November 2019 marks a couple of significant anniversaries for me. The first anniversary is that it’s now 10 years since I started this blog with this first very amateurish post. As far as the FIRE movement goes, particularly when we compare it with the number of FIRE blogs today, these were very quiet days. Notably Early Retirement Extreme wasn’t quite 2 years old while Mr Money Mustache was still more than a year away from making his first appearance.
The second anniversary is that it’s now 1 year since I pulled the FIRE’ing pin and for me at least I think that term is a good analogy. It really was like a hand grenade going off in my world.
Looking back over those 10 years I’ve learnt quite a few things and I thought it might be useful to jot a few of them down in no particular order of importance:
1. FIRE is both solving a quantitative and a qualitative problem. I also now believe in the early days of a FIRE journey it’s mostly quantitative problem solving but with time the problems become more qualitative in nature. For example if you want to FIRE you need to quickly learn how to earn more, spend less (which when combined is save hard) and invest wisely, then choose which of those options you’re going to go for. In parallel to this you’re probably tracking progress. These are all quantitative problems to solve. Looking back I was guilty of focusing on these topics for almost the first 9 years of my blogging which in hindsight was a mistake. What I should have been doing is in parallel being qualitative which is why most of my learnings today are qualitative in nature. Also where I sit today I know my FIRE problems left to solve are 100% qualitative. Are you focusing on both the quantitative and qualitative weighted appropriately depending on where you are in your FIRE journey?
The second anniversary is that it’s now 1 year since I pulled the FIRE’ing pin and for me at least I think that term is a good analogy. It really was like a hand grenade going off in my world.
Looking back over those 10 years I’ve learnt quite a few things and I thought it might be useful to jot a few of them down in no particular order of importance:
1. FIRE is both solving a quantitative and a qualitative problem. I also now believe in the early days of a FIRE journey it’s mostly quantitative problem solving but with time the problems become more qualitative in nature. For example if you want to FIRE you need to quickly learn how to earn more, spend less (which when combined is save hard) and invest wisely, then choose which of those options you’re going to go for. In parallel to this you’re probably tracking progress. These are all quantitative problems to solve. Looking back I was guilty of focusing on these topics for almost the first 9 years of my blogging which in hindsight was a mistake. What I should have been doing is in parallel being qualitative which is why most of my learnings today are qualitative in nature. Also where I sit today I know my FIRE problems left to solve are 100% qualitative. Are you focusing on both the quantitative and qualitative weighted appropriately depending on where you are in your FIRE journey?