“I’m like Che Guevara with bling on, I’m complex.”
S. Carter
Welcome to die or fire.
This site is an attempt at liberating oneself from self-imposed indentured servitude.
The pursuit of FIRE (Financial Independence/Retire Early).
Although the idea and community is intriguing, something feels off. Is it a cult?
Perhaps because I’m far from FI, or because I don’t plan to RE (or it’s not actually possible in the next 10 years barring an act of god). But because I’m a consumer. An impulsive consumer. This is the way of my generation. I guess that’s what you get when Wu-tang raised you. Although it took many sneakers to get off the hedonic treadmill, I’m still early in the evolution into a more conscious consumer. Like a backpacker rapper but with finance. A FIRE Backpacker.
This place is entirely for my own self-indulgence but it would be nice to help others along the way somehow.
Who am I kidding? This is my creative narcissistic outlet. But if I fail at achieving FIRE or eventually learn that it, too, is just another pile of shit, this will provide some entertainment for me down the road.
Schools barely teach literacy let alone financial literacy. Anecdotally, we’re all fucked. But at least debt doesn’t follow us into our next sad existence.
Here, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer all while the FIRE community belittles low to middle income folks because they aren’t stoic enough. Because they can’t survive on ramen, or nearly freeze to death to save some bucks on heating. But maybe if they did freeze they would save money on food and A/C. It just feels like the message pushed is:
“If you would just have discipline and bootstrap yourself. Stop always eating out at McDonalds or Church’s. Stop living in food deserts and working minimum wage jobs. Stop being born into generational poverty. Stop buying the small things that make your sad, unfortunate life, somewhat enjoyable. If you could just do some things yourself and stop blaming others and overcome the systematic racism and poverty you, too, could achieve FIRE!”
Sounds like a nice idea. Something I wish everyone could achieve but I’m sure most people can’t come close. Even those that climbed out of the lower income class and are now median income earners struggle.
I acknowledge that I’ve been blessed and fortunate that it’s an ideal that I can even entertain. But I do think that more people could achieve FIRE than we think. People like my parents. My close friends and family. They should have been near FIRE by now. I should be. But we were clueless and YOLOing a tad too much.
But, for some reason, I have hope. This is a plea to the younger me. To anyone caught up in the enigmatic culture of conspicuous consumption. Be it clothes, whips, or gluten free vegan personal training color theory whatever. My mind is torn because hip-hop raised me to be inspired and driven to activism yet tainted by toxic masculinity, violence, and pride.
This may never reach anyone. All good. We all die anyway. So it’s either I die before I reach FIRE. Or I reach FIRE and then die. Maybe I should have titled it, die and FIRE. I really wanted it to be DireFire because I thought that’s what it was when I started paying for this site over a year ago with only one post published. But obviously, it’s not dire. And since then, I ran from FIRE… But here we are again. Trying one last time…
Here’s to the the sneakerheads. The hypebeasts. Those unfortunate souls with motivation but financially illiterate. Even I thought I was driven, financially literate, and disciplined, look where I’m at now: >1 milli in debt. But here’s to the pursuit of FIRE, or at least some basic financial literacy. Thoughts on minimalism. Randoms and maybe even some KonMarie.
So here is my plea: join me as I explore this FIRE thing. Is it possible to YOLO and FIRE?
Yours truly, a conscious consumer.
J. Guevara