Why I decided to pursue FIRE

I remember discovering FIRE after hearing about Mr Money Moustache’s story on YouTube in late 2020. Oh, how time flies!

If I had to summarise why I pursued FIRE and give 1 reason, I’d be to have the optionality to never depend on a 9-5 job for income and live life on my terms. It’s so that I have to choose to go to work, and if I do work, I’ll truly be for the love of it, not because I have to pay my bills.

When I ride the train to work every day, I see dozens of people looking tired and clearly going to work for the paycheck and nothing else! I mean if you think about it, doesn’t that sound like such a sad life?

So let’s go into the 1st reason.

1. Buy back my time and live life on my terms

The thought of waking up and not having to go to work is heaven on earth! Do you know what’s better than living in a mansion and driving a Ferrari?

It’s living life on your terms and having all the time in the world to do whatever you want. Now, that doesn’t mean you’ll just watch Netflix all day.

But once you reach your FIRE goal, you’ll have so many options. Here are all the options you’ll have:

• Fully retire and never work a day in your life
• Semi-retire by working 2 days per week and enjoy a 5-day weekend! In this scenario, your expenses will be so low that your part-time job will cover your expenses, allowing your investments to compound in the background.
• Travel the world full-time or for the majority of the year.
• Fully commit to volunteering for a charitable cause you truly care about
• Maybe work at a tech startup with lower pay since you can afford to take a pay cut
• Etc

You have all the choice in the world to do whatever you want with your time , and it’s truly special to know that you’re in full-control of your life.

2. Retire young and enjoy the retirement of my prime years

Doesn’t it sound a bit strange that the whole “system” is designed for the average worker to work until their late 60s? And then maybe enjoy 20 years of retirement?? Does that sound like the lifestyle you want to live?

I knew that I didn’t want to follow the status quo and wanted to enjoy my prime years doing what I want. If you think about it, our whole life, we’re always constantly on a treadmill from the time we enter kindergarten to when we reach retirement age.

Instead of retiring in my 60s, I want to be able to retire in my late 20s and enjoy 60+ years of a healthy retirement with no obligations.

3. Spend more time with my family

It can be quite challenging to juggle work life-balance with the demanding schedule that work demands of us. That’s another beauty of FIRE because once you reach full retirement at a young age, you’ll have so much more time to spend time with your family.

Even if you work part-time, you’ll have an extra 2-4 days extra every week, allowing you to send that down time with you family. They say that our family members are the most important thing in our lives right?

We should spend the most time with our loved ones.

Obviously, most people want to spend more time with their families. But it’s difficult to balance both family life and work when you’re busy working 40, 50 or 60 hours per week just to “pay the bills” and sometimes neglect family completely.

I know when I reach financial indepedence and work a lot less, I want to spend the rest of my time with my parents.

I want to be able to look back and say that I cherished my moments with my family not only as a child, but also as an adult too.

It’s so common nowadays to watch parents work their tails off and barely spend time with their kids, only to regret it later on in life.

4. FIRE Helps You To Prepare For Retirement, Not Only When You’re Young, But As You Get Older, Too

When you achieve FIRE at a young age, not only does it prep you for your retirement in the short-term, but also in the very long-term as well.

Most Australians who are currently in their late 40s, 50s, and 60s are stressing out about retirement simply because they don’t have enough.

But why is that? Is it because they didn’t earn enough income? Is it because they are earning minimum wage and have barely enough to get by? Maybe?

But most Aussies in their lifetime earn a healthy amount of income, especially as they climb up the corporate ladder and earn promotions that supplement their rising income over time.

It’s quite simple: they start too late, which doesn’t give enough years for their investment portfolio to grow at a magical rate.

The great thing about pursuing and reaching FIRE at a young age is that you’re fully prepared for retirement and never have to stress about your finances, simply because you’re in full control and your wealth will keep increasing even if you don’t invest as much simply because you’ve laid the foundation.

And you know what sucks too? When most people save at a later age, it’s more difficult to save due to the expenses of having a family and other lifestyle expense creeps that gets unnoticed.

That’s why I thought to myself that I’m going to save & invest as much as I can when I’m young, so that I know I’ll be financially secure for the rest of my life going forward.

Like, let’s put it this way. If the average Australian couple needs $2 million after inflation, how do you think they need to save if they start investing at 50 years old, assuming they want to reach that number by 65?

They’d need to invest $7k monthly. Saving $7k a month is quite a tall task for the average couple, as it does require a bit of lifestyle sacrifices, which might be unideal due to having kids.

Here’s how much the couple would need to invest monthly to reach that goal based on which age they start at:

• 60 years old: $28,782.86
• 50 years old: $6,970.78
• 40 years old: $2,957.32
• 30 years old: $1,456.02
• 20 years old: $762.66

The earlier you start, the less you have to invest to reach your retirement goals. If the couple started when they were 20, they’d have to invest more than 4x less than if they were to start at 40 years old.

The point I’m trying to get across is that the earlier you start investing, the more wealth you can accumulate in your lifetime without ever having to worry about money.

Summary

So to recap, here are 4 reasons why I decided to pursue FIRE:

1. Buy back my time and live life on my terms
2. Retire young and enjoy retirement in my prime years
3. Spend more time with my family
4. Be fully prepared for retirement not only when I’m young, but also in my later years as well.

There are so many benefits of pursuing FIRE, and it doesn’t require a ton of lifestyle sacrifices that you might think.

I can say for sure that financial independence is 100% doable for the average person, and the earlier you start, the more wealth you can accumulate at a younger age.

If I had to boil it down to ONE massive benefit to pursuing FIRE, it’s that I don’t want to be slaving my ass off at a job that I hate for the next 50+ years. The thought of that scares the heck out of me, and I’m sure that’s certainly not what you want.

Life is meant to be enjoyed and lived to the fullest, but that ain’t possible without mastering our finances.

Without mastering our finances from a young age, we’ll always be enslaved by money. Instead, we want money to work for US and become our slaves instead.

You have two choices:

1. Take ZERO action
2. Take action and start taking control of your finances like a boss

If you enjoyed reading this post, feel free to share it and comment below with your reasons for pursuing FIRE. I’d be really interested to know each one of your reasons.