Financial Independence Is A Trap (FIRE Movement)

imagine spending a decade of your life saving for your dream vacation believing that it will finally bring the happiness and life experience you have always wanted the only catch is while pursuing this dream you will miss out on the joys of the present moment letting life's experiences pass you by what if the Relentless work and constant stress over finances is what was causing the very issue the vacation was intended to solve this is in reference to financial Independence retire early otherwise known as the fire movement a lifestyle of extreme frugality saving at least 50% of

one's income and hopes to be able to retire within 10 years and this was a lifestyle I actually chose to live as I believed sacrificing over 10 years of my life was worth the freedom that would follow and in certain ways it actually led me to being able to invest and save enough to be able to quit my job however having done this for 5 years now I actually want to express in in depth why I do not believe retiring early is the answer starting with retirement itself in today's modern society retirement is seen as

the ultimate Freedom granting the ability to finally be in control of your life it allows us to endure the monotonous and meaningless jobs allocating the majority of our time into our career placing our lives on hold we invest 40 years in hopes of 20 years of freedom but the scariest thought what if if when we achieve retirement we realized this was not a destination or even worse what if in pursuit of this very concept we don't even make it to the finish line and in my 5 years of working at a bank this was the

very thing that I was getting to experience firsthand the majority of my clients were either near retirement or already retired and through a lot of conversations I began finding two common characteristics they never stopped living like they were saving for retirement and two they wish they could do it all over again so there was one time that I was telling one of my clients that I was getting to go to New York City to be able to watch the ball drop for the new year but the response is what surprised me when they said they

have always wanted to be able to go and be able to experience that and they were jealous that I was doing so I was shocked because the ironic thing of working at a bank is you get to actually see how much money these people have whenever they say certain comments like that and these people were multi-millionaires and I just discovered that these people turn delayed gratification into a lifestyle and in certain ways it absolutely makes sense if you spend all of your educational years preparing to work and then all of your career preparing to retire

starting a whole new life in retirement is very difficult but honestly what impacted me the absolute most was in the countless conversations I had with people when they told me that they would trade anything that they had in their lives to be able to be in my shoes I even even remember this very specific conversation when this gentleman asked me if it was possible would I accept 6 million do but to have to trade lives with him and the obvious answer is no because I have my entire life ahead of me but that is what

I want to further go into detail because I think that this is very important in what it is we're discovering time is more precious than money for me $6 million was not worth the 40 years that I would have to sacrifice an a achieving that but let's ask ourselves is there any dollar amount that I would have accepted to be able to trade lives with him there's no if if you could give me $1 trillion I still would not give up 40 years of my life to be able to have that it begs a question

why do any of us sacrifice 10 years 20 years 30 years 40 Years of our life doing what we hate in pursuit of the illusion that money grants us freedom to live our lives number two the concept of I have my my whole life in front of me I feel as modern medicine is only getting better and as society as a whole we're always pursuing the next thing we're beginning to forget that life is not guaranteed that today in itself is a gift I would always think it's worth sacrificing time now for something in the

future but what's going to happen is if I'm lucky enough to get to that point in the future I'm going to have the exact same thought of a new goal in advancement I will not be taking advantage of the present the only moment in our lives that is actually real and I will further expand on this even more here in just a moment and ultimately money is incredibly important it is needed to be able to have emergencies taken care of if they arise it is needed for healthc care as it is becoming only more and

more expensive it is needed for us to participate in society in some way however what is happening is we are seeing retirement as a destination that when we achieve that then we will be able to have time and freedom to be able to participate in whatever it is that we want to have when each day is the same as the next it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises early and this is where I want to further expand on the race that we call

life for the majority of my life I have lived with artificial Frameworks in pursuit of me getting to a destination if I'm not worth $100,000 by 25 I am behind if I'm not a millionaire by 32 I am behind if I do not own a house by 27 I am behind I always feel behind and these may be the very statements that you are also thinking about but for me this was something that was truly obliterating my lifestyle I was consumed with with the achievement I was gladly selling the present moment for an illusion of

a goal that I had placed but in all reality it is a tremendous gift and accomplishment to be able to achieve any of those things in your entire lifetime but the issue in all of this is that we are not taking advantage and we're not realizing the gift of the present moment we are trying to run as fast as we can without truly realizing what the Finish line is and some of you may already know that I experienced severe anxiety when I turned 22 years old and I'm not going to go into depth about all

of this however I lost someone that was very close to me and this is when I lost the construct of life being guaranteed cuz I realized that nothing in life is guaranteed ironically this is the very thing that we are always told working in the financial sector is never guarantee something however we we have the illusion that life will just continue to happen as is and this is when I discovered that the very life that I was sacrificing to achieve I actually already had I had the ability to do everything I wanted in the future

now maybe there were some monetary things that I couldn't purchase maybe I didn't have the exact lifestyle that I wanted but in terms of the actions that I wanted to do the the freedom that this goal in the future was going to allow me I could do right now I can go for a walk right now I can go experience and travel and go throughout the world right now I don't have to have that barrier be broken in the future to achieve it right now we need to begin breaking these artificial Frameworks that is set

by Society just because Social Security is going to start paying me at 65 or 67 whatever it is is that doesn't mean that that is when I should retire retirement is a thing that is just put into place of our lives but it also doesn't mean I need to be a millionaire by a certain age I need to have kids by a certain age I need to have a house by a certain age there is nothing there's no rule book in our lives saying that we have to live our lives in a certain way we

need to find ways that we can live intentionally and decide what it is that we want to do you are exactly where you need to be and you have all the power to decide the direction you want to put one foot in front of the other people are capable at any time in their lives of doing what they dream of financial Independence so this is a very concept that I have been contemplating a lot as of late because I'm beginning to think I don't know necessarily if Financial Independence in itself is actually real I'm now

4 months into to being financially independent I no longer have to work I'm able to do what it is that I want to do day in and day out for a specific amount of time if I want to lay in bed eat cookies wash SpongeBob do whatever it is I want to do I can do that because I specifically set a plan in place that allowed me to live my life in any way that I wanted I had money set aside to be able to travel I had money set aside to be able to go

out to restaurants if I wanted to I had money set aside for unplanned expenses I felt very confident when I quit my job that I was going to be able to feel freedom because money granted that however as of late I have said no to a lot of Vacations or trips I'm no longer eating out and recently the gear shift of my car broke and while I acted as if my Bugatti just exploded it ended up being just a $20 fix but what happened was this happened at the same time I had a little ounce

of Doubt creep into my mind and all of a sudden I thought that I was not enough I thought that my goals were unrealistic I thought that I wasn't going to be able to pursue things even here on this channel I thought why is anyone listening to what it is that I have to say $20 expense mixed with an ounce of Doubt ruined all of the years and mon of planning that I have done so it made me realize that the way that I am living my life is no different than if we Circle back

to retirement in itself and that the majority of people save as if they are trying to retire we live our lives in a certain way because we let money control what it is that we do and again I'll I'll say money is extremely important it is needed for a lot of things that happen in our lives however I was still giving money the power and saying it dictated that I could now feel free but in reality there's no set dollar amounts that I could have that I wouldn't still be stressed about money I don't stress

about my hammer I don't stress about a toaster I don't stress about my convection oven I don't stress about my Skillet these are all tools why do we stress about money well of course money is more important than these other tools but at the end of the day it is still a tool you look at money and you look at our phones both things that are tools in our lives that we have let dictate and put as a priority of what it is that we do so I think that the goal is not Financial Independence

because we're still going to wake up and in some ways we're going to look at our bank account we're going to think can I afford this trip I I don't even think if you assume $300 billion that you will no longer have stress about money and I'm actually going to say I think that you will have more stress about money I think the goal is is to be independent from your finances from letting other things control your emotions from all of these different things in our lives that we're letting dictate how it is that we

feel and so that doesn't come from money allowing that to happen or your phone or your boss or all of these other things that we give power the power is within ourselves we need to look at what am I allowing to give myself these negative emotions or these positive emotions or whatever the case is because I need to feel whole in myself so I think instead of us always thinking whenever I get the specific amount of money then I will have this or if I just made an extra ,000 a month then I would be

or if I had a job that was just producing an extra $10,000 in Revenue then it would be that doesn't exist because we're going to continue to just pursue the next next thing we'll never be able to live the life that we actually want when money as a tool is granting that for us remember that wherever your heart is there you will find your treasure so in summary the fire movement is not bad nor is money itself retirement uh setting Frameworks up what it is that we want to achieve none of these things are bad

the issue is is that we are granting all of these things the power to dictate when we can have freedom in reality if we slow down and we begin to live our lives intentionally we're going to realize that this present moment is the only thing that is actually real in our lives we need to disconnect from the book that is being written for us and actually grab the tool and begin to write our own stories and that's about all that I have to say on that so this video was quite long I really appreciate your

time in in watching this and I hope that it was able to provide some sort of value so thank you very [Music] much [Music] [Applause] [Music] you