An interesting critique I’ve heard about F.I.R.E. is that once you hit your FIRE number and stop working you’ll get bored, regret it, and go back to your 9-5 (more like 8-5, but I digress).

F.I.R.E stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. My personal definition of Financial Independence is that I have enough money to sustain myself indefinitely. I am self-reliant. I don’t depend on anyone, especially not a company that doesn’t give a shit about me. Retiring Early is the second part of the acronym that people seem to get stuck on.

When you hit your FIRE number you don’t have to immediately retire. You can still keep your job and be in the club. You can do just the first part of the acronym and still be cool.

The thing is, once you hit FI number you have an option you’ve never had before. You’d no longer have to trade your time and labor for money. You have the option to say fuck it and leave any kind of work you don’t want to do because you’re not dependent on it or anyone.

This is a realization that only some people will get to experience so I can understand the hesitation.

People that retire early still work. Just not in the corporate sense. They spend their days with their kids. They volunteer, they have full-out hobbies, they work in gardens, they write books, they plan vacations, they cultivate friendships, they explore, they learn, they breathe, they create. They do a million other things that you can’t do sitting in a cubicle/open-air shared working space. All of these things take effort, therefore it is a type of work. This is the kind of work I wish I was doing. So don’t worry about me getting bored. I’ll be just find amongst my tower of books and pretty little things.

I plan on opening up a vintage store that resells lovely little trinkets and pretty clothes for dirt cheap, making just enough money to pay the rent.

My husband if the kind of person that doesn’t want to stop working. He actually really enjoys his job and can see himself doing it for a long time. I keep telling myself that one day, I too, will find a job that lights my soul on fire. I haven’t found it yet but I’m still looking so fingers crossed.

So even though he doesn’t plan on retiring early with me, he’s still completely on board this F.I.R.E journey (happy wife, happy life).

He understands how important it is to hit financial independence early because it means options. It means you’re able to take a pay cut to work on something that sets your soul on fire. It means never having to worry about layoffs. It means taking months off of work at a time to spend your summers with your kids. It means never having to worry about money again. So even though he may not choose to retire early, the choice is always there, and the lack of money isn’t something holding him back.

Also, if you do get to a point in your post-early-retirement where you’re so bored that you want to go back to work, just go for it. No one is going to stop you. But at least you got to the point where you found out that the retiring early club isn’t for you. Most people will never get to that point.

So if you’re telling yourself that you don’t want to try and retire early because you would get bored, please find a better excuse. You deserve more out of life than a blueish-gray cubicle with fake plants.