Revenge of a Misfit Toy

Some of us come to the FIRE movement a bit broken

Talk about a dream, try to make it real
You wake up in the night with a fear so real
You spend your life waiting for a moment that just don't come
Well, don't waste your time waiting
                                                                          - Springsteen

In 2018, after more stress at work, I toyed with the idea of finding a new job.

That’s the conventional advice we get, right? “Don’t like your job? Find a new job. Your dream job is out there.”

When you’ve worked long enough, you come to realize that every job, and every company, brings its own bullshit.

But then, I had a thought: I was almost 50, and what I really wanted to do was chuck my career altogether and just live off of the money I had.

I was tired of buying useless crap anyway.

In 2022, that’s just what I did.

Making this decision, as someone who is at peak earning potential, must seem downright bonkers to a normal person.

Dear normal people, it’s actually the second time I’ve walked away from career success, the first occurring shortly after 9/11 when I basically said “Fuck all, I’m going to film school.”

For those peeking inside my grey matter for the first time, I confess I’m a bit of a misfit; a bit broken inside. I struggle with normal. These struggles can undermine my ability to really enjoy happiness and success.

I don’t fully know the root cause of it, but I do know I have trust issues with corporate jobs. I perform well, but I can never give myself over to them fully. Part of that is wired into me as a card-carrying cynic of Generation X, and part is due to personal experiences.

A unified theory of misfit-ology in the FIRE movement

I have this theory that the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) movement is filled with other misfits like me.

At a recent EconoMe conference, I had the opportunity in one of the breakouts to share my “Why of FI?”. It’s a common question in the FIRE community. “Why are you pursuing financial independence? What is your why of FI?”

The answer to this question is often very noble. “I want to start a business. I want to spend more time with my family. I just want control over my own time and energy. I want to travel.”

I’ve given many of those answers over the years.

So when asked during this breakout session, “What is your why of FI, Allen?”, in a moment of Freudian panic, a word slipped out of my mouth that I was not expecting:

Revenge

Ok, it’s clear I’m not approaching this with the healthiest of mindsets.

But my theory proved true. There are a lot of us in this movement. I had people approach me in the hallway afterward, the disaffected, my fellow misfit toys, and they embraced me with their words. “I thought I was the only one! I’m so fed up with work!”

We wash ashore of the FIRE movement like it’s the Island for Misfit Toys. We arrive somewhat maladjusted. Maybe we once had a mindset of confidence, growth, and abundance, but life experience has stripped much of that away.

We’ve been “played with” too much.

The FIRE movement takes us in and applies a little glue here, or sews on a button there, and we are slowly nurtured back to a useful mindset of optimism, of possibility, of a way out.

We suck at normal

FIRE leads us off course, astray from the well-traveled path - and that’s intentional. It directs us away from what is considered “correct” or “normal.” And we, the misfit toys, say “Good. We don’t like normal. We suck at normal.”

I suppose we should seek some kind of counseling. Maybe try and make sense of our feelings so that we can better fit into this world; so we can better play this game of life.

But the truth is we don’t want to be fixed. We don’t want to be patched up and sent back onto the field. We did the math and saw our future: we lose the game more often than we win it. The normal path of saving 10-15% of our income and finally retiring at 70, broken in body and mind, just doesn’t add up.

We did the math and we saw our future: we lose the game more often than we win it.

FIRE says “To hell with the game. It’s a rigged game. Stop playing it.” That’s very appealing to a misfit toy like me.

The rigged game of normal

Taxation

The Rigged Game: As a regular employee, it took me a long time to realize that I and other W2 workers like me were the primary source of tax revenue for the federal government. We continue to be that source of revenue in retirement as withdrawals from our 401(k) or 403(b) plans are subject to required minimum distributions - where we are forced to take (taxable) money out even when we don’t need it. I didn’t know there were two sets of rules.

Getting Revenge: Business owners, entrepreneurs, and those living off of investments are treated exponentially better by the tax code. Join them.

The FIRE community uses real estate and post-tax investment accounts (e.g. a Schwab or Fidelity brokerage account) to build savings and investment cashflow to live off of in early retirement. There are so many levers available (depreciation, tax-loss harvesting, capital gain harvesting, etc.) to lower our tax bill, or even eliminate it altogether.

Car Culture

The Rigged Game: At some point in our collective psyche, it became normal to drop $40,000 on a vehicle, drive it into the ground for the next few years, get about $15,000 back in trade, and then do it all over again a few years later.

55% of Americans are underfunded for retirement, and yet we are buying new cars about every 6 years. Too many Americans will suddenly drop from the middle class during their working years to poverty in retirement, all while having spent more than $250,000 on shiny new (rapidly depreciating) cars over their lifetime.

Getting Revenge: There are plenty of “multimillionaires next door” driving old pickup trucks or a 10-year-old Prius. Do what they do. Face it, you hate sitting down with car salesmen anyway.

And to clarify, I’m not calling out car enthusiasts and collectors here (yes, I’m looking at you Jeepers) - as long as they aren’t mortgaging their retirement. They are putting money towards their passion. They like cars, so they drop money on cars. I like to travel, so I drop money on travel.

I’m talking about throwing money away on commuter cars and grocery getters that will be beaten into the ground at a clip of 80 miles per day - do we really need this slightly fancier Camry every few years?

Hustle Culture

The Rigged Game: Hustle culture is a double-shit sandwich with extra cheese. First, it glorifies overworking and burnout as a badge of honor, promoting an unsustainable and unhealthy lifestyle. Second, because we only make time for work, our identity and self-worth are primarily tied to our jobs. Take away the office, title, and role, and we don’t know who the fuck we are.

Fast forward to age 68, suddenly retired (or laid off) - our health probably isn’t that great and we are suddenly suffering a pretty massive identity crisis.

There’s a bit of a war going on right now between CEOs and employees. Work-from-home and work/life balance benefits gained in the COVID era are being clawed back in the name of productivity. Corporate America is desperate to reinstate hustle culture as the norm.

Getting Revenge: Take your vacation days. It’s part of your compensation. Most hustle culture people I knew in the corporate world would actually lose vacation because they reached their max and stopped accruing it.

No one would give back part of their paycheck each month, but those same people would regularly let their vacation days lapse. Hustle culture screws up your priorities - remember, time is our most valuable asset.

When you do take a vacation, use some of it for growth. We all love to hop on a cruise and drink the week away, but that won’t necessarily help you cultivate an identity outside of work. Use the time to try out a new hobby. Go to an EconoMe or CampFI or some other conference you are interested in and make new friends or learn new skills.

Take your sick days, too. I’ve worked through the flu countless times in my career, and it always took me much longer to get better. In 2020, I was always amazed at the number of people I would see on Zoom meetings with COVID. They looked terrible, and yet here they were in a meeting they really didn’t need to be on.

Predatory Credit Cards

The Rigged Game: Credit card companies offer teaser rates and large sign-on bonuses to entice people to run up large balances and make the minimum payment each month. The credit card company can then collect interest and fees that far outweigh any benefits of signing up.

Getting Revenge: The first revenge play is simply not to use them. Compound interest can work for you (investments) or against you (credit card debt). Since credit card interest is much higher than typical investment returns, it’s a losing game to carry a balance on a credit card.

Many of us in the FIRE community do use credit cards, but I have to tell you, we are terrible customers for credit card companies.

We make large purchases that we need to do anyway (for example homeowners insurance) in order to qualify for large signup benefits, and then we pay the card balance in full each month so that no interest accrues.

The travelers among us don’t pay for airline tickets or hotel rooms unless we want to. We make credit card companies pay for that.

By now, I bet you’re feeling sorry for those poor multi-billion dollar credit card companies. Adding to our cruelty, we cancel cards when we’re no longer getting enough value (i.e. free travel), often days before the annual fee is due.

If you’re not all about travel, you can also use reward points for regular purchases. We bought Christmas gifts one year mostly on credit card rewards.

Revenge is a dish best served at home with low-cost ingredients that you bought at Aldi

It’s pretty rare anymore for someone to work at the same company for 40 years and then collect a nice pension.

It’s actually more common for companies to lay off employees at the first sign of a slowing economy. (Those same companies will complain about the inability to hire and retain employees when the economy improves.)

Note to CEOs: When you treat your employees like a commodity, don’t be upset when they treat you like one too.

The modern economy promises us nothing. It’s an unreliable partner. Yet it needs a surprising amount of consistency from us.

It needs us to play the game -

• Work the job, sacrifice your family time, buy the house, and fill it with stuff!

• Lease a new car! No, lease two new cars! Do this every few years!

• Use credit if you have to!

Rinse and repeat until we’re used up and too old to do anything else.

The modern economy sucks at abnormal

The modern economy doesn’t know how to exploit or coerce financially independent people. We are problematic.

Layoff threats don’t phase us. Nighttime emails get answered the next day. We have the time for exercise and eating well. We say no a lot. We have time to form an identity and life outside of the office.

It’s a perfect revenge, and that’s pretty appealing to an old misfit toy like me.