Turning Down the FIRE?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, you’ve probably heard of FIRE, that is: Financial Independence, Retire Early.

The movement has moved from a niche corner of personal finance into the mainstream, particularly among people in their 20s, 30s, and early 40s.

The basic idea is simple: save aggressively, invest the difference, keep your lifestyle in check, and accumulate enough money that work becomes optional decades earlier than the traditional retirement timeline.

As a financial planner, I’ve had a few clients encounter the FIRE concept later in life and say some version of: “I wish I knew about this when I was in my 20s.”

Maybe they would have saved more. Bought less house. Avoided lifestyle creep. Made different career decisions. Perhaps they could have reached financial independence years earlier.

Maybe.

But alas, we are where we are.

As a financial planner, I spend less of my time looking in the rearview mirror and more time helping clients make the best decisions in the season of life they are in today.

Because for all its appeal, FIRE also has shortcomings.

I’ve worked with clients who “retired” early only to twiddle their thumbs, check items off their “bucket list,” get bored, and eventually start another job or business because they couldn’t think of anything better to do.

There’s a lesson here: escaping work and building a meaningful life are not the same thing.

So, especially for those in, or approaching, the back half of their careers, I propose a reframing:

What if the goal isn’t to retire as early as possible, but to stop postponing life until retirement?

We’ve been conditioned to think about retirement as a binary light switch.

Work + save. Then Retire.

Instead, consider a few alternative paths that replace that light switch with something more like a dimmer.

Semi-retirement.

Instead of going from 50 hours a week to zero, could you gradually dial things back?

Work three days a week. Consult. Teach. Serve on a board. Be more selective about the work you take on while creating the “time freedom” to live.

Continuing to earn income, and perhaps maintaining health insurance and other benefits, reduces the burden on your portfolio. At the same time, work can play a critical role in keeping us from rapid decline: it preserves purpose, structure, relationships, and intellectual stimulation.

Coast FIRE.

Coast FIRE might be my favorite.

In this scenario, you grow your nest egg to the point where, given enough time and reasonable returns, it could compound into what you’ll need for traditional retirement without ever contributing another dollar.

You’re not financially independent yet. You still need income to pay the bills.

But you no longer need to maximize your salary or savings rate.

The beauty is optionality.

You can take the more interesting job. Work fewer hours. Start the business. Even turn down the promotion you don’t actually want.

The sabbatical.

Instead of saving all of your retirement for the end of your career, what if you took some of it along the way?

Six months off at 50. A year at 55. A summer abroad with your kids. Caring for aging parents. Or simply doing nothing for a while.

Then go back to work.

There is a financial cost, of course, and I wouldn’t suggest this for the faint of heart.

But we cannot relive certain seasons of life.

If taking a year off means retiring at 66 instead of 65, but it lets you do that thing while you still can, is the trade worth it?

Time isn’t fungible.

When it comes to traditional retirement planning, I spend a lot of time modeling lifespan.

Sadly, financial planning software, and financial planners writ large, do a poor job modeling healthspan.

Yes, it’s very possible you live to 90. But you almost certainly won’t have the same ability or desire to ski, hike, travel internationally, play with grandchildren, or sleep on an uncomfortable mattress at 90 that you do at 55.

And the people around you won’t remain frozen in time either.

Kids grow up. Parents age. Friendships change. Your own interests evolve.

A year at 50 and a year at 80 are both 365 days, but the lived experience of those days can be radically different, and, dare I say, not of equal value.

Thought Experiment

If you could switch places with Warren Buffett today, would you?

You’d instantly become one of the wealthiest people on Earth.

You’d also be 95 years old.

Setting aside what you could leave to others, I suspect the answer for most of us is a resounding no.

That tells us something important about the value of time.

Final Thoughts

From my vantage point, financial independence has very little to do with retiring early.

It’s about optionality.

The ability to say no to work you no longer enjoy. To earn less without panicking. To take six months off. To spend Tuesday afternoon with your grandkids.

Or, to keep working until you’re 80+ because you genuinely love what you do.

Accumulating enough resources to control your time is the part that the FIRE movement got right.

But ultimately, the goal isn’t to retire as early as possible.

It’s to build a life you don’t need to retire from.

The RAAD Five Take-Aways

1. FIRE isn’t the win, optionality is. Retiring early means nothing if you don’t know what to do with the time. The real prize is having enough control over your life that work becomes a choice, not a sentence.
2. Trade the light switch for a dimmer. You don’t have to go from full career to dead stop. Semi-retirement, consulting, board work, a lighter schedule: that’s how you keep income, insurance, purpose, and your mind all at once.
3. Coast FIRE is the quiet flex. Once your nest egg can grow itself, you stop needing to maximize everything. You get to take the interesting job. Work fewer hours. Say no to the promotion you never wanted anyway.
4. Time is not fungible. A year at 50 and a year at 80 are not the same 365 days. Your body, your energy, and the people around you are all changing while you wait for “someday.” Spend some of your freedom now, while you can actually use it.
5. Build a life you don’t need to retire from. That’s the real goal. Not escaping work as fast as possible, but designing a life good enough that retirement stops being the finish line you’re racing toward.

Freedom Always.

About the Author:

Dennis McNamara helps successful professionals design a life they can thrive in. He believes this is achieved financially, mentally, and physically. A seasoned fiduciary with deep expertise in evidence-based investing and long-horizon planning, he blends wealth management with longevity science to help clients build both net worth and well-being. Co-founder of wHealth Financial Advisors, Dennis is known for translating complexity into clarity and guiding people toward a future they’re genuinely excited to live.