FIRE, FART, or Neither, the Choice is Yours

Retirement
14

When it comes to your finances, there are two extremes to model yourself on, FIRE or FART (acronyms below) — that is if you want to be an extremist. The third option is neither, and that’s completely fine.

The choice to quit the rat race at either 35 or 95 is completely your own prerogative. It’s called personal finance for a reason. What bothers me is when PF gurus preach FIRE as gospel, like there’s no other way.

Financially Independent Retire Early (FIRE)

Being a huge fan of becoming FI early, this is the obvious choice for me. However, some people bring frugal to an extreme level by eating dog food, skimping on shaving cream, biking their way to work, living in a tiny house, or saving 70% of their take-home pay to be able to retire in their 30s that it’s sometimes difficult, even for a frugal guy like me to relate.

But overall, the effort makes perfect sense especially if the goal includes paying-off toxic debt. And rightly so– it takes an extraordinary amount of effort to achieve extraordinary results. This is especially beneficial when you’re young because your savings have time to compound.

If the goal is to merely retire early, however, you better be sure that you’ll continue to contribute to the community in a positive way, or you’d end up disappointed. You may have a couple of million dollars in your retirement account, but that alone won’t make you happy. True happiness can only be found when you continue to become a productive member of society while sharing the fruits of your labor with others.

I wasn’t aware of the existence of the movement, nor did I know what the acronym stands for, but at one point in my life I’ve genuinely been on FIRE, for example:

  • I’ve spent $400 for a wedding when I have $50,000 saved
  • Rented a room instead of an apartment when I can afford the latter
  • Worn a bonnet inside the house during the winter to save heating costs.

 
Some typical characteristics of someone who is on FIRE:

  • Brown bags lunches regularly and very seldom go out for lunch
  • Drives a beater car in order to avoid monthly car payments
  • Saves 30% to 50% of their take-home pay

 
Once you reach a certain level of wealth, however, you’d be crazy to stay on FIRE. You should become a moderate, if at all. You should start reaping the benefits of your labor.

Financial Assistance Required Tomorrow (FART)

This option obviously is as stinky as it sounds. Only an insane person will intentionally choose this path. People unconsciously fall into this trap by living beyond their means having been brainwashed by society into thinking that buying on credit is the norm. They are content paying the minimum monthly payments on their enormous student loans or credit card debts.

Some are perceived as well off by the equally clueless as they often drive leased cars, wear signature clothing, watches, or handbags when in reality they are a ticking financial time bomb. They are one paycheck or pink slip away from insolvency.

They often have a relatively high income, enough to justify spending $12 on daily lunches, $600 on monthly car payments, and $300 golf lessons. Delaying gratification is not in their vocabulary as they fear missing out on something, may it be attending that expensive Maroon 5 concert, wearing the latest fashion trends, or coolest tech gadgets.

A few perceive themselves as victims of a society that favors the wealthy and the privileged. They practice self-pity and over-reliance on the established authority or divine providence to improve their lives instead of developing a workable plan to get ahead in life.

Oftentimes they treat their children as retirement accounts– they expect financial support from their children in old age because they took ‘great’ care of them when they were young. This utang na loob (debt of gratitude) mentality is rampant among Filipino culture hiding under the guise of having close family ties.

Other typical characteristics of someone who is on FART:

  • Maxing out their credit cards
  • Little or no emergency fund
  • Not investing for retirement
  • Not adequately insured
  • Don’t plan ahead/ messed-up priorities

The Third Option

A third option is to be like my big sister who is completely indifferent about her finances yet still ends up becoming a millionaire.

I have come to know a lot about her finances after she asked me for financial advice the other day.

Some facts about her:

  • She’s a single 60-year old psychiatrist who has never married and with no children.
  • She currently lives in California, but spent most of her career in Texas, a no-income-tax state.
  • Buys on impulse (once bought a $5,000 infrared sauna over lunchtime)
  • Does occasional irrational spending (like the $20,000 infinity pool she no longer uses)
  • Doesn’t cook, relies on her microwave, and eats out often
  • Owns stupid timeshares, but seldom uses them
  • She contributes a substantial amount to her retirement accounts but doesn’t maximize them.
  • Has a lower risk tolerance as she prefers investing in annuities over stocks
  • Earns $250K on average for the past 15 years
  • She has no student loan or significant credit card debts.
  • She once got punched by a patient with mental issues.

 
Her assets as of this writing:

  • $481,000 in real-estate equity (including her primary home)
  • $258,000 in Thrift Savings Plan
  • $200,000 in 401K / 457 Plan
  • $108,550 in other retirement savings
  • $203,836 in money market accounts
  • $15,400 in an IRA account

 
That’s over $1,266,000 in net worth. Not too shabby for someone who doesn’t budget and pays little attention to her finances until recently!

She may be a UAW according to Dr. Thomas Stanley’s definition, but I think she will be okay considering that she’s in good health and plans to retire at age 70.

Here are four things that we can learn from her…

Your income is your most powerful wealth-building tool.

She earns $250K a year. That’s more than what most families in America can hope for. If you earn less than 100K then this option is probably not for you. If you want to become a millionaire, you need to be on FIRE. Either that or find a way to increase your income.

Your savings rate is more important than your investment returns.

This is a no-brainer. Saving 50% of your take-home pay is a sure way to increase your net worth. Your mutual fund may be returning 20% on average, but if you’re only investing your spare change through your mobile app, you will never become a millionaire.

You still need to live within your means.

My sister may be a big spender, but she still lives within her means. She only buys things that she can afford. She uses credit cards but pays the bills in full every month.

Paying attention to your finances does make a big difference.

Her net worth would have easily grown from $2M to $3M had she paid more attention to her finances. If she simply invested 25% of her take-home pay in the S&P 500, one of her retirement accounts would have easily grown to more than a million dollars in 15 years.

So what advice did I give her?

time machine/ sauna
time machine/ sauna

 

I told my sister that I’d use the enormous stash of cash that she has in a money market account that is earning little to no interest to pay off her mortgage for the house in Florida.

I also told her to seek financial advice from a qualified professional, which she can very much afford– given that she can spend $5,000 on a time machine that happens to look like an infrared sauna.

Lol, sorry for that. I accidentally clicked “Publish” instead of “Save Draft” out of panic when the pilot asked everyone to turn off their cellphones 🙂

That’s crazy how your sister’s finances worked out! Hopefully she can tighten up a bit and have more security over the long haul. 🙂 But agreed! You can either be on FIRE or be a big, fat FART. It’s all about making positive decisions with your money.

I really hope she does. They beefed up security since then. Working with insane people is a dangerous job 🙂

Oh! This is the first time I’ve heard about FART. 😀 I was reluctant to read the entry as it did sound stinky.

I’m definitely not on that extreme but I know most people are. On the contrary, I’m also scared that I’m leaning towards FIRE in the sense that I am no longer content with just doing okay. I want to speed up being free! But it’s causing me a lot of frustrations as of the moment.

Hope I can pass through this rut.

You heard it first here because I made it up. I feel your pain. Nothing wrong with being extreme as long as you act with justice, give everyone his due, and observe honesty and good faith (lol… Civil code of the Philippines).

I was dumbstruck when I heard a friend say once that as lawyers, we are expected to maintain a certain level of appearance, thus, the power suits, power lunches and power cars. But as of now, she still doesn’t have the power savings and investments to back all of her powering.

Great post! And your sister rocks! Btw, what happened to your other sister who borrowed money from you? Is she still keeping you hostage?

All hat no clients ba?… I’m still waiting for the 2nd installment. It’s funny my sisters have no idea I’ve been writing about their finances for the whole world to see.. They’d kill me once they find out about this blog.

I think we are more closer to FIRE than FART, even though we are 50 years old. The thought of actual retirement scares the heck out of me: No more income/job?! A fixed income?! Yikes.

I’m new to your blog, just clicked over from FrugalAsianFinance and I love it. Reading some of your past posts had me laughing so much. I can totally relate to the whole family dynamics situation. I’m Asian (Korean/Japanese mother, English father) and my long-suffering husband is Caucasian/Filipino. I grew up poor, albeit American poor, and my husband grew up solidly American middle-class. My mother considers lottery tickets and bingo as ways to make money, and most of the money going towards these “investments” is from the money I give her every month … *cringe*. My husbands parents have a great, overly-compensating (if you as me) pension where they have so much superfluous money from it that my mother-in-law redecorates her home every 6 months or so. It’s interesting each time we visit our parents, going from one house to the other and experiencing the extreme socio-economic differences between them. Sorry I went a bit off-topic here!

D.

I’m glad to hear that you’re enjoying your stay here. I actually love it when readers like you share details of their lives, specially if it involves some craziness in the family. It makes me feel better about my own family and reminds me that we’re normal human beings.

Thanks for enlarging my vocabulary! I love your FART acronym. I run a horse boarding business and therefore have been educated in the vastly different philosophies of financial management, or lack thereof. Paying the horse expense is often their lowest priority and the FART group often offers up the most laughable excuses for being late paying the bill.

I’m well aware that the biggest problem is that they live on a razor thin line of solvency and really shouldn’t own a horse, and should instead be saving that expense money so the next unexpected expense doesn’t throw them into crisis. But this type will never learn.

You are welcome. I’m curious to know how expensive it is to own a horse. I live not far from “wealthy” people who own horse ranches.

MSolve, Horse ownership cost varies based on how bare bones or fancy the level of care is. Also it depends on geographical location. In central Florida one can expect to pay $300-650/month for the basic full care, including feeding grain and hay provided by farm and work performed by farm person. The low end typically means the horse lives outdoors 24/7. The higher price, generally, means stabling is included in a nicer facility. I’ve seen rates far higher than this in elite facilities. In spite of the board rate it’s difficult to make a living in this business. The supplies, real estate and operating costs are exorbitant. After depreciation, my business is lucky to make net profit $2,000/year. I’d say my year round average labor time runs 4-6 hours a day, 7 days a week, including grounds maintenance on 20 acres.. If I hire help I lose money. I average 8-10 boarders. Larger operations with 30+ boarders at top rates can actually make money but require lessons and sales to do it.

Obviously my day job was needed to finance building my barn and fence and to purchase equipment. I’m now ready to sell and downsize. Will probably board my horses at someone else’s place and let them do all the work for a change.

I can’t imagine myself having a day job and stabling on the side. Sorry to hear that, it sounds like you need to raise your prices. But if you’re getting ready to sell there’s probably no point in doing that. It will be like flogging a dead horse (sorry for the bad choice of idiom).

14 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

What is your retirement number?
Retirement
End of the Year Question: What is Your Retirement Number?

If I were to pay you to quit your job, how much would it be? Is it $1 million, $3 million, or nowhere near these numbers? Many think you can no longer retire with $1 million because of inflation. This may or may not be true depending on your spending …

This sheet tells you when to get out of the shit hole
Retirement
2
This Sheet Tells You When to Get Out of the Shithole

One of my favorite movies of all-time is American Beauty. The 1999 award-winning film stars Kevin Spacey who played Lester Burnham, a 40-something guy who hated his job and was on the brink of a mid-life crisis. The inflection point was when he saw his daughter’s gorgeous 16-year-old cheerleader friend, Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari), perform during a half-time dance routine at a high school basketball game.
Lester becomes so infatuated with Angela that he began having sexual fantasies with her. He becomes obsessed with youth that he started to live his life like he just graduated from high school. And when he was told that he was about to get laid off, he instead blackmailed his boss for $60,000. He then quits work anyway choosing to work as a crew in a fast-food chain instead– the position with, in his own words, the least amount of responsibility.
But what really caught my attention is the scene where Lester Burnham wonders in his cubicle while seeing a reflection of his image on the monitor, which resembles a guy trapped in a jail cell. With the numbers on the spreadsheet forming the jail bars in his mind, it’s pretty obvious that he felt imprisoned by his job and wanted an escape. A feeling that many people can sympathize.

Benefits of Tax-Advantaged Savings
Retirement
2
Tax-Advantaged Savings and Recommended Strategies

According to the National Study of Millionaires by Ramsey Solutions, 8 out of 10 millionaires invested in their company’s 401(k) plan, and that simple step was a key to their financial success. Not only that but 3 out of 4 of those surveyed also invested outside of company plans— mostly …