Hacker News Reader

Comment by closeparen | Hacker News Reader

I find it hard to empathize with FIRE people [0] because I like my job. But the few I've discussed it with absolutely despise working. Like all-consuming, life-purpose-defining revulsion. And I think there's a feedback loop to it, because in trying to "get it over worth" they increase the intensity and make it worse for themselves. Then it becomes all the more important to get it over with quickly.

I wonder if the European attitude is just more similar to mine, being comfortable with and accepting of a job as a backdrop to build a life around, rather than something intolerable to escape from ASAP at any cost. Probably has to do with the jobs themselves being more comfortable.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/financial-independence-...

View on HN

You can enjoy your job and pursue FIRE. FIRE just gives you options. You can either stop working, do other work that doesn't pay as well or at all, or keep working and live at a much higher standard of living. Maybe the company you like working for only gives you a few weeks off per year and you want to take 1-2 months of unpaid time off. Maybe you don't want to care about layoffs or market changes or bad management. Maybe one day you wake up and decide you want to spend time with your kids and productive work can take a breather for a while.

It's foolish to focus just on enjoying your job right now, finances be damned, without planning for the future. For what it's worth, I think it's also foolish to despise your job every day for years and years just to retire a few years earlier. But that's not what FIRE is, that's just one group of people taking it to extremes, as is common in any endeavor. For most people, it just means diligently and consistently setting money aside that will give them a level of freedom that those who don't will never achieve.

Yep - this is my take, financial independence gives you freedom.

It's not about hating your job (or even loving your job) - it's about buying your own independence. For those without family wealth it's building your own safety net and bringing money related anxiety to zero and making it easier for your children to take bigger risks too.

This lets you take more risk (like doing a startup) with the downside risk contained. There's a reason startups are more often started by people with family wealth, they're ultimately risking a lot less.

Americans work hard in part because there's more upside potential than in Europe, but there's also more downside risk. I think we could do more to protect the lower bound which would be good for entrepreneurship and society, but we shouldn't put restrictions on the upside (I'd argue restricting upside disincentives risk taking and wealth creation).

One of my main 'contrarian' opinions is that wealth inequality isn't actually a big deal, and as long as you protect the lower bound is desirable in a society. You also need to control how that wealth is leveraged into political power though (and that can be a problem).

Maybe we are talking past each other. By “FIRE” I mean the ability to live on investment income, exclusively and permanently, decades before a typical retirement age.

Retirement on a normal schedule and security for a few months of rest here and there are, I would say, baseline financial responsibility (if you can afford them). These are marginal sacrifices, not a lifestyle/subculture.

There is lean FIRE, fat FIRE, barista FIRE, only FI, and several other variations of FIRE

Considering the phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs it's kind of hard to imagine people not despising them. I spend my days dreaming of what I could do to fight climate change but not (yet) being able to find ways to do what seems worthwhile just because I can't figure out how to make it cover expenses. How much more science, art, and simple joy could be produced if we were not forced to compete with one another for necessities? Some things produce natural competition (water in the desert) but we have so much damn wealth it's _absurd_ that anyone even fears that losing their job means homelessness.

Last year I bought a dirt cheap (sub-100k) house in the countryside with good internet because I don't _ever_ want my boss to have the power to take the roof over my kids' heads. I am not quite FIRE but it certainly helps.

"A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skillful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well—this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection, and of sociality as a whole."

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin

I'd say that we, at least the Nordic counties - which I am familiar with, have decent enough social/welfare programs, that people can be a bit more selective about their employment. You're not tied up to your work, otherwise you're SOL as far as healthcare etc. goes.

Furthermore, we have more free time/vacation, nicer hours, less commuting, and what not. So you often don't feel like you're living at work - or even worse, work that you hate.

And it is possible to live the FIRE-lifestyle here, if you plan ahead and live somewhat frugally. But still, there's an expectation that you contribute to the system.

> You're not tied up to your work, otherwise you're SOL as far as healthcare etc. goes.

I have a dream that someday the "workplace <-> health insurance" link will be broken in the US. For a few years I thought we might have had a chance, but it seems to have become a back-burner issue again.

The thing that is most maddening about employer-sponsored health insurance is the people who have it don't realize how big of a gulf there is between what is affordable for them vs others in terms of health care.

I have friends with good employer health insurance that go to the doctor over every little cough and sniffle and funny rash.

I have decent health insurance, but it costs enough and has a high enough deductible that every potential trip to the doctor is prefaced with "Is this an issue worth $100?" That's a pretty high bar to clear. Usually you go to the doctor and the answer is "well just wait and see if it goes away." That's not $100 worth of advice.

And if it's after hours, you're looking at closer to $500 minimum. I can't count the number of times my wife and I have debated "Is this bleeding bad enough for a $500 bill?" when one of the kids does something dumb and gets hurt.

>>I have a dream that someday the "workplace <-> health insurance" link will be broken in the US. For a few years I thought we might have had a chance, but it seems to have become a back-burner issue again.

Does the set of Affordable Care Act healthcare plans that can be purchased by individuals by themselves qualify as breaking the link? I know that they're not all perfect, but it seems like a step in the right direction.

The costs are just unbearably high.

$2000-$4000/mo family plans?

It's a mortgage with only downsides and no appreciation.

That seems high. I had an individual plan a couple years ago which was around $300 a month. As I understand, pricing varies widely by state, so maybe that explains the difference.

It's about the same cost as work-provided insurance, without having to work for the employer.

The upside is you get health care.

If your employer offers a health plan, you are ineligible for subsidies.

As it stands now, I think the last I checked a family plan costs ~$3k / month for me.

If I qualified for subsidies, I could get the same plan free. And I think that was also factoring in my current income, only changing whether my employer offered a health plan.

Edit:

Looked it up. In November 2019, the cheapest family plan available on the marketplace in my area was a "Catastrophic" level plan with a $16,300 total deductible for $1217.90 / month.

> I have decent health insurance, but it costs enough and has a high enough deductible that every potential trip to the doctor is prefaced with "Is this an issue worth $100?" That's a pretty high bar to clear. Usually you go to the doctor and the answer is "well just wait and see if it goes away." That's not $100 worth of advice.

I actually like this (generally speaking) as it causes you to bear some of the upfront cost and allows you an easy way to question the value of an action. With that being said, we should all be able to email our PCP to get answers to questions or schedule 15 minutes video calls.

I’m not against UHC, I think as I’ve mentioned before there are merits to both approaches (we just happen to do neither in the US). What I like about “is this worth $100” is that it introduces some upfront personal responsibility and decision making versus “well I sneezed let’s go to the doctor it’s free!!”.

Absolutely.

I just wish it was a more evenly distributed fee. I don't particularly mind that it's expensive to get care (I wish it was a bit less expensive), but the fact that I know so many people who go there seemingly on a whim precisely because it's cheap is frustrating.

> I find it hard to empathize with FIRE people because I like my job.

It's not about having to quit your job. It's about having the option to quit if you decide to. Should you decide not to quit you can keep earning money, without having any real need for it, which means you can invest and get even more money.

It's great that you enjoy your job _today_ (you are probably a minority). But what about 5 years from now? 10 years? Whatever you are working on may change. If you are an employee, your manager could be replaced by a crappy one. If you own your company, the market forces might change.

Not having your job tied to your ability to put food on the table frees you to do whatever you may decide to do.

Interesting perspective. As a software engineer it is unlikely that the world will ever lack satisfying work for me for very long (recessions notwithstanding). If it does, as a reasonably smart and academically successful person, I think I could transition to whatever is next. Maybe it helps that I saw both my parents change careers via graduate school while I was growing up. But you’re right, it is a gamble, and if I were more risk averse I might want stronger insurance against the possibility.

FIRE literally means Retire Early. Otherwise it's just FI.

> being comfortable with and accepting of a job as a backdrop to build a life around.

As a Berliner, this is what most of my colleagues aim at. They all have colourful lives outside the office setting.

I'm in the same boat as you. I don't totally get the push to retire early. In fact, I don't think I'll ever retire if I can continue working and doing something that I enjoy. I have colleagues who dream of spending their days on a golf course or doing projects around the house. That sounds like a horribly boring life, to me. I'd love to be able to keep working at and solving technical problems until I die. That, and I think my spouse and I would hate each other if we had to spend every moment together. We love each other dearly but also appreciate our time away from each other.

Solving technical problems until you die sounds much more boring than having the freedom to solve technical problems one day, teaching the next, volunteering the third, and taking the family on an extended weekend trip the rest of the week... or literally anything else you want to do. To each their own I suppose.

You my friend, has just described a Professor job at a typical US University. The tenured Professor in US can work until their chosen last day in the office, i. e. as long as they are capable of working.

Academia is not without its downsides. The road to tenure sucks and generally pays peanuts compared to industry. It's not for everyone.

More importantly, those were just examples. Replace teaching with running a bookstore or tending to a community garden or living on a sailboat in the Med and all of a sudden, professorship isn't nearly as desirable. You can always find someone to teach after a long career in industry, no need to lock yourself into academia. :)

Sure, you like your job...now.

Everyone has different life experiences. Many people have had bad experiences and believe early retirement to be their best option.

I hope you can broaden your mind to at least emphasize with people who do not entity their job.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com