When I first started digging into personal finance, one of the most alluring things to me was the idea of retirement-having this big nest egg that would pay for the best years of your life. The work of your career was done, and now all you had to do was spend every day soaking up the rewards and enjoying the fruits of your labor.

It was really weird because I hadn’t even started my career yet. And I was already dreaming of it being over. I got stuck in this spot where all I could see was after all the hard work was done and I had retired. But I was completely skipping over my life. 

But we do that. As a culture, we dream of those days where we don’t have to work anymore. Where we’ll walk out for the last time and our time will be ours again. 

A popular personal finance movement that’s come about and gained some serious steam is the FIRE movement. It stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. 

The premise is that basically, you can retire as soon as you’d like. In fact, retirement is just a number, and if you meet that number where your investments provide more income than what you need month to month, then you can retire right now. 

So here’s the question. If you had saved enough money that you could retire from your job today, would you?

I’m not sure that I want to sit on a beach all day.

I think sitting on a beach on day one would be amazing. Extra points for the mai tai. 

I think it would completely refresh me doing it for a week.

But I think that somewhere in there, I’d start to get bored. I’d actually want to start doing something else. It’s not that I don’t love the waves, there’s just this point where your mind starts to dream of the next thing. 

I think the same thing happens in retirement. You get there, but you start to feel a little bored and you start needing a new direction to go.

I’m not sure that it’d be very good for me to have no work. 

I think I’ll always need something to keep me going. 

In fact, I’ve sometimes struggled with big chunks of time whenever I reach a break. I finally get to summer vacation or a break, and I realize that the break won’t do anything to make me happier. 

I find that having complete free time isn’t what I really needed after all. 

I enjoy spending money.

So to reach financial independence, you would need to save and invest that money all the way to the point that your investments would be making more than you’re spending. To reach that point, you’d need to do two things. 

1. Slash your spending to live off of the least amount of money you can stand.
2. Save a vast amount of money really quickly. 

But here’s the problem.

I actually enjoy spending money on things that have meaning for us. And while it may be nice to be able to reach a point where you can retire and quit, you have to slash your spending to the point where there’s really nothing left. 

I’m not sure that I want to cut my spending to that point. 

I actually enjoy being able to go out to a nice restaurant.

I enjoy taking a trip to someplace new. 

I feel like I wouldn’t be working, but I would be kind of trapped.

I’ll keep building a career I love.

A couple of years ago, I was a high school band director. The hours were crazy long but I had a great job and I really enjoyed it. Then I had my son, Finn, and I realized how important it was going to be for me to be able to get home and be with my family each night. 

So I decided to make the switch to being a junior high band director and I’ve been home so much more as a result. 

I won’t be joining the FIRE movement because I’ll keep working to build a career I love. 

The work we do each day is so important to the way live our lives, we need to keep working to make our work something we love.

I think if my entire end goal is to hoard up all of my money until I can simply create the absence of work, then I’ve missed the point. 

If you hate your work that much, maybe your goal should be just to change your work instead of trying to retire super early. 

When you build an income off of work you love, you ensure that you enjoy your Monday through Friday, while also giving yourself the money to enjoy experiences you love in your free time. 

Let me know. Do you enjoy the work you do? Would you retire now if you had the chance?

Jared