I have never liked the retire early (RE) part of the FIRE equation. Yes, it makes for a catchy title, but it also attracts a lot of negative attention. The problems come from a few things.
The definition of retirement
According to the Cambridge dictionary, retirement is the act of leaving your job and stopping working. So what happens if my 68 year old father takes on a 10 hour a week job at the local bowling club? Or earns a bit of money from working at the local library? Would he still be considered retired? Not according to the definition.
A lot of people who retire early and still decide to work are subject to people telling them they are not retired because it doesn’t meet the defined criteria. Removal of the RE part of the acronym would remove all that push back from people claiming you are a fraud or not early retired.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with earning money and if it is money that you don’t need, then I would still consider someone retired. The key difference in my eyes is that retirement is not the absence of work, it is the absence of needing to work.
fIRE AND Meaningful work
FIRE assumes that financial independence means early retirement. But the two are mutually exclusive from the definition. You can be FI and still work. In fact, a lot of people who reach financial independence still continue to work in some capacity. The difference is, you can now be much more deliberate with your work choices since you no longer rely on the money. To be financially independent and still continue to work would mean that the work is so valuable that you would do it for free.
FIRE diminishes financial independence
For those considering pursuing financial independence to then see people still earning money after reaching it, diminishes this strategy so they don’t even try. What it tells them is that you can try and achieve FI but you might still need to work anyway. If they dug deeper they would find out that these people are choosing to work, not needing to work. But the problem is many people don’t dig deeper. They see it at face value, and think what’s the point.
By removing the RE part, it helps with credibility and honesty of the movement.
It’s hard enough to convince people to be better with their money, without lying about things. All for the sake of a catchy acronym. Unless we get a more modern definition of retirement, hopefully over time the FIRE phrase gets phased out. Why do we even need a catchy phrase? Let’s just call it what it is. Financial independence. More people may get on board with that. After all, not all people want to stop working even if they are ‘retired’.
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