fire resources
Mind Over Matter 

FIRE Done Right is About Resources, Not Money

Darcy @ We Want Guac , ,

Yes, I am aware that the “F” in FIRE stands for “financial”. I also understand practically every FIRE-focused blog discusses money topics, including but not limited to:

  • Budgeting
  • Investing
  • Side hustles
  • High-paying incomes

However, I am taking time out of writing Count of Monte Cristo screenplays to argue that FIRE is about resources, which includes money along with other necessary bits and pieces. The end goal of FIRE is not “reach your FI number,” in much the same way that the end goal of building a birdhouse is not “acquire a toolbox”. The end goal is about living your ideal life.

The Curated List of Resources for FIRE

Money is a resource to getting to that life. It’s just not the only resource you’re gonna need to reach it.

Resource: your own desires, goals, and dreams.

You need this resource to understand how to best deploy all your other resources. I name this as a resource as well, because a lack of known goals and dreams makes your other resources ultimately useless. It dovetails nicely with using information as a resource because it’s the only direct information that tells you what your ideal (i.e. post-FI) life might look like.

Resources: the privileges you have.

There are parts of myself that are disadvantages in society as it stands today. Because I’m a woman, a bisexual, and have a serious disorder, I have to deal with the societal disadvantages those bring. But! My privileges help mitigate that. I am a white person in a society that favors whiteness. I’m an American during the time in history when America is the most powerful nation on earth. I have a college degree, which only 39% of the world’s population can also state. So far, I’m also able-bodied, which is a massive advantage no matter how much accessibility infrastructure actually makes it to my surroundings.

My privileges complement my fine personal qualities (smarts, kindness, and good ol’ moxie being amongst them) which, all together, enable me to hold down a six-figure job and grow my wealth to $300,000 at the age of 28. I will note counting your privilege as a resource can feel tacky in a “counting my blessings I’m not like THOSE people” type of way. My goal here is not to pat myself on the back for traits I merely lucked into. It’s to acknowledge the suboptimal reality that is the 21st century. Sexism, racism, ableism, classism, homophobia, xenophobia, and a whole bunch of other oppressive practices are woven into the tapestry of modern life. They disrupt the whole piece of art, to take the metaphor further, and it’ll take a lot of tedious time and effort to even begin removing them.

Until the human race can rise above these evils, you’re gonna have to deal with them. Might as well acknowledge the unfair playing field and understand what can be used as a resource.

Resource: information.

Bar none, this was the most important resource at my disposal when I had nothing else of substance. Online forums and finance-focused sites are the direct reason why I managed at all to save my first $100,000, $200,000, and now $300,000.

Remember that bullet point list at the top of this article? I learned all of those things thanks to my access to information. Everything I learned, I did so from people who sought to share the wealth of knowledge they themselves had access to: how to budget, invest, build side hustles, and secure high-paying salaried roles. They can point to their own successes as examples of how this resource enriches their lives. Hell, you don’t even need access to the Internet to use this resource. Back in the days when there were more barriers to Internet access (hi, early 2000s rural Midwest) I still had access to information thanks to books stocked at my community libraries. It’s why I feel so strongly about the necessity of library access, especially now that libraries offer so much more than books nowadays.

Resource: your relationships.

Guess what! As a species, the number one practice humanity’s profited the most from is building community! Working alone makes for a cool Western or whatever, but working with your friends and loved ones is what brought us literally all of the cool shit! Sports! Stories! Expedited travel! Insights into everything that makes your life better! It’s all from pooling our abilities and possessions together to get more than the sum of its parts!!

It blows my mind how much easier my life is with friends and loved ones to do things with. I’m estranged from most of my biological family, so the differences are even more stark to me. There’s little things, like friends randomly gifting me treats from their travels or the produce from their gardens/chicken coops. There’s bigger things, like picking me up if I need a ride or just straight up being there when I need advice or to vent about my struggles. On a community level, I don’t even need relationships to benefit from things like snow plows keeping ice off the roads or guerilla groups picking up litter on the nature trails (when I’m not hate-doing it myself).

Relationships are also overwhelmingly the make-or-break to getting excellent employment, career mentorship, and other opportunities that bring you riches. As long as your relationships are with upstanding people you enjoy being around, whatever effort you put into your relationships will come back to you in spades.

Resource: money (duh).

It’s the most obvious resource because it’s the most obvious when you have a lack of it. Arguably, having money can make the other types of resources at your disposal a lot less necessary. It can also be the toughest resource to acquire, hence the need for financial content sites like this one.

The Misconceptions Around FIRE and Resources

FIRE might come off as a need to hoard money. On one end of the scale – and in the early 2010s days – it might’ve looked like squeezing a fraction of a penny anywhere you could. On the other end, it might look like folks with multi-millions and who still don’t feel it’s enough. Seriously – I’ve seen folks I follow on Twitter, beloved by the community, who say things like “I’m TECHNICALLY a millionaire, but I’m still highly insecure about money”. Meanwhile, reaching that seven-figure status makes you richer than over 90% of the United States, long touted as the richest country on earth.

I still believe folks like that just don’t understand how much is enough. There are systemic factors at play here, too: it’s impossible to estimate how much is “enough” in a country without free healthcare. No one wants to work hard to reach millionaire status, only to have it taken away because of complications from a car accident, cancer, or COVID-19.

FIRE should not be about living miserably until you reach your milestone and live in excess. It is about sacrifices, which is not the same thing as suffering. Sacrifices and suffering are not the same thing.

When FIRE is the Tool, Not the Goal

If you’d like another metaphor, think about FIRE like, well, fire. I usually imagine “fire” as a campfire crackling merrily in a clearing by a rockface. You wanted to build the fire, but the fire itself was never the goal. What you want is what the fire enables: cooked food, warmth from the chill, and light after darkness falls. Fire is the resource you use to get you the things you want. All it should be, is the framework that propels you to something better and better.

FIRE helps you consistently improve. Remember this line from Game of Thrones?

Following that same line:

And six years ago, I had no money and no (job) prospects. I was a 21-year-old version of Charlotte Lucas, and I knew it. Looking back now, I was really more of a Dragon Queen pre-season-7. And all because of the resources from FIRE.

If I only saw FIRE about getting money and nothing else, I would be richer today. If I had to estimate, I’d have at least $50,000 more than I currently do, which is an old estimate. But FIRE is about more than the money. Money isn’t even the end goal. All money is, is the tool that I need to accomplish the end goal. That goal: live a good life, in the definition I choose to have. “Live a good life” does not mean “live a good life some years into the future”. The future is not specified here. “Live a good life” means living a good life, which includes the time frame of right now.

Best Using FIRE Resources

For the vast majority of humanity, their ideal life does NOT involve work-as-a-prerequisite-to-survival. It’s just that removing the work-survival-prerequisite takes up so much of the equation that it, rightfully, dominates the process. This has the unfortunate effect of downplaying the very necessary step of actually envisioning what your ideal life looks like.

I’ll give you two examples of ideal lives. One person reached financial independence and decided to live life as a perpetual vacation. They bounce around the USA – and the world at large – taking all of the beach days, naps, and restaurant outings to their heart’s content. Another person reached financial independence and decided to pursue passion projects. Sometimes, they make five figures per month; sometimes, they go several months without seeing a dime for their work. Both are incredibly happy with their lives, but the “ideal” for them both are vastly different.

(By the way, the two examples above are from real life. Person #1 is Purple from A Purple Life, and Person #2 is J. Money from Budgets Are Sexy. They talk about their life post-FI here and here if you want to know more!)

Which is all to say: it doesn’t take loads of stress to make the FIRE journey work for you. It’s there so you can identify your resources and use them to your best advantage. At the beginning, use the financial reflections and lessons of other FIRE folks to inform your own way to it. You might discover the same thing I am: you don’t even need to reach total FI to enjoy the resources it helps you build.

Cover image credit: DLKR via Unsplash