FIRE- Early Retirement. Isn't as great as its often made out to be

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day. He was talking about FIRE — Financial Independence, Retire Early — and the number he’s saving toward. It’s caught on fast among urban Indian professionals the last few years: the spreadsheets, the FI-number threads, the calculators.

I completely respect his thinking, and I know a lot of people believe in it. But over the years, I’ve lost friends who were working sincerely, making good money, saving up for that day when they could retire and live a good life.

First — that concept doesn’t agree with me, because I’ve realised there are no guarantees to life.

I don’t want my tomorrow to be better than my today. I have realized tomorrow comes with no guarantees, but today is guaranteed. I can do something amazing with it now.

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Second — there are things you can do in your 20s, 30s, 40s, even your 50s, that get harder and harder to do as you age. Physically, our body declines. Mentally, we get more mature, more experienced. The irony is we plan to “retire” mentally and get physically active — go do the things we actually want to enjoy — later in life. That doesn’t make sense to me.

Third — I semi-retired once. It got extremely boring.

So I respect everyone chasing FIRE with a retirement number in mind. I’d just encourage you to hold a few different perspectives alongside it, then choose what works for you.

As for me? I plan to work till my deathbed — laptop or pen in hand, till I die — enjoying the process the whole way. With mini-retirements whenever I want one, throughout.

Saurabh Parmar, Fractional CMO linkedin.com/in/saurabhparmar