FI-RE: An Introspective History

 FI-RE: AN INTROSPECTIVE HISTORY  

One of the first web sites I ever looked at back in 1998 was the Retire Early Home Page. At the time, dot com fever had hit. Of course, I needed a dot com too. But I wouldn’t get around to building one til 2006. 

Another site, Raddr’s Forum was online well before 2006. I used to follow a lot of the threads there. One major item at the old FI-RE forum discussion was the weirdness, randomness, and hypocrisy of mega corps and their iron assed subordinates. In the old days, before online forums, people turned to TV, nightclubs, and maybe university libraries to escape Mega Corp and their JBT’s. Sometime after 2001, even with the dot com implosion and outsourcing, many people turned to their personal finances for escape from the rat race. 

Sure, MLM was there, no money down real estate was there, Rich Dad, and as Neil Strauss documented in the book Emergency, there were people preparing for civil disorder and looking into second passports and foreign (off shore) residences. 

I first heard the acronym “FI-RE” at Raddr’s Forum in 2005. After 2006 when I launched independent wealth, now MMU, Tim Ferriss published the widely read Four Hour Work Week, where mobility, practical outsourcing, geographic arbitrage, creative abandonment and removing oneself as a bottleneck spread through practically every pro and hobby blogger and online marketer. Ferriss introduced practical psychology and philosophy to a broad niche that tended to like numbers and self-discipline, but that also embraced minimalism. 

Ferris, the Kiyosaki’s, Dave Ramsey, Steven Catlin, Frank Kern, Jim Cramer and several others were the meat of the early FI-RE movement. These days the wet nurses demand index funds only, presumably so everyone gets the same results. Long before the dot com era and the two financial busts that followed, there was Your Money Or Your Life, Six Months Off, and Cashing In On the American Dream. These books talked serious frugality, and cool stuff like relocating overseas as a perpetual traveler (or PT) and living on $50 per day. 

The Financial Crisis of 2008, seemed to shake out a lot of gurus of all types, not to mention people who wanted to RE, not just those strictly FI-RE. The Kiyosaki’s seemed to emerge stronger. Minimalism was in. Low cost, passive index investing was in, some of the traditional astroturf stuff was Excess Cash  rejected. MMU’s money saving ideas page had thousands of hits per day. The reminders of the crash were still there and are still there although the hall monitors didn’t like it. 

FI-RE was in. Around 2014-15, the manosphere and the alt-right pointed out trade school and STEM majors were better than MBAs, social “sciences,” women’s studies, and good sounding specialized degrees that are not in demand. My favorite statement from these guys is, “Does your boss ever say, “I need to hire a guy with a degree in x ?” If not, study STEM!” Like the loosely organized manosphere, the FI-RE movement has irrational haters and Machiavellians who want to astroturf either or both and be their hall monitor or wet nurse for a big fee. All those mentioned in this article and their fans know what I mean. 

Even in personal finance and related business, and casual hobbying and discussion, there are people from the polar ice caps who want to water down the tea, extract value (much different from adding value) and making doctrine palatable to the CEO’s of the Mega corps and their iron assed brown nosed subordinates and volunteers who caused the 08 Crash and fairly or not, drive us into the FI-RE camp in the first place. 

For real, FI-RE proponents openly supporting candidates who want wealth confiscation? It appears a bubble has been created in FI-RE. Astroturfers will someday say, “FI-RE is old.” Just like the soulless, Machiavellian astroturfers of my youth used to say, when they wanted to quash or demean “old” and usher in “new” socialism, occultism, and other obvious tired scams. The original FI-RE crowd was semi-rebellious and not looking for the hall monitor to ask for permission to pee. 

The author has no official relationship with any speakers or personalities mentioned in this article

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