(upbeat music) - This is part of my gripe with the FIRE movement. Now, I'll caveat, so I was in a documentary on it, this documentary playing with FIRE. I'm guessing you've seen it, 'cause a lot of the community has watched it. If anyone hasn't, I'll link to it in the show notes.

But, you know, in the recent past, especially through your book, I really struggle with the RE part, like this idea that we should get all this money so that we can stop working and just kind of do nothing or travel or whatever it is. And I think the word retirement is too messy.

And for me, it actually, you know, many people I think say, "Oh, retirement, no more work." For me, I think if we could reframe that concept as financial independence is just when money lets you do the thing you wanna do. And if you're already doing it, then you already are, you know, like you said, you know, if you had been a hospice doctor from the beginning, you would have been financially independent, you know, out of medical school, or maybe once you paid your medical bills, but maybe not.

And so that stresses me out, thinking about people trying to have this goal of just doing nothing. What do you think? How do you feel about that RE part of the movement? - So I think that was both the greatest thing for the movement, 'cause it made it exciting and fun to talk about, but also the most detrimental to the real message.

Because the real message is not retire early. Most of us got here because we actually enjoy some kind of work. And I think we find purpose in work. The point being is that what really matters is not whether you're working or not, because I think we work most of our lives, and I think most of us enjoy doing some kind of work.

It's more about the autonomy, and the mastery, and the independence, all those things that make us feel good about. I think that's what, when we're talking about retiring early, we're not really talking about not doing things, we're talking about reclaiming our control of doing things that make us feel good.

Those things may actually create money. Often they do, or create some kind of content or product, right? We build something, we make something, we write something. This is all very important to our sense of identity, and our sense of waking up in the morning, and feeling like we have something productive, and exciting to do.

But what we're really looking for is control. Control and independence. And so it's really, you get to financial independence, and then you have control of what type of work you do, when you do it, and what the end goal of that work is. And that's something that most people feel is lacking in traditional employment today.

- Yeah, I would challenge anyone listening, that feels like they want to achieve this kind of fire journey goal, to stop worrying about trying to save enough that you could stop working for the rest of your life. I think what you said about people often end up being able to monetize whatever they would do if they stopped working, is very true.

So I try to challenge people to say, what if you just took a year? Took a year off, did the thing you love. I think for a good number of people, not everyone, but for a good number of people they'd find within a year, that thing that they love actually does generate income.

And all of the math of, oh, I need to save enough to live on 4%. Well, that's true if you're not working. But that goal of maybe, if you're on the coast, maybe you think you need $10 million, but if you take a year off, find out that the thing you love doing makes more than $0.

Well, then the amount you actually need to do that full time could be half of what you need. It could be nothing because it makes enough money to sustain your lifestyle. So I think that far too often we assume that in retirement, we make no money. When in reality, if your retirement is just doing something you would do for free, many of us can get paid to do that thing also.

And it changes the entire equation. - When I have these conversations, I wanna be really clear about this 'cause people look at my story and even probably your story, a lot of our stories and people say, well, duh, it's really easy to say that when you have money, right?

You have space, you've made money, you have savings, you have investments. It's really easy for you to say these things, but I'm a 22 year old out of college. I have just enough money to cover my rent. I'm barely putting food on the table. It might be easy for you, but for me, I don't have time to do all this stuff.

And this is the conversation I really wanna have, right? Because again, it's easy for us in our 40s and our 50s when we have some savings to start talking about meaning and purpose and side hustling and monetizing things so that we can stop doing what we don't like. But the 20 year olds, the people who are struggling to put money on the table are looking at us and saying, yeah, that's a real privileged version of life that we don't have.

But I wanna start thinking about those people too, 'cause I think it's really important. We talk about money as if it is the and only tool, but the truth of the matter is we have lots of tools that help us live a purposeful and meaningful life. So if you were 22, you just got out of school or you didn't go to school and you're just working that eight to six barely getting by, and you're like, I don't have space in my life for side hustles.

I don't have space in my life for these things. I would like to look at those people and say, well, money is one tool, but again, you have other tools. You've got your energy, you've got your youth, you've got your communities, you've got your skills. So maybe you work your eight to six Monday through Friday, and then on Saturday night for three hours, pick something you're really passionate about and start a side hustle, right?

Three hours on a Saturday. Let's see what happens with this.