I’m honestly surprised by this article. Its very outdated in my mind of the FI movement which largely moved way from the RE part of FIRE to only focus on FI. Namely, if you listen to the last year or two of the ChooseFI podcast, there is an insane amount of effort put towards the ideas she seems to be pushing for in the article. The FI movement is today not about achieving FI as soon as possible, but rather, about enjoying life through pursuing FI, and finding out what activities you best feel provide value to yourself and the world around you.

So are you surprised by the article because you think this obvious given the movement? Or that it's contradicting the FIRE movement in some way?

so i think the article is contradicting the FIRE movement, which is good, because the FI movement has moved away from the FIRE movements approach by dropping the push for retiring early. So the latter, I am surprised the article is acting like she is making a chiddush when this is what the whole community has been saying for at least the last 2 years. It’s a beautiful article and I agree with everything it is saying besides for the fact that she thinks its her chiddush and not like we all agree with her, because we all agree with her.

Wow! That is great that you reached that! Definitely goals to have and I'll be studying this chart even more and adjusting as need be. I've jumped around on the chart, where sometimes I'm saving, sometimes I'm investing, and sometimes I'm paying down debt. I look at them as 3 pillars where I'm slowly growing them (or with debt, putting them down) evenly and occasionally attacking more heavily. Have you read 'Die with Zero'? It seems more in line with the current FI mentality if I'm reading the room right.

I haven’t but I know of it and want to read it. I would definitely recommend not jumping around on the chart bc the idea is that filling each step is doing the mathematically optimal thing at each stage

IMO it's a balance to be struck. I personally am not optimizing for CoastFI because that would mean losing out on certain experiences now. Sure it's not the best financial decision, but it's the best whole life decision for me and my family at the moment. Like you said, great to have this slack to share experiences!

@steep-dog-55906 yeah i would never tell someone to focus on reaching coastfi, I didn’t really set that as a goal of mine persay, it was really just get to the next step in the flowchart while staying happy. Which it sounds like you are also optimizing for.

So I'm new to the term "CoastFI" and from my googling it means having enough saved so that I no longer need to contribute to my retirement account. I could get closer to that by spending less on other things and putting more into retirement savings, so that I can stop contributing to my retirement account earlier. I actively choose not to do that, because I'd rather amortize the cost of retirement by contributing monthly until retirement, and spending more on other things now. And I do like to phrase it as "not optimizing for CoastFI" because that helps me weigh the pros and cons of the decision. But maybe I'm misunderstanding what CoastFI means?

CoastFI is a milestone, it's still really part of FI so really we are asking about are you optimizing for FI since it would be the same optimization. By investing anything you are still optimizing for FI. When you're optimizing, you have lots of things you're optimizing for, including your current happiness. When we make financial decisions, we're not just optimizing for one goal, but optimizing for many goals including present ones as well as future ones. I reject the premise that by spending some money today instead of investing it that you are no longer optimizing for FI. If you spent nothing and invested everything, you could get burnout, and therefore not be investing anything and it would be an even worse scenario. Also, who's to say that if you maybe invested even less and worked even less, you would get a brilliant business idea with that free time and be able to invest even more. It's very hard to say what the optimal decision would be without being able to see the future. That's why it's all part of a big equation that you have in your head with lots of moving parts that You are optimizing for. If you weren't also optimizing for Fi then you would be investing nothing. One of the very important factors of FI is living in the moment and enjoying today. The fi community is not about not having your cup of coffee to invest an extra $5. There are other financial communities that would tell you to do that but not the financial independence community. Part of the equation of reaching financial independence is current satisfaction and enjoyment of life. So I would say you are even more optimizing for FI than someone who was miserable saving every penny they had for retirement. This is the big difference between FIRE and FI.

I like that framing @mysterious-tomato-10057! Thanks for the explanation!

I think the linked article and FI are both a lot easier for families with two kids in public schools. For families with several kids in private schools, we will spend a lot more money than the rest of the world.

I don’t think any of the articles or FI are related at all to how many kids or whether kids are in public or private school. People in any place of society of expenses that look different. I think the premise that @thankful-raincoat-91160 is making that FI is not achievable for a frum family is exactly the premise I am rejecting by helping families do it one by one for free. Income can be optimized, expenses can be lowered, decisions can be made smarter, and FI is a very realistic goal for every frum person. May it take some some years longer bc we have some higher expenses? Yes. But in a lot of ways our expenses are much lower than other sections of society. I was raised secular and went to a college that cost 250k. That is a pretty normal expense to take on that frum families usually would not. Its very hard to make this comparison. In fact, I think yidden pointing to how expensive it is to be frum is just an escape mechanism from taking responsibility of their own finances. People avoiding taxes and living on food stamps telling me how expensive it is to be frum instead of taking ownership. Once educated, the same people are high income earning individuals supporting the moisdos in our community. We are not victims here. We can own our future and make it bright.