De weg naar financiële vrijheid: Playing with FIRE

by Scott Rieckens

Met 'De weg naar financiële vrijheid' leer je alles over de almaar groeiende Financial Independence, Retire Early. Aanhangers van deze filosofie proberen hun uitgaven te verkleinen en voldoende passief inkomen te genereren zodat ze niet langer te hoeven werken voor hun levensonderhoud en dus financieel onafhankelijk zijn.

Dit boek volgt de weg van een familie die besloot het roer drastisch om te gooien op zoek naar financiële onafhankelijkheid. Met een gelukkig huwelijk, succesvolle onderneming en een dure levensstijl leek Scott Rieckens alles te hebben. Maar op een dag realiseerde hij zich dat hij overwerkt en ongelukkig was, en besloot het roer drastisch om te gooien. Hij zegde zijn baan op, overtuigde zijn gezin hun huis te verlaten en de uitgaven te halveren. Volg Scott en zijn familie op hun reis naar financiële vrijheid, en het enige dat niet voor geld te koop een eenvoudiger en gelukkiger leven. Vol met inspirerende casestudy’s en adviezen.

Genres: Finance, Nonfiction, Personal Finance, Money, Self Help, Business, Personal Development

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Leigh Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe they struggled, maybe it was white privilege.

The first thing you need to know right off the bat is that the couple featured in this book earned over $142,000 a year, lived in California, belonged to a boat club, and owned a BMW at the beginning of their journey. Realizing that selling the BMW and quitting the boat club were HUGE epiphanies for them, so you can imagine how the rest of this goes. Add in not one, but TWO sets of parents willing to let them live with them RENT FREE, and I almost just gave up and threw it across the room.

I am, apparently, a masochist, so, okay. Everybody has to start somewhere, and Rieckens and his wife wake up and realize that their consumer lifestyle wasn't making them happy. So they decide to cut back and discover the joy of living with less. Because "less" is relative, however, I need to point out that the house they bought at the END of their journey STILL came with a mortgage payment of over $2400 a month, which is more than many families spend on their entire budget. In fact, watching these two wake up to the realities of packing their own lunches (!), brewing coffee at home (!!), and NOT dropping $100s of dollars on dinner with their friends (!!!) will make most people want to reach through the pages and throttle them while screaming "FIX IT LORD JESUS!"

Ahem. Reickens pays lip service to the idea that "anybody" can do the FIRE method, but the examples they give are all of middle-class white couples. Furthermore, the one couple that DOES live on two non-profit salaries ultimately decide to take for-profit jobs that pay more, which hurts me in ways I cannot begin to describe. A grand total of ONE paragraph is devoted to these affluent white folks contemplating their privilege, and the solution they provide is....

....wait for it....

teaching financial literacy classes in schools.

LORD

JESUS

FIX

IT.

Sigh. Look. If your childhood involved hunger, housing insecurity, secondhand clothes, or furious scholarship hunting because your parents couldn't afford to send you to college, spare yourself the anguish and don't pick this up. You will just hate everyone and everything in this book. If, however, you are rolling in cash and trying to figure out how to stop spending money on luxuries and live like regular people, this is your book. Recommended only for libraries in the fanciest of neighborhoods.

[Christina · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a fun intro to FIRE for anyone who can't adult and handle personal finances. Really, it sounds like a dream that you can hop from being ignorant about how your 401k works at age 29 to having a net worth of over 300k.

This book ignores some pitfalls of FIRE. It also dispenses inaccurate advice and misuses the word "hack" so terribly that I wonder how smug the author must be.

As someone who says (and I paraphrase) "I want to show how an average American family can FIRE and not be extremely cheap-as-fuhfrugal," he seems oblivious to his privilege. His parents house him and his wife and his kid FOR FREE for months. You mean free housing and free childcare for months and voila you save 60% of your income?? Why didn't I think of that? OH YEAH. Because free housing and free childcare (with an added bonus of a remote job!) isn't some magical given. Also it doesn't sound like they need to worry about their parents' retirement. That's another burden that many face.

As for dispensing bad advice:

...a Roth conversion ladder, where you roll money from your 401k or other tax-deferred retirement accounts into an IRA and then withdraw it, tax-free. p. 129

What's a Roth conversion ladder without a Roth account? You don't magically jump from an IRA to tax-free withdrawals, WTF. You roll your money from a 401k to a traditional IRA. Then you convert from your traditional IRA to a Roth IRA at which point you *gasp* pay taxes. Then you withdraw the principal tax-free, but you still have to pay a penalty on any gains accrued in the Roth IRA until you hit retirement age. I guess that sounds too complex for his nice FIRE narrative.

And all these clever "hacks"...

...all the FIRE-approved methods for hacking college, like attending a community college, focusing on scholarships, living at home, or working during the summer to cover her tuition. p. 146

Since when has any of those things been "hacks"? They're just things frugal people or people without so much privilege do. And summer work to cover tuition doesn't work given that tuition increases have outstripped inflation and the rise of prices of just about anything else that is humanly possible to buy. If those qualify as college "hacks," then he forgot things such as "attend a public university" and "don't pursue your dream but pick your major based on best ROI."

[Natalie K · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a bad book if you know absolutely nothing about finance, but for those of us who have more than a basic knowledge, it's kind of redundant. I appreciate the shout-out to Vanguard funds (I'm a proud Vanguard investor), but his description of a Roth conversion ladder was just... not right. Remember, friends, you can't ever avoid the tax man. You WILL have to pay taxes if you convert your 401k (deferred tax) to a Roth IRA (taxes already paid). That's just how it works. This PSA courtesy of your friendly local soon-to-be CPA. ;)

[Siah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am mad because the book is somehow surprisingly even worse than the movie. I mean who can afford to start their financial independence journey by dropping $500k on a house, not working for many months and traveling to various conferences? This does not really add up and in fact goes against every principle of the FIRE movement.

By the end of the book I was not really sure what was the purpose of this book. Basically a relatively privileged duo let go of their BMW and their country club membership. Left their small child with parents to travel to all of these FIRE conferences and magically fell on track to become financially independent. I mean other than cancelling their country club membership what did they really do to afford them those months of not working and traveling.

The book is a typical example of folks completely ignoring their privilege. The wife has the luxury of working for her mom's business remotely. And the husband, I honestly don't really know what he does. They take home $140k after tax. This is not an average American story.

It is like Vicki Robin's story all over again, sure if you get an inheritance by which you can invest in a low risk bond and still afford to travel the world you can retire early but you won't be getting a cookie credit from me as your reader.

By the end, I was at least expecting a literary climax. I was expecting them to come back and say "all of that paid off. All of the free child care from family, all of that guaranteed employment from the in-laws, the canceling of the country club, it paid off, we are now financially independent". But nope, they are not.

Your reader deserves at least a closure!

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great short read on both the idea of FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) and the FIRE movement. I had heard of this movement before but didn't know much about it. It was an interesting and personal read about a family choosing to abandon living the typical upper-middle class California lifestyle to a frugal life that allows for the savings necessary to achieve financial independence. The basic idea is to decide upon a set amount of annual expenses per year for your family and multiply that number by 25 to 35 to get your FI number. You incrementally save up to that number and use low cost index funds as your investment tool. For an example lets say that a family needs $60,000 per year. The FI number would be 1.5 to 2.1 million. With the power of compound interest and, to be frank, a high income one can reach that in a decade or two retiring sometime in their forties. In writing all this out, the thought occurred to me that the actual number would have to be closer to 2.1 million than 1.5 just to give room for potential economic collapses and inflation. The book recommends a podcast called ChooseFI that goes into the details of how to become extremely frugal in order to cut down on one's expenses. 60k is high in the FIRE community while the low end would be 25k to 35k which personally strikes me as an astoundingly low figure to reach but with the right frugality hacks, one can do it.

I find this topic fascinating because it goes so far beyond the typical mainstream financial advice. Personally, I don't think I will retire early but I love the idea of financial independence that makes such a choice possible as well as the general idea of escaping modern consumerism.

[Christa Maurice · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. This is the literary equivalent of a toddler digging something out of his diaper and proclaiming it something brand new that he discovered. Financial independence has been around for as long as there has been money, but the author writes as though his personal experience is groundbreaking. And it's ALLLLL his personal experience. I have no interest in WHY this yodel did this, I want to know HOW.

Read Your Money Or Your Life, Affluenza, and The Tightwad Gazette instead.

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

The more I think about this book, the more I reevaluate my feelings about it. I'm a huge finance nerd so I definitely enjoyed the process of reading the book. However, as many of the critical reviews suggest, the extremely privileged situation of the author and his family is tough to ignore. It was still interesting to learn about the principles of FIRE and learn about their story but the reality is that it is not at all relatable to the majority of people who will read this (and while that isn't an excuse to not put the FIRE principles into practice, it most likely won't be as easily achieved as in this book).

[Djamilla · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is just a man sharing his family's year-long financial adventure with us. I don't feel like his mission was to teach anything. They had an extravagant lifestyle. Therefore, most of the steps they took are really not applicable for most people:
- Drop the BMW (savings: $400/month)
- Opt for a daycare, instead of a nanny (savings: $700/month)
- Cooking instead of buying lunch & coffee EVERY SINGLE DAY
- moving out of the beach house
- Save $50k in one year by travelling around the country, living with friends and family and working remotely. Really?!?! Who would've thought you could save money by not paying rent for a full year?!

That being said, he DOES acknowledge his privilege and the systematic barriers that would prevent many from starting the FIRE journey.

[Gabrielė Bužinskaitė · Rating 2 out of 5]

While trying to learn more about investing I kept noticing comments of people online claiming to have retired by 33 and reached financial independence. I took it as just another get-rich-fast hook that catches the naïveté, yet, ironically, I was caught by the concept and could not stop wondering of how do people do it.

The formula turns out to be the basic of the basics: spend less than you earn and invest the rest. The only difference is that you should apply it to the extreme, which means saving and investing 50-70% of your income. I read the whole book expecting something more, but really that was it. The only thing that was new to me is the formulas which can be used to calculate the amount of money I need to invest to be able to retire. They are called The 25X Rule and The 4% Rule. You are welcome.

The book itself is written by a person who had a problem with overspending and was living unfulfilling lifestyle which purpose was to buy things with no time to use them. Author is a high-income earner and has a possibility to live rent-free — if you are under similar circumstances it does provide you a way to use it to your maximum future benefit. If the reason you cannot save more than 50% of your income is not because you are overly materialistic, the book has little of value.

[Evan Bassford · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wealthy California couple learns what frugality is. The entire book is about basic personal finance philosophies. Nothing in this book seems to resonate with people who have low to mid level incomes.

Reading on, I discover the couple moves to my hometown. Again, wealthy Californians move to nice town driving up home prices and make it difficult everyone else to afford to live.

[Dak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Playing with FIRE combines what you need to know about retiring early, wraps it around an approachable, relatable story, and lays out why it matters. In short, family, satisfying and fulfilling ways to spend your time, and feeling empowered about money instead of owned by it.

I've read the blogs, listened to the podcasts, and this book wraps it neatly into one package. Scott writes with humor, candor, and isn't just selling an extreme frugality approach. Even if you're in the FIRE movement and on the path to early retirement, this book is worth reading. For anyone who has never heard of FIRE, pick it up!

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Less a 'how to' and more of a 'what happens when'.

If you are loking for a 'how to' book for financial independence than this isnt the one. It follows the authors decision to follow FIRE and his ups and downs including trying to get his wife on board, dealing with friends and family views on FIRE. It discusses how he and his wife felt like quitting and regrets when they splurged to feel like they used to when they didnt think of how they spent their money. A very worthwhile read for anyone thinking of going down the path of FIRE.

[Wendelle]

This book acts as testimony, marketing pitch, explanation and autobiography with practical tips on FIRE, the financial movement abbreviated from "Financial Independence, Retire Early " that has captured a lot of online attention. As the author explains it, FIRE is basically retirement math-- its premise is that one needs to save 25 times of one's comfortable annual spending to retire. This then translates to a lifestyle change of aggressive saving by cutting out on unnecessary expenditure, towards the goal of financial independence without dependence on a job. As the author explains it, the ultimate desirable endpoint of retirement is not necessarily a hedonistic lifestyle of lounging on the beach, but time in life spent o what one chooses, instead of working for the weekends. It's an interesting basic introduction to FIRE from a committed adherent.

[Melanie · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars, rounded down because this is NOT a planning tool and anyone reading it for that purpose will be sorely disappointed.

This is mostly a memoir by an upper middle class tool, where he decides to join the FIRE movement and then bitches about how his wife won't sell her BMW or move from California so they can achieve financial independence by the time their toddler is a teenager. It seems like it would be informative but (in the e-book version, anyway) he spends a lot of time posting links to actual FIRE bloggers and FIRE websites. In fact, he doesn't give a lot of specifics describing the process, either personally or in the abstract, just "if we save 58% of our income, we can retire in 11 years!" Continually pimps the documentary film he was making about the process.

It is definitely *not* a how-to book. I'd recommend poking around the blogosphere to get a better idea of how to establish financial independence, or reading either "The Simple Path to Wealth" or "The Bogleheads Guide to Investing." There is virtually zero technical information, and the information he provides about the VTSAX fund, namely that it requires $10K to invest, is not accurate and was not accurate when he wrote this book. It only requires a $3000 minimum.

I like chapter 10, when he goes to see family and friends and tries to evangelize to them about FIRE, but it turns out that most of them have already been engaging in high frugality and investment already.

I keep getting the impression that this guy really doesn't *get* FIRE, despite trying to achieve it, and am struggling not to lump him in with the 28 year olds who say they've already reached FIRE, despite still living rent-free with Mom and Dad and only having a nest egg of $250K or so. Nope. Nope. This guy comes across as a crash dieter who will run out of steam, or who will hit his goal and then decide to leap back into the pre-Fire lifestyle and blow through his nest egg much faster than he'd anticipated. FIRE is an entire lifestyle and it's really a rough change for someone who is as much of a spendthrift as this author at the start of this book.

I was really annoyed reading about how he and his wife crashed at their parents' houses for about six months total and didn't seem to contribute to household expenses, while also complaining that the parents were ever-present or had chores for them to do or such. Or how they went to some conference in Ecuador or in the woods and dumped their toddler off on the parents. Of *course* you can save 70% of your annual earnings when you're freeloading off your parents for six months and house sitting elsewhere for another three months.

By the end of the book, he's only a year into his FIRE plan with a decent albeit not that impressive net worth ($300K) and a plan to save aggressively over the next ten years in order to hit a Financial Independence target. (No discussion on how to tackle the issue of health insurance once retired, though, which I find to be a major sticking point in a lot of books like this.) Since the book was written before the covid era, I wonder how the past couple of years have treated his FI plan, or how much he's taken inflation into account. I honestly expect a fair amount of lifestyle creep will slip in (if it hasn't already) because I don't get the impression that they had well-adapted to these proposed changes over the course of the book. Good luck to them, though.

[Lars Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to say this book was outstanding. My wife and I are 31 and 30, and I really felt a lot of similarities between the two of us, our lifestyle and spending habits, and Scott Rieckens, the author, and his wife, before they started really pursuing mindfulness with their money. I plan to follow suit in many ways.

Many books are inspiring but I haven’t been this inspired by a book in years. Scott is humble, inviting, and completely honest in how he writes about his family’s journey to making more intentional choices with money, lifestyle, and their time.

I highly recommend this book to anyone, literally any person, from any background with any amount of money, at any age, with any family structure. I am feeling frankly embarrassed at some of the choices I’ve made with my own money, lifestyle, and dumb Amazon 1 click ordering type consumerism. Will I move to bumfuck nowhere and establish a savings rate of 80% and be cutting my own hair? No. But I do want to learn to better track where my money is going, and try to more closely align that with what makes me happy. Hopefully I can retire, or ideally, move to working part time, before 65 when Uncle Sam provides me with Medicaid.

Who knows, but again, I recommend this one to anyone. We can all do better with mindfulness, intentionality, and, our money and time.

[Conrad · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a nutshell: Californian dude with a lot of cash gets hooked on FIRE and shares his experiences trying to convince his other half and taking a gap year to travel and make a documentary. The book fails to either engage, inspire or provide a good description on what FIRE is. My critique is not on FIRE itself (although the author fails to even mention the main problems with it) but on the book. It is self-centered, inconsistent, a relentless promotion for the authors' documentary and fails at explaining and exploring the FIRE philosophy.

p.s. The name-dropping in the book was one of its worst features. As a reader I don't care which leading figures in the FIRE community you talk with: I am interested in what they have to say.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am recently really interested in this idea, but the books about it are so incredibly privileged. This one is no exception. One of the hardest things to give up was their BMW...

I enjoy all the tidbits of info about reducing expenses and maximizing savings, but seriously. I wish these authors would stop with the ‘I hope our journey inspires people’... they started with an income of 142,000 after taxes. Some of their tips included making your lunches instead of eating out at work every day. Ugh.

Anyways, I’ll continue looking at these ideas, but you really have to wade through the privilege.

[Rebe · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable read. Although it's more memoir and less how-to than I expected, it's a good introduction to the concepts of radical savings for early retirement (FIRE, Mustachianism, what have you). It's no Mr. Money Mustache, but then again, for an introduction to the topic, maybe that's a good thing. MMM is like an Olympic athlete of the extreme early retirement movement. A more moderate path to the same ends may reach a wider audience.

[Daniel Hageman · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much here that is so important, no matter how strong your personal defense mechanism is for eschewing a 'more frugal lifestyle'. The one caveat, which I'm sure Rieckens is aware of given his mention of Effective Altruism, is to what extent not earning durning the later/most profitable time of one's career is the best bet when it comes to EA and 'doing the most good'. I suppose it would just give one the freedom to pursue more direct work that he or she is passionate about, but it's odd to think of giving up larger sums of money in the face of such earn-to-give counterfactual opportunities.

Nonetheless, most people aren't considering this sort of caveat (unfortunately), so this book is well-worth their read. Worst case scenario, you get to learn about a very cool group of people with some laudable life goals. Time to watch the corresponding documentary!

[Tom Hageman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely good for introduction to what FIRE is. Doesn't get too bogged down in financial specifics that many find confusing. Highlights the more humanistic early challenges of committing to a more frugal lifestyle.

[Glenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful to those new to the FIRE experiences who want to hear a story of someone's introduction to FIRE. Would suggest 'Your money or your life' or 'Early Retirement Extreme' for more practical examples though.

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

The two stars are for the engaging format. The combination of a narrative of the family’s journey spliced with a personal finance book keeps things interesting.

BUT. If the FIRE movement is trying to outrun the criticisms of being mostly targeted to white high earners, this is not the book to do that. The couple in this book struggled to get their monthly spending to $4200 - a figure that does not include rent or childcare, as they spent a year living rent free with friends and family. OH! And then, their budget friendly house payment after their year of searching? $2400/month. In Bend, Oregon - a famously high cost of living city. No time is spent addressing the privilege of having family that will allow this or having a job that allows for completely remote work. The biggest sacrifices this author spills ink about are giving up the 2 car leases, the $200 dinners out, and the boat club membership.

I applaud them for making what felt like a sacrifice, but it is really difficult to root for this couple. The author approaches conversations about FIRE with all the tact of a new cult follower. Have you heard of our lord and savior Mr. Money Mustache?

[Anna (Annizo92) · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5 stars
If you don’t know anything about investing or how to handle your money responsibly, this is the book for you.

I even found this book quite inspirational when I ignored the fact that the monthly mortgage in the new cheaper house was higher than my salary. Not that I have a high income job as a nurse with specialist function, far from it, but I still have a higher salary than some people without higher education. I guess the point isn’t the numbers, it’s the principle that most people can do it if the really want it. Although, I believe that it’s much easier for the author to save over 50% of the salary when it’s so high, since there’s actually a limit on how low you can go with groceries and housing. I think that we (me and my husband) save around 30% of our income now, which is actually quite extreme with our salaries. Of course we already do all the “hacks” that they write about, since that’s normal life for us. We actually have to be MUCH more extreme in order to save anything.

[Robson Castilho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trata-se de um documentário escrito de como o autor mudou radicalmente seu estilo de vida, passando a viver segundo os princípios do FIRE.

Confesso que, seguindo o mindset mais extremista das pessoas desse estilo de vida, me veio à mente a palavra "privação" (no sentido negativo) inúmeras vezes e "isso não faz sentido para mim". Contudo, o próprio autor relata seus medos e dúvidas ao longo da história e enfatiza que trata-se mais de encontrar o que realmente te traz felicidade.

Sua história - que pode ser vista até como loucura por muitos - me fez pensar bastante na vida e, em diversos aspectos, alinha-se com o que eu venho pensando nos últimos tempos.

Leia com a mente bem aberta e tenho certeza que ficarão muitas lições valiosas, mesmo que você não compre totalmente a ideia de viver segundo a comunidade do FIRE.

[Jenny Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quick read that will feel very familiar to most of its likely readers (people who already read a lot of fi/re blogs). In fact, the target audience is a bit unclear. For people in this community, there is nothing new, and you can get better info elsewhere.

I have to assume it's meant as an introduction, but the Rieckens' journey will not be accessible to any readers who are genuinely struggling to stay afloat. The author detailing his painful decision to sacrifice his boat club membership and his wife's agony over giving up her BMW will probably make those readers truly struggling with money issues want to punch a wall.

I imagine it will only be useful for a narrow subset of the population: people who have had a lot of privilege and opportunity in their lives but still seem barely able to make ends meet. Those people really need this book.

[Mathias · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book starts with a couple that earns 142 000 $ per year (after taxes), but knows basically nothing about finances and burns most of this money on very important stuff like BMW cars, boat club memberships and starbucks coffee. Then they find some podcasts about money, a calculator and realize how much they spend on some things. The rest of the books deals with them developing a more reasonable approach to money and working towards financial independence. The most telling moment is a discussion of them with two childhood friends of him, who just ask why they are so upset about frugality, because that's normal. As said in the beginning they know nothing about money.
The book is still a nice read, but the main characters are like aliens finding normal people and being suprised by it. Maybe this book is a symptom of society being fractured into non-intersection spheres.

[Ty Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book suffices as an interesting read. Being someone who loves to read about money and personal finance, I found this book useless.
Well written. But redundant.
The pet I enjoyed was the emotional story that tied into the book. It made it more enjoyable for a personal finance book. The principles he describes are pretty basic and should be glaringly obvious.
But most Americans struggle with money.
I will teach you to be rich by Ramit Sethi is what is recommend to anyone looking to get into personal finance.
Or anything Dave Ramsey.
This is a fun read with an introduction to this lifestyle that shouldn’t be used as your personal finance bible. He labels some other sources on FIRE that may be worth checking out, but I wouldn’t really waste my time reading this.
Switch to one of my other two suggestions, I enjoyed Ramit Sethi quite a lot. And who doesn’t love Dave Ramsey ?

[Heidi C · Rating 5 out of 5]

About a year ago I went to a hackathon and the key takeaway for me was that I needed to retire as soon as possible because I won’t be able to upkeep myself in the world controlled by various of AI. And yet, nothing really happened but gradually I saw it in other people’s life and then I saw FIRE, it gave a very simple yet critical insight to help me rethink what I want my life to be and what I treasured the most was not the great paycheck I got, fancy big title in even more fancier company, and I saw the more I made, the more I spent. Thanks for this book to help crystallize my to-do action, I may not be a die-hard follower but I will take the advices and reshape my life and make peace with money.

[Sophie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe helpful if you knew NOTHING about personal finances, like the fact that you should spend less than you earn and you should save and invest. Some useful info on index funds but that’s about it. I admire the idea of escaping high cost areas and earning some of the time back from working so much but this book, just...made me cringe all the way through. Being quite judgmental to your childhood friends (who are obviously much more responsible and wise financially than you are) while saying you are not, relying on two sets of parents offering rent free housing and childcare, and not saving for your kid’s college so she can ‘hack’ college...Nah.

[Trish Barlowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent introduction to FIRE. I devoured it in a day and a half. When I first started looking into FIRE, everything seemed a little bit overwhelming. This book provides a quick overview of FIRE principles, introduces you to the key players in this movement, all while following real people with real examples. After reading this book, many of the FI blogs made more sense and I knew which resources to grab next. Highly recommended!