Fired up about FIRE

"You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war!" - William Randolph Hearst in a cable to Frederic Remington, 1897

It seems to me that the Internet media are currently experiencing "komkommertijd", a time of year when there isn't much "news" to report on. After all, most of what is happening in the world has been reheated and rehashed so many times that followers have lost their interest. Even clowns such as Donald Trump lose their funny after a while, impeachment or not.

Enter the latest electronic media target: young people who live prudent and frugal lives in order to be able to kiss their formal employment goodbye sooner rather than later. There is even an acronym to describe them, namely the FIRE generation (Financially Independent, Retire Early).

The question begs as to why this philosophy would be a bad thing. After all, having young people working carefully with their money in order to not work for a boss until they fall down dead at their desks would be something to encourage, wouldn't it?

And then the penny dropped.

The reason why this is frowned upon is not that "not everyone can do it" or "they are denying themselves life's pleasures unnecessarily", but because while these young people are working extremely hard towards their goal of very early retirement, they don't do the stuff that keeps the economy going. They don't have debt and they don't buy new cars every other year. They don't drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes or do anything else that can be excessively taxed. And then they leave the formal workforce altogether, living their prudent and frugal lives on their own terms! So it's not that they're doing anything illegal. They're just doing everything WRONG!

The Western economy is driven by debt and worthless paper money. So the moment one steps away from that, one also distances oneself from the mechanism that makes Big Money even richer, and Big Money can't profit from the effort of those young people any more. Wow!

So instead of encouraging that lifestyle that ultimately enriches them as human beings and giving them ample time to travel, volunteer and actually mean something to someone else, retiring before the age of 45 is seen as something to be actively discouraged. Instead, much is made of the fiction that these FIRE-ey peeps are sitting at home and twiddling their thumbs, while they are mostly still active and busy and working bloody hard, just outside the system where they can't be controlled.

Well, I have news for Big Money. I am 43 years old. I plan to take the first retrenchment package they offer me, only because it'll probably pay a wee bit more than me resigning. After that, I have more goals to reach and things to do and people to meet and places to go than one can shake a stick at. But I shall do it on my own terms. And that's what is ultimately the most important consideration.

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Ps. I found some jobs online that I wanted to apply for, and then discovered that my resumé was one of the files lost during a recent computer worm attack (wiping the hard drive was the only solution available!) Yes, I could probably redo it, but I realized that this might just be the sign that I was waiting for. So this year - 2020 - will be my retirement year, come what may!