Playing with FIRE
Jill on Money with Jill Schlesinger
Audacy
4.6 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 26 December 2019
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On the latest episode we’re joined by Travis Shakespeare, director of a new documentary called Playing with FIRE, which follows 35 year old Scott Rieckens, his wife Taylor, and their toddler Jovie as the family decides to embark on a year-long odyssey to understand the rules of the FIRE movement and test their willingness to reject the standard narrative of adult life.
When Scott hears a prominent leader and “early retiree” in the FIRE movement subculture interviewed on a podcast, he enlists his wife to abandon everything they’ve been taught about the role of money in adulthood and instead focus on pursuing financial independence.
But doing so requires an about face since their current path has them spending every dime they make living the “Instagram” life in an expensive San Diego suburb, driving luxury cars, and eating at fancy restaurants.
Although everything they are doing is sanctioned by their friends, traditional education, and broad society, Taylor agrees that something is wrong when it becomes clear she’ll need to sacrifice the precious hours of her daughter’s childhood and work 40+ hours per week to continue paying for their lifestyle.
She agrees to uproot their lives and spend a year traveling around the country to meet the subculture’s mentors while living rent free to save as much as they can.
It’s an interesting tale full of ups and downs. If the FIRE movement is something you’re interested in, this film is a must watch.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Jill Schlesinger. On this episode of the program, we are talking about the |
| 0:08.0 | Fire Movement, Financial Independence, retire early, with Director Travis Shakespeare. His movie is called |
| 0:15.2 | Playing with Fire. The biggest thing that I've noticed is how deep the taboo around |
| 0:22.1 | money is in our culture because all that this culture talks about is money all the time |
| 0:27.7 | But if you talk to somebody about their own personal relationship with money, it's a big deal. |
| 0:33.0 | Welcome to the Jill on Money Podcast. |
| 0:36.0 | We are presented by Marcus by Goldman Sachs. |
| 0:39.0 | It's a big holiday week and that means that you've got some time maybe in the next week or so to watch |
| 0:45.9 | some movies. I've got a great one to recommend. It's called Playing with Fire. Fire, as in Financial Independence, |
| 0:54.7 | Retire Early. |
| 0:56.2 | We were lucky enough to interview the director, |
| 0:58.7 | Travis Shakespeare. |
| 1:00.6 | The movie is available right now on iTunes Google Play and it comes with your Amazon Prime |
| 1:05.7 | membership. US News and World Report just named it one of the best financial films of the |
| 1:11.1 | decade. Here's a little snippet. Walking out of the My name is Scott Rickins. Like most people, money has never been easy for our family. |
| 1:25.0 | This year, we're starting our own journey to financial independence. |
| 1:29.0 | To pick up your life and just move. |
| 1:31.0 | That is extraordinarily difficult. |
| 1:33.0 | There's something scary about going, |
| 1:35.0 | here's what's important to me in life, here's how I'm going to live my life. |
| 1:38.0 | We're doing a lot of things at once, |
| 1:40.0 | changing our entire lifestyle of spending too much money, trying to figure out where we want to live |
... |
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