to lift yourself higher, walk your own FIRE
I may preach to the choir,
but to what do you aspire?
25x expenses you must acquire
and you can retire!
but then what, I must inquire
to be happy d’you require?
to seek fame, be admired,
and cheap thrills till you expire?
Or be a hermit in the shire
and suppress every desire?
there’s no one answer it transpires
to avoid the quagmire
like the god of hellfire
I say, and hope to inspire
To lift yourself higher
You must walk your own FIRE
This post is in the main a jaunty response to the (admittedly only a handful of) commenters on my last post who seemed to think that they knew best on how I should be living my life (although strangely enough had no constructive answers on what I actually should do instead, huh?! 1).
It is also dedicated to the pseudo-namesake of the blog, Keith Flint, who sadly passed away at the start of this month.
I’m not sure he’d appreciate the dainty lyrics I’ve employed above, but I am sure he would be fully behind the general gist of it.
RIP Keith, you fucking legend.
Notes:
- I did start to write a bit of a rant on that, but it was hard to keep it general without responding directly to individual comments, which I didn’t want to do as I know people have good intentions when they comment on this blog, and I do genuinely appreciate every comment and especially different points of view. The last thing I want is people to start avoiding commenting in case they get a whole post dedicated to having a crack back at their comment! Thank you to all who contributed to that discussion ↩
Discussion (27) ¬
I am beginning to think that 25x isn’t the right answer.
Unless that 25x includes future earnings – ehich you could make a reasonable stab at.
Two weeks picking berries in summer or apples in auitumn might net you £1000.
And That’s just the kow hanging fruit.
Gentleman’s Family Finances recently posted…Lenten Pledge: Digital Detox – 2 weeks later
Haha … I love that’s what you got from my poem. People seem to be obsessed with the 4% rule at the moment!
“That’s just the low hanging fruit.” – Haha – love it!
Not much to say except keep up the awesome work – I always enjoy getting an email notifying me of the next installment!
Thanks Marc, really appreciate that!
Thats a whole lot of ire mr. fire(starter)
I’m intrigued now to go and read your last post and the resulting commentary
I know just what you should do with your life but I’m not going to tell you if you’re going to be like that!
Boo! It was all super sensible and polite. You big tease…
Hah, well I never said people were rude or anything.
I guess I have 2 main gripes:
1. There was (a bit of) negativity and “nah I wouldn’t do that” but no suggestions on what I should do instead, which I felt was unconstructive.
2. The whole “waste of your talents” angle really confused me. I thought the whole point of FI was so you can essentially dick about and do what the hell you wanted to? Pretending FI is some sort of noble goal where everyone is out saving the world once they’ve quit the day job is a bit of a joke if you ask me. Look… some people may well do that sort of thing and that is there final goal, but I would argue if you are really that bothered you would probably be already doing it to some extent. I would imagine most people end up doing pretty selfish (on the face of it) things like travelling, looking after their own children, or setting up their own businesses/side hustles to make even more money. None of those goals are bad of course, but on the other hand you could argue that none of them would really be a good use of anyone’s talents, I think?
Cheers
Haha – what i’ve noticed is the sort of questions where you really feel like you need some wise advice tend to also be the sort you can only really answer yourself. I think its some variant of Murphy’s law?
You proabably already know if certain side hustles feel a bit tawdry or not. MB, e-books, Tshirts and the like?
My tuppence would be you’ve engineered quite a sweet setup as it stands, theres a lot of variety in there and it looks pretty sustainable? Thats way better than most manage.
That commute needs looking at though – but you’re pretty good at seeing the positives in it..
Very astute observation Rhino, as always!
I’m was never interested in the eBooks side hustle, but only because it doesn’t feel like that is really any creative process at all. It’s all about just outsourcing 90% of it. You can do the same with the T-Shirt hustle but I would look to be flexing my design muscles which will hopefully be a rewarding learning process.
There is definitely more enlightening here than MB, which is literally just a mechanical turk type of side hustle and pretty boring (apart from the excitement of winning money on the good days, of course!).
Re: “Tawdry”, this is the line of thinking that annoyed me. As I said above about eBooks, it’s not for me, but if others are making good income on it, I say bloody fair play to them. At the end of the day all they are doing is offering a service and people are paying for it, so they must be deriving value from it otherwise they wouldn’t have bought and keep buying them. It’s how capitalism works, no?
And I presume the people who are not keen on Merch actually wear T-Shirts, so that seems a bit hypocritical to say the least 😉
“My tuppence would be you’ve engineered quite a sweet setup as it stands, theres a lot of variety in there and it looks pretty sustainable? Thats way better than most manage.” – Yep and maybe I should come across more grateful. I am very grateful for what I have so far, but the grass is always greener and all that 🙂
http://thefirestarter.co.uk/the-grass-is-always-greener-syndrome/
Yea there is a real chance I am blinded to the chains of commuting just by having done it for so many years now, and when I finally give it up, I will only then see the chains for what they really were. I still think I am very unlikely to be getting up at 6:30 and replying to blog comments though, which is exactly what I’ve done today, if I were not forced to get up and get on a train, haha!
You’ll do whatever you feel is right and I’ll be cheering alongside! 🙂
weenie recently posted…January 2019 Savings, plus other updates
Cheers weenie, as always!
I’d like to be a hermit in the shire – but perhaps not to suppress every desire though! 😀
Hah, yea that part did sound quite good to me actually! 🙂
I might start writing mean comments just to get more poetry out of you.
Haha! You couldn’t if you tried, you are too nice DbF! 🙂
Big thumbs up to this (can’t find the thumb emoji right now). Also – waiting for an update on what you ended up deciding!
Mindy recently posted…February 2019 update – Life in the slow lane
Will post one when I know but spoiler alert is that I will probably do OMY (One More Year) because of a tax situation. But will fill you all in when decision is final etc…
Cheers!
I feel, subtweeted…but OBVIOUSLY I do know best how other people should live their live. My life? Not so much.
Admire your restraint though TFS. As yer man Mr Flint said “Sometimes after a few hours sleep I have a little grizzle but I very rarely bite back.” Clearly you had a good night’s sleep.
As for me, after FIRE I just wanna drink, smoke, laugh, take herbal baths in the country.
Caveman recently posted…Making a million. Why saving for kids is a terrible idea and why I’m doing it anyway
Hah, definitely wasn’t referring to your comment Caveman!
Loving the further 90s references as well! 🙂
Love it! You should get this poem on RedBubble, could order a duvet cover with this printed down the middle :))
SavingNinja recently posted…The Account Sharing Revolution
Hah! Great idea SN 🙂
“Keep doing what you do now” *is* a practical and constructive suggestion. Imho, if you’ve already as good as ruled out that option, then you’re seeking validation, not advice. At the end of the day, though, you gotta do you.
Also, RIP Keith. Agreed, hero.
Hi,
To clarify… (maybe I should have just posted the full repost in the first place to avoid confusion… apologies on that but I thought I’d flex my lyrical skillz instead)… my issue was not with people saying you should keep doing what you are doing, that is totally fine and when people gave their reasons even more so.
My issue was that a few of the comments seemed to suggest that quitting work would somehow be a waste of “my talents” – but they never gave any constructive advice on what wouldn’t be a waste of my talents.
The option of staying at work is surely also an equal waste of my talents, so it was implied that wasn’t what they were advocating for, so it baffled me as to what the advice/suggestion actually was in those cases?
Definitely wasn’t looking for validation, the decision was not already made and looks like in the end I am going to stay for one more year.
Cheers 🙂
I mean isn’t that the definition of unconstructive criticism? I offered up 2 options and they basically said/implied both were shit, without offering up any further ideas of their own. 😀
I discovered TFS and MMM later in my “career”. Anyway never too late to start. I’m maybe 3 years away from FI. Love the poem. Have shared with with my son who has just started his career.
Agreed never too late to start! I thought I found it late on around the age of 30, but there are always going to people who discover this stuff much later (and many much earlier) than you do, so you just got to get on with it and not worry about that (hard sometimes I know!)
Glad you liked the poem and thank you very much for sharing… appreciate that 🙂