It's been one heck of a bull market. You can tell because countless blogs and websites dedicated to the concept of FIRE have cropped up like crabgrass in July on a poorly managed lawn. FIRE... also known as Financial Independence & Retire Early. A person who strives for FIRE typically lives an austere lifestyle in order to accumulate a massive nest egg. Once this is done, he or she can leave the workforce way earlier than normal and live off the investment income for the rest of their lives. I am not against this concept at all. However, before letting something consume your life, sometimes it's worth stepping back and putting things in the proper perspective. Here are two interesting passages from the Gospels. You don't need to be a Christian in order to appreciate them:
It is early 2019 and it's been a long and profitable bull market. The S&P 500 pretty much tripled from its trough from 10 years ago. The number of bloggers on the internet talking about FIRE has also likewise exponentially proliferated. Many are Millennials who have never lived through a bear market or an adverse life event like a divorce or serious medical condition. It's easy to sit here and make our plans after the S&P 500 just tripled. It's easy to think that we are the only ones in control of our destinies. It's easy to get greedy and focus on nothing other than making money, while alienating our family and friends. It's easy to get arrogant and complacent. It's easy to forget just who really controls whether you are successful or not, no matter how hard you work. I'm not saying this to call out everyone else. I fall prey to such foolishness myself. It's easy to lose it all. It's easy to get greedy and arrogant with your asset allocation. One day the market will drop 5%. "No problem, it's only 5%. Stay the course. It will come back." Then it drops 20% and you say the same thing. Then it drops 30%... and then before you know it, half of your portfolio is gone. "How could this happen to me? I thought I was smarter than everyone else?" you say to yourself as you show up for work. An hour later, someone from human resources and a mean looking guy in a uniform show up to your desk and hand you a box. There goes your FIRE. I suspect half of the FIRE blogs will disappear during the next market downturn. Let's say you are one of the ones who manage to survive the next market downturn. All you've focused on is making money and saving it. Your nest egg is huge. You are all set... but you forgot to "invest" in your wife and your family. Now your wife wants a divorce. There goes half of your wealth. Or you've eaten from the dollar menu at McDonald's your whole life in order to save money, and just as you retire at 40... you have a heart attack. Do you invest in life's more important things, or do you let FIRE become your god? But sometimes we do everything right and things still don't work out. Should we get mad and curse the world, or should we be thankful for what we have left? If all you've ever done with your life was "stack paper" you'll probably do the former and be miserable. But if you've invested in your family, your relationships, given money or volunteered time to your church, you will have a chance at the latter and still find some peace. It may have been easy for me to sit there and write this article, but it's a challenge for me too. Maybe I'm writing this more for myself than for anyone else. I'll leave you with one more Bible quote...
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