Personal FinanceCanva: Rido and Jenn Miranda from Jenn Miranda’s ImagesChristy Bieber
A Reddit poster commented that the FIRE lifestyle may be too big of a sacrifice.
He said he really enjoyed spending money on travel and spending time with his daughter and hates to see people giving too much up in the pursuit of wealth.
There’s a happy medium where you can enjoy life and invest for the future.
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Many people are pursuing a lifestyle called Financial Independence, Retire Early, or FIRE. Being financially independent and retiring early both sound like good things, but one Reddit user is not convinced. In fact, the original poster (OP) described some of the lifestyle decisions made by the FIRE community as “sad” and said that the lifestyle has the potential to make people miserable.The issue that the Redditor is raising is one that could impact many people with aspirations of getting rich at a young age. That question is how much you should sacrifice now to have a more secure future later. And the answer is not as straightforward as you might think. How much is too much to give up to achieve financial independence?The Reddit user questioning the FIRE lifestyle said that he felt upset seeing people asking questions like whether they should buy a car or start a family because of the impact those decisions would have on their ability to save aggressively and retire young. He said that he’s 43-years-old and when he personally looks back over the last 20 years, most of his happy memories come from traveling and from enjoying his daughter’s life. He believes that the time and money he spent doing those things was well worth the cost of not aggressively pursuing financial independence when he was younger and also made clear that he would not have given up all of that joy even if someone offered him $100 million.His warning to others, based on his personal experience, was “Don’t let it all pass you by. Life is short. Of course don’t blow all your income and save and plan and all that, but don’t forget to live.”Finding a balance is key to financial success now and laterfizkes / Shutterstock.comObviously, the OP’s advice is good advice. If people truly are afraid to make any fun purchases because they are saving too much, or if they are working 100 hours a week like the OP said he’d heard of someone doing, then the price of their future financial freedom is too high. Sacrificing for years or even decades just to meet some elusive target of being “rich” at a younger age could end up leaving you with big regrets — especi