A crash course on the meaning of life in the context of FIRE

 

We almost had a personal finance festival, but the May elections forced the event to be postponed. In such events of late, financial institutions have been pushing an alternative to FIRE, implying that people in the FIRE movement experience a life with little meaning and that somehow paying expensive annual management fees can lead to a more meaningful existence.  

To counter such forms of propaganda, I spent a decent three weeks of my life decoding the meaning of life, devouring Roy Baumeister's book Meanings of Life. This article summarises the book's most fundamental ideas.

To start, we need to break meaning down into four parts. We need to pursue each part to have a meaningful life:

• Your life must have a purpose - Why do you exist?
• Your life must have value - You must bring value to others or society
• Your life must have efficacy - You need control over events.
• You must have self-worth - You need some way to feel superior to others.

Once you lay down these four foundations, you have meaning in life, and it produces a few effects :

• First, you connect all these positive and negative events together to respond differently to them.
• Secondly, this response will increase the stability in your life and help you cope with changes better. 

And that's basically the gist of everything else in this formidable volume.

If you examine FIRE within this meaning definition, then FIRE is intensely meaningful. 

• Purpose - We exist to be free of our golden handcuffs. We play roles like child, spouse, and parent rather than just a cog in the economy. 
• Value - A financially free person can give up a job to someone else who needs it more and pursue a calling rather than a job. 
• Efficacy - Passive forms of income give us a powerful sense of control over financial obstacles. 
• Self-worth - And trust me, you will definitely feel superior to others. 

That's all I have to say. 

I hope readers will use these ideas to challenge financial institutions with so-called more meaningful approaches to financial planning. It's not meaningful to be a source of commissions to these institutions.

Instead, just buy the stock, collect the dividends, and speed up your journey towards financial independence.