Playing with FIRE, with Scott Rieckens

A successful entrepreneur living in Southern California, my guest today had built a “dream life”; a happy marriage, a two-year-old daughter, a membership to a boat club, and a BMW in the driveway.

But underneath the surface, he was creatively stifled, depressed, and overworked trying to help pay for his family’s beach-town lifestyle.

Then one day, he listened to a podcast interview that changed his life.

Five months later, he had quit his job, convinced his family to leave their home, and cut their expenses in half.

My guest today is author, filmmaker and FIRE fanatic Scott Rieckens.

We’re diving into the FIRE movement in this episode, something I’ve been wanting to cover for a long time on Informed Choice Radio.

What’s FIRE? It stands for Financial Independence Retire Early, and it’s a rapidly growing community of personal finance extremists.

In essence, FIRE means tracking your spending and making adjustments to achieve and maintain a standard annualised spend, usually 50% or better. Yes, Scott and other advocates of the FIRE movement are successfully saving half or more of their take-home pay each month, as part of their journey towards financial independence and early retirement.

By following the FIRE principles, you save up enough for a 4-6 month emergency fund, and once that’s funded, put the leftovers in tax advantaged accounts invested in simple index tracker funds.

Anything left over once those accounts are maxed out are also put into investments.

Most people try and stay as passive as possible with their investments so they can spend more time doing what brings them the most happiness. Financial Independence, Retire Early.

You’re going to enjoy this one.

Here’s my conversation with Scott Rieckens, author of playing with FIRE, in episode 414 of Informed Choice Radio.

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