3584: Two Roads To Financial Independence by Jesse Cramer of Best Interest on Wealth Building Strategies

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[00:00:30] This is Optimal Finance Daily, Two Roads To Financial Independence by Jesse Cramer of bestinterest.blog. Quote, Two roads diverge in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. Robert Frost Most people know Robert Frost's famous poem, The Road Not Taken, especially the last few lines, which you just heard.

[00:00:57] And most people interpret the poem as, Frost's choice made all the difference, in a good way. Frost is telling us to break the mold, be different, and create an extraordinary life. But Frost makes no such claim in the poem. The road less traveled is neither good nor bad. Frost is not passing any judgment on the path one takes. Instead, Frost's point is that decisions, like a fork in the road, steer you in a direction that cannot be undone.

[00:01:26] And because of that, even a tiny decision can make all the difference, perhaps good, perhaps bad, in your life. One road leads to another road, then another, then another. Frost would never again find himself at that particular intersection. His choice, left or right, led to future disparate decisions, but would never lead back to where he stood at that moment, to that particular decision. Quote,

[00:01:52] Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. End quote. In the long run, a simple fork in the road can fundamentally change your life. This is chaos theory, just like the apocryphal idea of a butterfly's flight in South America changing the direction of a major hurricane over the Atlantic. Small changes in input can cause massive shifts in output. Time only moves in one direction. There are no counterfactuals in life.

[00:02:22] If I had done this instead of that, I'd be here instead of there. You can pretend you know what would have happened, but you can't be certain. Nevertheless, we dwell on opportunities missed. If I had gone to that party, I would have met Margot Robbie. But we never consider or even begin to think about disasters we've averted. If I'd had gone to that party, a distracted driver would have T-boned my car at the stoplight and broken my leg. Think about it.

[00:02:50] When was the last time you considered that a few mundane choices in your past have probably saved your life by avoiding a fatal accident? You might scoff. It's certainly a train of thought less traveled. Quote, And be one traveler long I stood, And look down one as far as I could, To where it bent in the undergrowth, Then took the other just as fair. End quote. Time for the second path of today's article.

[00:03:17] The FIRE or Financial Independence Retire Early movement strikes me as a Frostian bargain. The basics of FIRE are straightforward. If you earn more and spend less, you can become financially independent, no longer tied to, for example, your employer's mandates, and can retire much earlier than traditional Western retirement dates. FIRE folks generally take Frost's path, the one less traveled.

[00:03:43] They eschew the common 9 to 5 for 40 years career by striving for higher incomes, more investing, and less spending. That combination makes all the difference. But like those who misread Frost's poem, the FIRE movement occasionally conflates different with better. They're not the same thing. FIRE is a road less traveled, but it's not always a better road. My personal story is another example.

[00:04:10] FIRE was a big part of my initial interest in personal finance and investing. And that interest led to the creation of the best interest. That's huge. I was full steam ahead on the FIRE path in my old engineering career. On the fastest path to FIRE as I could muster. Rice and beans, coffee at home, and brown bag lunches for the win. But something wasn't quite right. I'm on a better path, right? Why doesn't it feel better? FIRE. For years, I couldn't put my finger on the problem.

[00:04:39] Coincidentally, the work I'm doing here on the best interest helped me discover my issue. Simply put, I didn't enjoy the day-to-day work of my engineering career. Rather than running towards early retirement, I was using FIRE to run away from an unfulfilling job. The mind rebels, I discovered, when you force it to be passionate about escapism. But I did love the work of writing, podcasting, and helping my readers achieve their financial goals. I wasn't looking for an escape route from it.

[00:05:08] If anything, I wanted more work time, writing time, and helping time. And now that I've been working full-time in wealth management for a year, I'm no longer focused on reaching FIRE. I love what I do. Sure, I'm still maintaining a budget and investing my money wisely. But I've separated financial independence from retire early. Financial independence is something we all want, but I'm no longer racing towards an early retirement. Instead, I'm on the slow path now. I'm saving less and spending more.

[00:05:37] I'm enjoying the present rather than wishing it away, rather than straining towards a supposedly better future. And it makes me an outlier. Compared to other finance bloggers and FIRE heroes and spreadsheet nerds, I'm on the road less taken. But for me, it's making all the difference. You just listened to the post titled, Two Roads to Financial Independence by Jesse Cramer of bestinterest.blog.

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[00:07:26] So it's always easy to save big every day with savings and rewards. Fred Meyer, fresh for everyone. Savings may vary by state. Fuel restrictions apply. See site for details. This was such a good article. I absolutely loved it and I think it hits on so many misunderstood points about FIRE. First of all, I don't think there's such a thing as an alternate reality where if you made a different choice, it would have turned out differently. I mostly think this is a mental construct we use to torture ourselves.

[00:07:56] For example, I used to tell myself I would have been so much better off if I didn't take out student loans for living expenses or if I didn't rack up 30 grand of senseless debt in my 20s. But there's no way for me to know that's true. It's just a story. I could also tell the story that it's so good all of that happened because it led me to be sitting in my closet right now in front of a microphone telling you about it.

[00:08:21] I think the much better and compassionate story is to recognize that we're always making the best decisions we can with the information we have at the time. Hindsight is 20-20, but alternate realities don't exist. So why do we ruminate on them? I also think there's a dark side to FIRE that most people don't realize. The reward for early retirement for many of us is an existential crisis.

[00:08:46] For your entire life, much of your time was dictated by some kind of authority or schedule you didn't create. When you're handed the keys to the castle and now have full autonomy over your time, and it can truly all be self-directed, many of us find this disorienting. On top of that, if you're burnt out, have any mental health issues, childhood trauma, or a dysregulated nervous system, early retirement creates just enough space in your life to completely fall apart.

[00:09:16] When there isn't a busy schedule to distract you, you can't help but notice all the emotional stuff you buried for decades. Ask me how I know. It took me over two years to sort it all out, but I'm now finally able to fully enjoy the freedom of retiring early. That's a wrap for another Friday show. Have a great start to your weekend, and I'll be back tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.