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Article: A Growing Cult of Millennials Is Obsessed With Early Retirement

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Trede:
I never read Your Money or Your Life or knew much about Vicki Robin, so I found this article interesting:

http://time.com/money/5241566/vicki-robin-financial-independence-retire-early/

Can't say I agree with certain sweeping characterizations of the FIRE community in some places in the article (male-dominated, millennial, etc.) but enjoyed the read nonetheless.

jax8:
Thanks for sharing this!  I can feel the distain for Early Retirees oozing off this article...  How funny.

The warning about early retirees DYING makes me chuckle. 

1.) How many retirement decisions are made by health scares?
2.) If someone retired early due to poor health, it makes sense that they are inflating the whole "Early retirement leads to shorter life!" stats.

This is totally anecdotal, but I'm starting to wonder if women live so much longer than men because the stay-at-home-wife era led to less stress on women.  Their husbands are long gone, but the women in my family are still kicking in their late 80's and 90's.  They haven't worked since they were 25.  "Early retirement" seemed to have done wonders for them! 

Ynari:
That was a weird article. I couldn't quite figure out who their target audience was. Not FIRE folks themselves. It's equating FIRE to a YMOYL fandom? And also it reads like they just read the Reddit FAQ and decided to write an essay about it. I disagree with their assessment of why "millennials" are taking to FIRE:


--- Quote ---The stock market has been very good to investors in recent years, especially to those who understand the magic of compound interest. Unemployment is low, and opportunities to earn extra money in the sharing economy are plentiful. Add the do-it-yourself spirit of a generation that can learn anything on YouTube, and you’ve got ripe conditions for a movement.
--- End quote ---

I've always felt that the reason FIRE is popular right now ("millennial" is effectively clickbait here, because those in the early-to-mid stages of "early retirement" are necessarily younger by definition.) was more due to the changing culture of work - it's no longer the norm to stay at a company for 40 years and get a pension. And even if you do, pensions aren't as golden as they used to be and you're expected to fund your own retirement alongside that. So if young adults already have to do a lot of retirement math and change jobs every few years, why not plan it out to your advantage? But also I think the recession got folks in the mind of saving (risk-aversion) and setting a goal of financial independence - the early retirement part is incidental. I guess I just don't see how the sharing economy or watching Youtube DIY videos has anything to do with FIRE.

Just... weird.

StockBeard:

--- Quote from: jax8 on April 17, 2018, 12:12:55 PM ---I can feel the distain for Early Retirees oozing off this article...  How funny.

--- End quote ---
I felt on the contrary that the article was pretty well balanced, explaining multiple aspects of the FIRE community, including its pros and cons. I especially appreciated the last part which talks about the risks of blindly following the 4% rule (while still explaining where it originates from), as well as the fact that many of us in the community come from a privileged background but pretend it's not a factor.

I'd definitely share this article if friends/family asked me to explain about FIRE.

Telecaster:

--- Quote from: Ynari on April 17, 2018, 01:13:39 PM ---That was a weird article. I couldn't quite figure out who their target audience was. Not FIRE folks themselves. It's equating FIRE to a YMOYL fandom? And also it reads like they just read the Reddit FAQ and decided to write an essay about it. I disagree with their assessment of why "millennials" are taking to FIRE:

--- End quote ---

The audience was their general readership.  For better or worse, the FIRE movement wasn't invented by millennials, not by a long shot. But millenials are driving it.  Say, eight years ago you could count the number of FIRE blogs on one hand. Now there are too many FIRE blogs to even count.  There are dozens at least, maybe hundreds. 

I also thought the author had a good concept of the basic ideas and was able to explain them with out going too far into the weeds.   

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