FIRE, as you almost certainly know, stands for Financial Independence / Retire Early. However, I think that definition can be kind of misleading.
In the textbook FIRE model, someone would work, presumably full-time, perhaps also with one or more side-gigs, until they hit their FI number, at which point in time they would stop working forever.
Despite this being the textbook definition, I actually don’t think this is a very common approach to FIRE. Many of the FIRE’d folks that I’m aware of continue to earn money in one way or another. Some are landlords or bloggers. Others sell books or online courses. Still others have hobbies that they have monetized in some way. Please understand — I am not trying to be the retirement police here. I’m not criticizing the behavior, I’m highlighting what seems to me to be a shortcoming in the definition itself.
You may have heard people talk about CoastFIRE or BaristaFIRE. I’ve also seen it referred to as downshifting. Basically, this means working (again full-time, perhaps with side-gigs) until you hit a (lower) FI number. This FI number would be enough so that if you left these savings alone until your full retirement age, you would have enough money. Thus, for the remaining years until full retirement, you just need to coast — earning enough to break even — working a less stressful, less time consuming, or more stimulating job. Despite the fact that this is often treated as a sub-category of FIRE, the sense I get is that most people who “retire” in the FIRE community are actually doing something more like this.
I originally (like, starting in high school) thought my goal was to quit working completely as quickly as possible, but as we’ve reached our (admittedly somewhat arbitrary) FI number, both my wife and I have realized that we want to keep working part-time. We like the intellectual stimulation and the community. And, personally, I tend to do lousy with large swaths of unstructured free-time (even though the voice in my head still tells me that’s what I want). I tend to isolate and get depressed. So I want to ease into it, keeping the structure of work as I figure out other ways to support my mental health.
Plus, I don’t remotely hate my job. I read a lot of stories about people dreading Mondays or feeling stressed out or disrespected. I never feel that way. In fact, if I’m totally honest, I sometimes find myself looking forward to Mondays, because work is a context where I know how to handle most of what comes up and often feel useful. I also have a great boss and really like the people I work with. I also get paid decently (by my fairly modest standards) and am able to work from home.
So here’s how I’m thinking about things:
I’ve been working full-time for almost 15 years. We probably have enough invested now that I could just stop working, but I don’t really want to do that. Instead, I’m thinking about ways I could work differently in order to bring even more work / life balance into my life. At this point, I’m not sure what this looks like.
Possibility 1: Stay in the same (or similar position) but work less hours, either by having a day or two off per week, or alternating weeks on / off.
Possibility 2: Find a different job, perhaps even working full-time, doing something that I was more passionate about.
What it really comes down to is the freedom to choose. I’ve been focused for so long on simply hitting a particular number, that I hadn’t really thought about “what next”. Now that we’re there, I want to make sure I’m transitioning to something, not just away from something. And, again, my point here certainly isn’t to criticize what FIRE looks like for anyone, or to suggest that there is a right way and a wrong way. I don’t even know that for myself yet, let along for anyone else.