I had a personal breakthrough in thinking about FIRE principles today that I wrote out for myself and decided I'd share in case others found it helpful. This is the mental framework I'd like to use to help me integrate my spending and my decisionmaking.
Everyone has a limited amount of these three items:
- Resources (money, but also real or personal property)
- Energy (time, generally, but accounting for the fact that some expenditures of time wear your down so you need to recover, while others build you up)
- Entrepreneurial ability (creativity, logical reasoning, problem solving skills and ability -- discounting the time it takes to implement these plans)
Everyone faces a series of challenges in their life. Some of these are serious problems (e.g., recovering from an illness) while others are self-directed goals (e.g., climbing a big mountain).
The goal of FIRE philosophy is to learn how to solve each challenge with the least expenditure of resources and energy, mainly by relying on and increasing entrepreneurial ability. Doing this allows one to conserve and grow these reserves of resources and energy in order to take on more complex challenges, more self-directed challenges rather than externally-imposed challenges (e.g., starting a business rather than completing a report directed by a boss) and more challenges that involve helping others (once the groundwork has been lain for a happy personal life).
With this framework, there's not necessarily one "mustachian" decision that all people must abide by. It is a problem solving system that will necessarily result in different answers for different people with varying goals and stages of life, etc. However, we can all learn from each other by seeing how other people with a high amount of "entrepreneurial ability" solved problems in their own life with extremely efficient uses of resources and energy.
I've started to use this framework to analyze purchases and it is helping a lot. Previously, I used to live with broken and worn out things a long time, then get frustrated and say "I'm a high earning professional with plenty of savings, I shouldn't need to deal with this" and go out and buy something. Typically something fairly nice but not top of the line because I like nice things and I wanted it to last but didn't want to break the bank. This process allowed me to save a lot more than my spendy friends but a lot less (relative to income) than, say, Mr. Money Mustache. Then I would feel bad and think I should just toughen up and live with problems, but I don't think "deprivation until quitting job you hate" is really the answer.
Instead, when a spending decision comes up I am now trying to purposefully step back and think, "what is the problem I am trying to solve here" and then determine the most efficient way to solve that actual problem. Sometimes, I've realized the problem isn't really a problem that can be solved with resources but is a mental block (e.g., solution to "I'm stressed" is not "Starbucks" but "reduce stress."). Other times, I've realized I can solve it by adapting existing personal property. Or realized I can spend less than I thought because I've zeroed in on the specific problem (need new toaster oven to make toast and reheat food) and avoided the traps (look, a shiny $500 smart oven that can air fry and sync with your phone!) designed to convince me to spend money rather than solve my problem.
I suppose the only constructive feedback of this site that I can offer based on this analysis is that I feel sometimes jobs are framed on here as those horrible things you suffer through until the glory of FIRE. I sort of unconsciously used the decisionmaking strategy outlined above to move myself from a terrible, very high paying job situation to a great, reasonably high paying job situation over the course of about five years and I'm so glad I did. I would advise others in similar situations NOT to suffer though a bad job situation just to FIRE, but to go to work immediately using FIRE principles to make their job situation better, even if the path then gets slightly longer, so that RE becomes just a nice option at the end of a more enjoyable FIRE path.