FIRE or “Financial Independence, Retire Early” is a compelling message for most people. Although I’m past the age of being able to retire early – I’m 64 as I write this – even for me, I find much that is compelling in this message. That’s because FIRE promises … what exactly? Freedom. Independence. Relief from the grind. Escape from burnout. Time, sweet time, to finally do what you want to do!
 
I wrote on FIRE twice before, once on its benefits and once on its downsides. Today I want to pull on some of these threads. You’ll note that what I write today will sound like I’m less than enthusiastic about FIRE – a FIRE sceptic. I view my attitude differently: I view FIRE as a powerful and generative idea, with many self-evident benefits and some less evident downsides. But beyond these benefits and downsides, I see FIRE as an idea worth living with, to return to and consider again and again. In other words, I respect FIRE as a thought-provoking concept that calls for my engagement. So, with that, here are some more thoughts to share. 
 

I’m Already Free

FIRE is an idea – sometimes the richly imagined ‘Oh, how great my life will be once I’m retired’ video that plays in my mind – that before that glorious day of ‘walking away’ is reached, can further my ‘stuckness’ in a stressful and overly time-consuming job that leaves me with little time and energy to do all the other things I’d rather be doing. This bright future may blind me to what I can – what I must – do in the present to make my present moments rock.
 
What if, instead, I imagined and gave space to the idea that I’m already free, free to do what I want to do, to do all the important things that call for their devotion, whether to my daily life chores, spending time with the ones I love, or on my avocation. 
 
But am I free right now? Most of us, during our years of work, often do not feel free. We feel stressed and put-upon. Not all the time, but still too often.
 
So, what would it take for me, today, right now, to feel I am free and then make it so? Perhaps my making it so cannot be done right away, but once my plan to reach my objectives is established, it can start to get implemented today and then extend into the months and years ahead. 
 
Perhaps you are simply working too many hours? This may be because the job you have requires it. Or because you impose these hours on yourself. This self-imposition may come about because you lack certain skills in managing your time with patients or, more likely, with paperwork. If it’s too much time spent on paperwork, with the ever-present overhang of thinking how far behind you are, then what can you do about it starting now? Do you need to learn to navigate and use the EMR better? Write more concisely? Schedule the filling out of charts or forms into your appointment times or to strictly scheduled times during the day? Can you switch jobs to ones that require less paperwork from you? Or a different practice model – direct pay – that lets you forego insurance forms and hassles? 
 
Some of these ideas may seem more far-fetched to you than others. It doesn’t matter. Allow yourself to think through all possibilities. You can write them down to consider each in turn. 
 
If your back was against the wall, what would you be willing to do that, at the moment, you’re not willing to do? Some things – unethical ones – should always remain off the table, while others may make sense with further thought and refinement or when conditions are right, and they may be right sooner than you know. 
 
My subhead, under which I’m writing this, is “I’m already free.” But if you’re not already free, consider what needs to change – and what YOU need to change – to make it so, to make what your life is like right now be such that you feel you are already free. 
 

Sustainability 

Here is an ugly thought: for some clinicians, thinking about FIRE is a copout. It is daydreaming about some bright future of being finally fully free from that which currently is. Dreaming, daydreaming, imagining – I’m not against any of these. But they can become self-defeating copes when they become substitutes for doing the hard work of making one’s current life sustainable. 
 
When you’re, let’s say, 38 and dreaming of retiring when you’re 50 rather than when you’re 60, 70, or 80, it is still thinking about a very far off time, a time when you will be quite different than you currently are and the world will also be quite different than it is now. 
 
Again, this is all well and good – except when it keeps you stuck now. The good news is you can combine these ideas: you can both plan for an early retirement and for building a sustainable life for the years between now and then. After all, right now and the immediately upcoming years are the years of the prime of your life. It would be a misallocation of resources – the moments of your life – to overly invest in making money now for far-off future use at the expense of feeling miserable in the present. 
 

Right Now

Another reason that a person can overinvest in FIRE at the cost of the present is that once a person is living the FIRE mindset, it becomes a habit, one that can become hard to break. FIRE teaches frugality and living below one’s means. These are very good things. Wise and prudent. But they are, in a way, inconsistent with FIRE. Living frugally and prudently is to provide for the availability of resources for a ‘dark day,’ for when one cannot work anymore due to disability or simply old age. But it is hard to change oneself from a frugal and prudent person to one who retires early and just putters or even jet-sets around – and does so at an early age. Instead, one is likely to want to continue to live in this wise and prudent way. And, after all, when you’re 50 and make a very high salary, will you want to leave the good pay, sense of accomplishment, and source of esteem, to do … what exactly? Travel around the world? Play golf? All of that is compelling for about 3 months. Then what? 
 
Then, many early retirees just return to work, especially the highly-trained and highly-compensated ones. Why? Because it was the source of so many good things. And, it also feels like a waste to simply stop using one’s dearly-acquired and highly-valuable knowledge and skills for no good reason. 
 
I’ve now had three retired physicians who, after a few months to a couple of years, return to work as physicians. They did so with a twist: they came back to clinical work on their terms, with sustainable hours, working with patient populations they most enjoyed working with and cared about, and without the stress of always gunning, gunning, gunning. 
 
Isn’t this both happy and sad? I’m glad they learned what was important and life-giving and came back to it. Too bad they didn’t learn this lesson 20 or 30 years earlier. 
 
Maybe, you too need to retire – in your mind, at least – to be able to ‘return’ to work and do so on your terms. Working ‘on your terms’ is available now.

Thanks, and take care,
Dr. Jack

Language Brief

“The cost of a thing is the amount of life which is required to be exchanged for it.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” – John Lennon

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” – Seneca

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“We do not remember days, we remember moments.” – Cesare Pavese

Ask not (’tis forbidden knowledge), what our destined term of years,
Mine and yours; nor scan the tables of your Babylonish seers.
Better far to bear the future, my Leuconoe, like the past,
Whether Jove has many winters yet to give, or this our last;
This, that makes the Tyrrhene billows spend their strength against the shore.
Strain your wine and prove your wisdom; life is short; should hope be more?
In the moment of our talking, envious time has ebb’d away.
Seize the present; trust tomorrow e’en as little as you may
[Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.]

– Horace, Odes 1.11 (Translation: John Conington, 1882)