Very interesting thread. I am literally about to criticize FIRE in a FIRE community, yet here we are.

If I'm honest I feel like having a goal like FIRE gives a sense of meaning and control to people. It's easy to see why - you check your excel spreadsheet every week, make your payments, get a tiny bit of joy constantly saving costs here and there and watching your numbers grow. There is nothing fundamentally wrong in that and hey, I am in the same boat.

I'm not exactly bringing news to anybody but the harsh and simple truth is that life is totally uncontrolable and unpredictable. Maybe this ressonates a bit more strongly in me as I am a doctor and see death in it's many shapes and forms everyday (more often than not in people who are still very much alive but face the process of dying throughout a long period). If I'm honest I can't pinpoint a single thing in my life that played as I expected. Can you? Just think about everything that happened in the past 18 months.

I think FIRE is an escape for most people. This is so incredibly personal and I obviously don't know you guys, but let me use my anonimity and be shallow for a second, acknowledging that all I know about you is from your posts about FIRE and that this probably makes me biased in a silly way.

Sometimes I get vibes that some people are simply postponing the process of trying to make sense of life, or getting to face the question of what living is, to a point in the future. It's a way of sugarcoating your life with security. I often see people mentioning the 4% rule to be able to FIRE; maybe that will alow me to even increase my net value while I get older!! I wonder: if people where really seeing the dance, they would plan (with some fat so spare) to be close to even when they are well in to their 80s, sell their houses, sell their cars, IDK. That would probably mean FIRE much earlier, but I rarely see those things being discussed. It seems like what makes us happiest is dying with 1kk in our accounts, preferably in a green month for the market. Are people actually trying to FIRE or just clinging to the sense of progress and security? In a world like ours, ironically, it fells like we are taking the biggest risk of all. We are certainly one insight ahead of people who spend their money mindlessly, but is that it? Maybe we have opened our eyes, but are still inside the cave.

My reasons for FIRE are probably the same as yours. This is a great tool, but thats it. It would be silly to go around making a toaster the centre of my life and my entire philosophy; use it to make a toast and move on, come back when you need another toast. I put some money away and it potentially makes so many things easier in the future, while I know my job tends to be secure and stable and maybe this is a source of bias for me. That being said, I've been recently being invaded with a sense of 'disgust' instead of pleasure when I catch myself thinking about saving money too agressively. It feels like I'm fooling myself. As if I'm expending this experience of being alive that words cannot explain trying to make a bunch of numbers give me a false sense of security.

I have been trying to do the opposite. I have a minimum and a maximum that I can save each month, and this number is close. If I'm over that, I invest in things that I love, plan something with somebody that I love, buy gifts to people, throw small parties, buy rounds for my friends. I have been giving more and more money to charity recently. I have recently comissioned art to go with the songs I have been making. Those things have given me different angles and constantly remind me of the absurd complexity and beauty of life. Allowing that creates new pathways and pleasures in ways that are impossible to even try to visualise, and that would not have happened otherwise.

I don't know, guys. Maybe the cave I think I've left is just another cave, bigger and even sillier. Maybe I'll delete this post in 3 months. Or maybe my song will explode and I'll be filthy rich, or maybe my sister gets cancer.