I first heard about the FIRE movement on Reddit, but the way it was presented there felt too strict to me and put me off of the idea. That was until I decided to search for some financial podcasts to listen to at work and stumbled upon ChooseFI.
They made the lifestyle changes feel easier to accomplish and didn’t make it feel like pursuing a FIRE path would take away from my current lifestyle.
Overall it’s just been easy listening and has really fired me me up to take control of my financial future.
Thanks for sharing! I’m not much of a podcast person, but there is definitely a spectrum to FIRE.
The main principle to success is definitely just being intentional with your spending and understanding the trade offs. You can have your super frugal Early Retirement Extreme adherents who believe in living an ascetic life to retire asap. Most people can’t live long term like that and definitely need a more moderated approach.
I’ve increased my spending over the years to include things like international travel and expensive hobbies, but those are the things that make life more worthwhile for me. On the flip side I do what I can to make the rest of my life more frugal to offset my higher spending in other areas. Yeah, I won’t be able to retire on a $15k yearly budget, but I will enjoy my life along the way and still be able to retire in my 40s.
Afford Anything by Paula Pant is also a good blog/podcast about intentional spending in pursuit of FIRE.
I’ve heard Paula Pant mentioned a bunch of times, it may be time to check her content out.