I got my start in personal finance with a baptism by fire.

Financial independence retired early.

This rhetoric was such an integral part of my financial education so as to distort it completely.

And I say distort because the philosophy takes regular personal finance tactics and basically

turns them up to 11, becoming so extreme that most, quote unquote, normal underlying assumptions

about best practices may actually change in this paradigm.

For example, in the traditional versus Roth debate, the quote regular person personal finance

advice might recommend a Roth 401k unilaterally because the regular person is likely only saving

an 401k and nowhere else is not interested in optimizing and may plan to work until they're

75.

Given those parameters, Roth probably is the better choice for them.

But someone who is ready to optimize and earning a lot of money and interested in retiring

in their 50s, hmm, not so much.

Most modern day adherence of the fire movement may clarify that it doesn't have to be extreme

or claim that I'm misrepresenting the movements intent, but I don't even mean it derogatorily.

The fire world has a lot of valid philosophies, many of which, if adopted widely, would probably

put most people in a far better financial position.

After all, saving 30% of your income instead of 10% is probably going to create better

long-term outcomes, right?

I am merely calling out the cultural differences between traditional financial advice and

fire principles.

The same way that someone who grows up in the UK is likely to feel differently about, say,

...