Today I find another article about the debate between FIRE movement members and…Suze Orman? And a guy named Jared Dillian. The article is this one, by Shawn Langlois at MarketWatch.com. I am moved to share.
At the start of the matter is the idea advanced by Orman and apparently supported by Dillian, that early retirement would require at least five and more likely six to ten million dollars. They find the FIRE movement’s life strategy tools of extreme savings, unconventional living and disciplined action too risky and unpleasant. They believe this choice of strategy would most likely be due to laziness and a desire to avoid work. Dillian believes the FIRE movement’s success or failure depends upon the stock market’s direction.
I have not seen any of Suze Oman’s shows or heard any of the spots from where this conflict springs. I don’t know what work Suze recommends for accumulating the needed ten million, or how long she believes is the right amount of time for that to take. I am sure her intended audience does not include those who, sine qua non some radical life strategies, would never, ever, be able to save anything like ten million dollars, and maybe could not retire at all. But those people do exist. There are a lot of them. And even though they will never have ten million dollars, they still want good lives.
Dillian seems to make two points. First, that radical savings is a doomed strategy in a bear market. Dillian defers to Math for more details on this first point. Second, that the FIRE movement is doomed because it is based on a value system that is in conflict with Hard Work, and only Hard Work can provide the things people really need: purpose, someone else to structure their time for them, and dignity.
The author, Mr. Langlois, editorialized a couple of Dillian’s comments as being valid. Langlois says it is true of Dillian’s remarks that younger investors in the FIRE movement have enjoyed primarily positive stock market outcomes in recent years, and asks the question of the reader, ‘What happens when the music stops?’. As the reader, I would have liked for Mr. Langlois to have taken that question back to the FIRE boards for an answer. It does not need to go unknown and the answers would have enriched the article. Langlois also characterized this comment from Dillian as a valid reflection on the benefits of having a “regular job”:
“What is wrong with working? Why do the FIRE people dislike working so much that they want to quit at age 35?” he asked in his piece. “Working gives people purpose. Most people do not function well with a bunch of unstructured free time. I am one of these people who thinks there is dignity in working, that every job is important no matter how small.”
I will have the odds on my side that Langlois is talking about working for a company or companies other than one’s own, for forty or more hours a week, more or less continuously for thirty-five to forty years when he says, “regular job”. The same guess about what Dillian means when he says “hard work” or “working” will also have good odds. For purposes of discussion, that is what we will call a regular job.
For me, this is the central misunderstanding. It is a misunderstanding that is much larger than the tweets and quips of out-of-touch financial advisors trying to make a buck hyping one thing or another on TV, and feuding with Reddit. It is this perception that regular jobs are good, or even going to be around much longer. The idea that the work structures and organizations of the industrial age are even remotely competitive any longer. The blindness of corporate business leaders to the radical changes in work-life that have already taken place and continue to evolve and develop at an incredible speed. How these changes skew what we see in traditional metrics like labor participation rates, and in turn, how these new modes confound policy-makers, pundits and professionals. These are the stories behind FIRE, I believe, if you keep looking.
I respect the radical savers and all the people in the FIRE movement who are looking for their freedom. They know that freedom begins with self-determination and is supported and protected with money, among other things. Many aren’t retiring from working. They are retiring from working on things that aren’t important to them. They are retiring from work environments that don’t make them feel happy. They are retiring from having to tolerate abuse and disrespect out of fear. They are retiring from watching their lives go by through the window of an office building while their loved ones are at home. They are retiring from doing the hard work that creates value for a society and passing most of the rewards to the investor class. At least some people are excited about the FIRE movement for the work it will allow them to do, not so they can avoid work.
Technology has created a new frontier of work configurations. People can explore, innovate and monetize the things they care about in ways they never could have before. These changes and innovations allow people to reprioritize where a ‘regular job’ falls in terms of activities that support a good life. As regular jobs have been scarce for most of the young FIRE movement’s life, people have found purpose and dignity working multiple jobs part-time. They are working projects, specific assignments, contracts or gigs. They are writing blogs, posting on Instigram, advertising to followers. In at least one case they are in a public beef with high profile media figures. They are finding more economic security in diversification than they found at their regular jobs. They are also finding more purpose and dignity. Much more. In some cases, they are making more money, too.
If we redefine the FIRE movement in this way, to say that it is made up of those who are turning away from the convention of a regular job in the belief that new strategies offer better economic security, purpose, dignity and opportunity, then I think we would be looking at this phenomenon in a way that I hope Suze and Jared can understand.