When You’re Not Ready to Chase Financial Independence

Too overwhelmed with other duties to think about FIRE? Feeling burnout? Worried sick over failing? Guess what, you’re not alone! Not being ready for financial independence comes in so many flavors it’s hard to keep track of them all. In fact, you could argue it’s part of your archetypal Hero’s Journey towards stability and wealth. “Refusal of the Call” is literally the step right after getting “The Call to Adventure (Call to FIRE?)” in the first place. So look at you, following in a time-honored tradition of Establishing Boundaries Against the Plot! This is only Chapter 2 of this epic story, so don’t think you’re out for the count just yet.

I’m going to talk about the time when I wasn’t ready to pursue financial independence, what was needed to make myself ready, and how you can get yourself ready.

Darcy’s Refusal of the Call

It’s springtime in 2014. I’m nineteen years old and a college sophomore in Boston. Besides my full course load, I am also part of multiple extracurricular groups, holding down a call center job, and working as an unpaid intern for a local nonprofit. I’m in Year 2 of being away from the place I grew up and doing everything I can to ensure I stay away… hence the overwork with all these moving parts. My main focus was performing well and building a great resume so I could eventually support myself out in the world. The goal was more geared towards “support through work,” not “building investments on the path to wealth”.

My mindset, at this time, was fear-based. It limited my thought processes to resembling tunnel vision. There was little room for anything that wasn’t about becoming an attractive, in-demand worker. Due to that and the stress from stretching myself too (needlessly) thin, financial independence wasn’t even a consideration. Wild looking back at it. All I had time for was molding myself into the type of person companies wanted to hire and give lots of money to. I didn’t think about what else my money could do for me beyond “let me live in peace and away from the place I grew up”.

One day, I was sitting in the weirdly-shaped office layout of that nonprofit. It was a dreary day outside so the lighting came from the fluorescents above me. I didn’t have work at the nonprofit to do that day, so I was randomly reading news articles to pass the time. Clicking one link led to another, and soon I found myself on the blog of none other than Mr. Money Mustache.

And just like that… my life changed.

The world itself tilted on its axis as the heavens sang above those sad fluorescents.

JUST KIDDING.

MY LIFE DIDN’T CHANGE AT ALL.

There were zero tilted axes or angel choirs. I skimmed a couple of articles with passing interest; the one most noteworthy to me, at the time, was about biking in Arizona. That article, and the distinctive site background, are the only two reasons why I remember reading his blog back in college. I’m sure I skimmed his much more famous articles like the one explaining the 4% rule or the one with the shockingly simple math behind early retirement. It wasn’t that I disregarded the advice. It’s that I didn’t think about it at all. Since it didn’t apply to being a good worker, this stuff didn’t apply to me. I read, I thought it was interesting, and I promptly closed the tab with no further preamble. In other words: I was not ready to hear about financial independence, let alone begin my journey towards it.

It would take until I was a few months into my first post-grad job that I returned to financial independence. Things looked much different at this stage. My life was now much more settled and stable than it was in hectic academia. I had so much more mental and emotional bandwidth to educate myself about personal finance and, then, put what I had learned into action. Most importantly, I had a lot more control over my expenses and, to an extent, my earnings. I could now dedicate the majority of my time to generating income without other obligations. It took me more time to get ready to pursue financial independence, but once I got there I was off to the races.

So how do you get ready with the life variables unique to you? Answer two questions first:

Are you willing? Are you able?

I’d venture to say most folks would answer “yes” to the first question. Not all, and not because they’re staunchly contrarian or because they don’t understand what being financially independent can do. It might be because they’ve experienced the negative effects of capitalism; a lot of young adults feel sick at the thought of perpetuating a bad system built on the suffering of others. I’m not okay with it either, which is why you’ll see me jump to fixing grocery displays or picking up discarded clothing in a department store. I just can’t leave it for workers when I know they’re already being underpaid.

I’m willing to work my way to financial independence because that’s the most sensible way I have to escape under the current economic system. Until I can find out how to instantly improve lives for the millions living in poverty or poverty-adjacent, I’ll do what I can now to donate to worthy causes, be an advocate for better working conditions/pay, and steadily open up roles for those outside the privileged bubbles.

The Ability/Privilege of Pursuing FIRE

You might not be able to reach financial independence. This depends on the nuances of your financial situation. You cannot make much headway at all if you are earning poverty wages. Cutting down your expenses will help you save and invest more cash, but there is always going to be a limit to how much you can cut (we gotta eat and have shelter as the bare minimum to survive, which are going to eat up a lot of the budget anyway). You are able to pursue financial independence if it is feasible to save 20% or more of your salary. I managed to answer “yes” to this question when I was making $15 an hour in 2016, but only because my expenses were as low as I could possibly make them without someone staging an intervention.

If you are willing and able, then you can ask if you are ready for what comes next. In 2014, that “next” for me would have been learning about investment strategies and beginning to increase my income. In 2017, “next” was trusting my investment strategy and continuously adding to my brokerage accounts. Today, “next”  is fine-tuning my approach while I deal with a pandemic (and, hopefully soon, post-pandemic) society. Someday, “next” will be cresting over my FI goal and following through on my goals and dreams. All of these “next”s issue their own unique challenges. They’re intimidating. They’re scary. It seems easier to avoid these scary challenges entirely as your first instinctual response.

Put It Into Words

Acknowledge the fear. Say aloud you’re scared, or write it out, or otherwise express it in the medium you’re most comfortable with.

“I’m scared I will not succeed. I don’t want to seem stupid for pursuing this if it turns out to mean nothing. I don’t know how to tell my friends I’m spending less when we’re out, and I don’t want to have that conversation in case they get confused or pity me. Financial independence is a lonely road and I don’t want to feel alone.” 

Air out your doubts someplace that isn’t your mind. That way, you can look at it from more than one angle and give yourself the time and space to best analyze it.

Check in With Someone Smart

Talk to someone else who’s familiar with FIRE. There are several dozen people I trust to give me sound advice on personal finance, most of whom I follow on social media. I know I can DM them with any questions I have and get a thoughtful response within a day. Now that I’m more comfortable mentioning I write about money IRL, I have a couple of close friends I can discuss this with. If I had neither of the above, I know there are several dedicated online communities (including r/financialindependence on Reddit, the Mr. Money Mustache forums, and the Bogleheads forums) I can ask directly. The FIRE subreddit has a dedicated weekly thread called “Help Me FIRE!” where you can post your specific financial situation for others to chime in with advice tailored to your needs; if you do not feel ready for financial independence, that can open your eyes to actionable steps for you to take.

Consult Those That Came Before

Listen, watch, and/or read about how others did it before you. If you’re a straight white male with a good childhood, you might just have the largest array of FIRE personalities most similar to you. If you’re none of the above, there are still several others in the FIRE space who have shared their own stories to help you out. I mention a few of them on my Resource page for direct recs; for many more, look at roundups like the ChooseFI podcast guests, the Camp FIRE finance directory, or the Personal Finance Blogs directory. Their choices and results are available in whatever format works best for you; I’m all about reading so I stick with that, while others are drawn to podcasts or YouTube videos/documentaries.

Try It Out

Who says you need to stick with this the rest of your life? If you’re still waffling between yes-financial-independence or no-financial-independence, settling on “maybe” is a totally valid option. Give yourself a timeline for trying it out and seeing where it takes you. I sort of did this myself by doing a check-in 5 years after starting this. If that check-in told me it wasn’t working for me, I would have stopped pursuing this.

While you need to commit to testing this out, nothing about this that makes it a lifelong commitment. If it’s no bueno after a few years, you’re free to quit. We’re not going to show up to your house and curse you with ghosts if you decide it’s not your thing. If it is your thing, then congrats! You now know for sure this is the path you want to stay on. Whatever the outcome, you’ll be better off for trying.

Cover image credit: Quentin Lagache via Unsplash