Haters Gonna Say It's Fake

Sometimes I wonder how the Financial Independence, Retire Early movement (what the cool kids call FIRE) has spread as far as it has. The details for reaching financial independence sound so ridiculous, that typing them out makes me feel like a scam artist.

People saving fifty, sixty, or seventy percent of their incomes? Retiring in their mid-thirties or late twenties? Living on twenty or thirty grand, total, a year, without having to eat plain rice for dinner each night?

That sounds like a hustle, friend.

The fact that the blueprint for FIRE was born on, and is shared through, the internet doesn't help things. We're skeptical of some of the things we read online because a lot of the things we read here aren't true. There are a lot of hustles on the internet. Maybe these early retirement bloggers are financially catfishing us. (Though things like Choose FI, Camp Mustache, and Jim Collins' Chautauquas are giving us the opportunity to see these supposedly retired folks in real life, press a finger against their foreheads, and validate their existence.)

The rub is that the people jetting off halfway around the world, or even just packing up the car for a weekend camping trip, are already convinced that financial independence and early retirement are for real. There's no need to preach to the choir, especially when they're already packed into the minister's bus on the way to the revival.

But what about the unconverted? Why should they believe?

A peek at the comments section from any early retiree profile shows that a lot of people aren't convinced by the sermon.

I wish I could say that I, too, showed a healthy degree of skepticism the first time I read Mr. Money Mustache's blog back in 2011. But I, with the fervor of the newly converted, read, and believed, everything the man wrote. I, too, would turn away from the false idol of materialism, become an investor instead of a mere consumer, and finally, truly be free.

Looking back, I'm a little surprised that I bought in so fully, or so quickly.

Maybe this financial independence stuff really is the truth. That might explain why it resonated with me.

But history has shown that I'm a bit of an easy convert. After hearing about communism for the first time in high school, I thought, "Man, this is definitely where society is headed...where can I pass out literature so I can help bring about the revolution?" A few months later, a cute girl in jean shorts convinced me to come to "this really cool retreat in the woods" where she and all her friends would be all weekend and, wouldn't you know it, that Sunday I came home born again. Oddly, I didn't particularly care what Marx thought about religion anymore.

Thankfully, not everyone jumps in with both feet. A lot of people show a healthy skepticism towards people who claim on blogs that they made millions in a few short years, and they didn't have to do anything remarkable either, and wouldn't you like to try, too? Part of me wants more of us to be more skeptical of ridiculous things we read on the internet.

But then there's the pesky fact that, after I worked on this financial independence thing for a few years, it turns out that it actually worked just like the blogger said it would. We got lucky and increased our income a lot, got frugal and reduced our expenses a lot, and invested the simplest way we could. With a little luck we could reach financial independence this year.

Of course, no one reading this really knows that for sure. For all they know, I'm lying about the whole thing. And the rational side of me thinks, "You know what? They probably should be skeptical."

I write in a medium that deserves some suspicion. It's just a blog, written by a guy who won't share his own name or many details about his life. Maybe people should not make life-altering financial decisions based on the advice of an anonymous bro on the internet.

I'm kind of at a loss as to where I'd go from there though, because I actually know the plan works, because I am working it. I know that something like financial independence is possible for a lot of Americans, especially if you have an above-average income. And I'd like other people to know that it's at least possible, even if it's not something they want to pursue.

But who am I fooling? This is the internet. You can show a bit of yourself here, the part you think is interesting, or cool, or just something that you want to share...but not everyone is going to pick up what you're putting down.

It's the internet, friend, and you're talking about getting rich and retiring a few decades early, without making any huge sacrifices.

Haters gonna say it's fake.

*Photo is from rasdourian at Flickr Creative Commons.