It’s still a very busy summer for dog sitting, so rather than be 80% blogger and 20% dog sitter, it’s close to 95% dog sitter and 5% blogger. I expect that to change when kids go back to school in September and families stop traveling.
Last week this Tweet caught my attention:
I'm getting really sick of the constant bashing of the FIRE community and frugality. Everything I've accomplished financially in the past decade is due to those two things, so kindly shut up. Personal finance is personal!
— Josh Overmyer (@Jovermyer1) August 8, 2021
It’s simple and straight to the point. However, I read it and think of it from a historical perspective. My blogging mentality is still stuck in 2006 and 2007 when I started.
Frugality Bashing Over Time
There were bloggers in 2006 who were into extreme frugality. I remember reading an article where the person calculated that opening the refrigerator costs four cents. So before opening the fridge, he planned his attack to grab all the items as quick as possible. There were also jokes that if you by 2-ply toilet paper, you can just pull one ply apart and “BAM!” double your toilet paper. Some of the extreme frugality got a little weird.
In general, though, people were just doing common sense things to save money. Make coffee at home, bring lunch to work, that kind of thing. However, people have started attacking those kinds of frugal suggestions. Their argument is, “No one got rich making coffee at home.” That may be true, but brewing coffee at home makes sense.
One decision repeated many times over a long time can make a significant difference. However, it’s more than that one decision. That one decision can grow into creating many mindful and frugal spending habits. When I developed these habits, I had more money left over to max out my 401k at a fairly young age (the maximum allowable contribution was lower then). This 45-year-old is thanking his younger self for doing that.
You have to have money to invest money. Not everyone can have a high-paying career (I did, fortunately), so frugality can be the path to having that money.
If you read a money guru and they are against frugality, it’s probably a good idea to shop for a new guru. They have not walked a mile in your shoes. I haven’t either. However, I’m not going to shut the door and bash an idea that mathematically is proven to help so many people.
Bashing of the FIRE Community
When I read “FIRE community”, my 2006 dinosaur brain interprets it as “personal finance community.” For all practical purposes, they are synonyms. FIRE is a better marketing term and “Financial Independence, Retire Early” evokes a sense of freedom to do whatever you want in life. There are no new money tips and tricks in FIRE that weren’t already in the personal finance community. We could call it all a “money community” and everyone would know what we are talking about.
The thing about defining a money community is that it’s nebulous. There are money communities in website forums (Bogleheads for example), blogs (this one for example), Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. Sometimes the people in one community don’t know who I am, but in another community, they know me quite well. Finding the community that supports you as you work towards your money goals is what’s important.
I don’t understand why anyone would bash a supportive group. I suppose I can imagine a person with enough hate in their hearts to do that. I imagine the bashing happens mostly on social media where people may just be trying to get attention (even negative attention) or entertain themselves. That used to get me going and angrily responding. Now, I just feel a little sad for that person, because he/she does not seem to have a focus and/or a community to help themselves move forward.
Final Thoughts
Frugality and FIRE communities are tremendously useful money tools. They’ve worked for countless people for decades. It makes no more sense to bash them than it does to bash being in a high-paying career or investing. My 8th-grade math teacher used to say, “There’s more than one way to Moody Street” (a big street in my hometown). There are many money tools that can get you to financial independence. Use the ones that work for you.
I’m spending a lot of time with my side gig this summer. Once school starts, I’ll work on the blog more. It’s too hard to write when the weather is nice and the kid is home.
I think frugality is great. If you can control your spending, you’ll be able to grow your wealth.
It’s pretty simple.
Same, I’m looking forward to school.
I think it all just boils down to mindless social media drivel. The concept of FIRE has broken off into so many different subcategories (Coast, Fat, Lean, etc.), and people might argue that whichever path they’ve chosen works best. Who’s right? All of them! It’s whatever works best for YOU.
Other detractors are likely people who see FIRE goals as unrealistic, either because they legitimately are for their current situation or because they are marking excuses for themselves.
Sometimes I think the mindless social media drivel is people who have run out of conversation, so they make up their own conflict.
i believe in saving money. i also believe in spending money. there are lots of things i don’t know how to do, but i am not going to waste time learning how. fix my car? reroof my home? the time i would spend learning, struggling, getting it wrong and having to do it over, i could be working and making money. i pay experts, i respect experts, just like i expect to get respected and paid for what i do.
many years ago, about 40 years or so, there was an article on a woman who fed her family of 4 on $15/wk. stale dated food, strict portion control, powdered milk. the nutritionist were appalled, her children were malnourished due to her extreme frugality. But they were banking $$$ to retire early.
one of the silliest things i heard was a finance ‘guru’ advising someone to cut back at their job and take another job. yes, cut back at the work that is paying you 40/hr and deliver pizza. uh huh.
I saw something recently about feeding a family of 4 on $30/week. That might even be more incredible than $15/week 40 years ago. It really take a lot of planning to do that. Planning takes time and I’m not sure that I get a great return on that time. I can shop fairly frugally with years of practice, but optimizing every last dollar is a lot of work.