You may still be working once you reach FI and plan to work for years to come. OR you may scale your working efforts down to part time so you don’t lose the social aspect of it. OR you may foresee upcoming one-off expenses in your near future that may keep you working a bit longer. OR you just love you job and don’t want to leave just because you not longer have to be there for the paycheck. OR you want to keep working for the benefits its provides to you and your family. OR you may want to keep working to collect additional funds to support your kids, parents, friends, other family members, the homeless or for charities.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

FIRE stands for “Financial Independence Retire Early”. I’ve also heard the term FI\/OR which stands for “Financial Independence Optional Retirement”. Either way, the idea is that once you reach Financial Independence, you can then retire early if you WANT to as you will no longer NEED any additional income to support yourself. Early retirement could be at any point before the typical retirement age of mid to late 60s.\u00a0\u00a0This is essentially when work becomes optional<\/strong>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

There are some retirement police out there saying if you reach FIRE, quit your job, then start making income some other way, then you aren\u2019t really retiring. My argument to this is, if you end up spending your free time on a side hobby that you are PASSIONATE about and it ends up bringing in an income, you aren\u2019t really “working”. At least you are no longer tied to your 9-5. You aren’t spending time on this hobby BECAUSE of the money it generates. You are spending time on it because you CHOOSE to and ENJOY it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

After reaching FIRE the idea is that you will have the TIME to learn about something you are truly interested in and passionate about. It may or may not make money. If it does, great. If it doesn\u2019t, no sweat, you didn\u2019t start doing it with the purpose of making money off it in the first place.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

As humans, we are naturally curious individuals and will likely find SOMETHING to spend our free time on. You can only be a couch potato for so long before you get the itch to do something else. Be it traveling, volunteering, coaching, building, writing, crafting, designing… And that\u2019s the beauty of FIRE. You free yourself from the Monday-Friday 9-5 grind with 2-4 weeks of vacation a year to instead decide what you WANT to do EVERYDAY.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n