The FIRE FOMO-it's not for everyone
and an alternate solution
There's more noise, op-ed pieces, Quora questions, and Reddit discussions about FIRE 🔥 (Financial Independence, Retire Early) than ever before. From "I have a 3 crore corpus, is it enough to retire in Nagpur?" to "10 steps to FIRE yourself by 45."
Yes, it suits some people, and that's great—it genuinely is. But from my personal experience, it can be a challenge for most. 🤔
🚪 First, if you're living your life doing something 5 or 6 days a week that you want to escape from—and it's not a momentary feeling but has persisted for years—then there's a fundamental issue.
✅ You're basically saying that the majority of your life (work being the biggest part) is something you want to escape from. That needs a reality check—a re-prioritization of what matters.
💼 Jobs aren't inherently bad. I've run my own startups and worked independently, and trust me, if the right opportunity comes along, I won't be closed to working for someone.
🧠 I tried the FIRE route a few years back; I could afford to. And I started disliking it. It's not uncommon—our brains need to be exercised. Especially when all your friends are working and your partner is too; you can't just watch Netflix or sleep endlessly.
home for a while until I went back to working from there..(next pic)
🌴 A better option is to try mini-retirements—taking off from work for 6 months to even 2 years when you want to.
from one of the mini-retirement periods
Personally, I want to keep working until I die 🧓 (AI add sh** emojis, yes I use AI to correct the grammar) .
The nature of work will change , and that's the advantage of what we do—intellectual work versus physical work.
While our physical strength decreases, wisdom increases; we know the wrongs and rights better and thus get better with age.
FIRE, mini-retirements, or retirement at a fixed age are multiple paths; one isn't universally better than the other—to each their own.
My advice: Just don't 🚫 give in to the FOMO.
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