Woke up to 62 comments and just want to say I love how engaged and thoughtful this conversation is - particularly amongst people whose opinions differ. I’m still working out how I feel about these concepts, too; I think a lot of us are. Reading through comments like these (and figuring out how to articulate your own comment) is so useful, and I’m so grateful for this discussion!
Woke up to 62 comments and just want to say I love how engaged and thoughtful this conversation is - particularly amongst people whose opinions differ. I’m still working out how I feel about these concepts, too; I think a lot of us are. Reading through comments like these (and figuring out how to articulate your own comment) is so useful, and I’m so grateful for this discussion!
I'd love to see a follow up interview that teases out 1) where bookkeeping and understanding your monthly cash flow ends and "budget culture" begins, and 2) what she has to say to YNAB and Ramit Sethi people (which I think is the majority of your audience) vs Dave Ramsey people. Focusing on the latter feels like a straw person argument because left-leaning upper middle class PMC types are not really on the Dave Ramsey train, but there are valuable conversations to be had in the more nuanced space.
I keep thinking there's some interesting crossover here with Prosperity Gospel and Kate Bowler's work--but the Dave Ramsay stuff as a secularized version of it. Good studies of Prosperity Gospel like Bowler's locate it as a specific and pernicious subculture in Christianity, though, and not a stand-in for any/all gospel messaging. I'd love to see a more nuanced version of this critique that gets more specific about the different kinds of budget/personal finance messages are out there.
another person I would add to the Ramit Sethi/YNAB camp is Chelsea Fagan (The Financial Diet) who also rejects the hoarding/FIRE approach to personal finance and is more focused on frugality and entrepreneurship. She is also quite conscious of the echoes between budget discussions and dieting; but doesn't come at it from a strong anticapitalist lens.
Yes! Also Katie Gatti Tassin from Money with Katie. She does a lot of research and interrogation about the influence of capitalism and patriarchy on economics, but combined with practical personal finance information that we all need in a world with essentially no safety net. As much as I love the idea of "community care," I think we have to be realistic about the fact that our neighbors are not going to pay our rent every month and we need to protect our ability to pay our bills and provide for our families.
Yes please — and that you can ingest the ethos of FIRE without going FIRE extremes. The reality is that we live in a society that doesn’t normalize what she advocates for (which I hate! I wish we did!) *and* that aging is really expensive. I hope I do have community and government resources to support me as I age (esp as someone who chose to be child free) but relying on it seems risky. She argues budgets have been restricting, but it’s actually been quite freeing for me personally, as an anxious person. Looking at the numbers helps me make decisions without too much fretting.
I love this space for discussion so much! One thing I would really love is a more nuanced look at FIRE folks. It’s a much broader and more interesting sub-culture than is being portrayed here, and it’s often caricatured or conflated with tech bro/Dave Ramsey nonsense, which is a bummer.
Yeah, I was kind of surprised that she dismissed it with such broad strokes. In my mind, the book "Your Money or Your Life" is the classic FIRE text, and it really is *not* advocating wealth hoarding. If anything, the ideas of the book are anti-consumerist and pro-social. Yes, there are absolutely people who associate who assume the FIRE label that just want to...be rich. (I especially bristle at the contingency that call being a landlord "passive income" -- if you're a slumlord, sure, I guess) There's also the element of people hustling online to sell themselves, and that has led to more ridiculous claims/gross snake oil/'get rich quick' online courses. But this isn't a full reflection of the "movement."
"Financial independence" and "retired" mean different things to different people. There's a lot of folks who are choosing to work lower-paying jobs for the sake of their time or personal fulfillment. There are a lot who choose under-consumption for environmental and ethical reasons. (Think: shopping at thrift stores over Shein, even though both are 'cheap.') My point being that 'FIRE folks' includes a lot of people who swap babysitting nights with neighbors, live in communal housing, and trade food from their garden. These are not folks who are worshipping wealth; if anything, they are skeptical of the importance of it and choose to live more simply.
I echo your idea that it's a bummer, because I think our culture would benefit from a serious examination of our consumption and spending habits, and highlighting the more 'ethical' strain of the FIRE world might provide more avenues for people to do so.
After reading more of her work and sitting with this more, I think I see how she got there and where it goes off the rails for me. If we want to continue the diet culture parallel, FIRE people are basically financial vegans.
Does veganism/FIRE intersect with diet/Budget culture in some extremely gnarly places that should be challenged in that community? Yes. (I would put the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad in the same garbage can as Skinny Bitch)
From the outside, can vegans/FIRE people come across as extreme, anti-social, hyper-restrictive, elitist/out of touch, preachy, or just plain old weird? Certainly.
Are they both individual choice responses to frightening and horrible systemic problems? Yup.
Does either group deserve to be wholesale held up as the awful poster children for diet/budget culture? Certainly not.
It’s frustrating because I’m super onboard with using the diet culture parallel to challenge “personal responsibility” financial culture.
Yeah, it also doesn’t help that most mainstream coverage of it is either “Hayden and Angela retired at 26 with 10 million dollars to travel the world, but now they’re tired of being so frugal” or “check out these cheap weirdos”
I echo many of the thoughts as someone who loosely budgets and formerly restricted my diet. I appreciate the reminder that budgeting can tailspin into something more toxic. I remember a comment in a FIRE forum where someone was asking the online to scrutinise her budget because she couldn’t save, and the answer was that it wasn’t her fault, she was just being exploited and then made to feel guilty for not saving. That said I’ve also gained a lot from budgeting, namely questioning overconsumption, as well as great achievement that I can feel ownership over. I also think a complete dereliction of budgeting can also be its own form of egotism. I hope I can count on community financially or otherwise if things go really go south, but they will know that if I ask for that help it won’t be because I haven’t worked my ass off to make ends meet. Misfortune can strike anyone but I don’t want to disrespect my community by not trying. That’s not to say the interviewee is necessarily suggesting to give up. It’s just that I see striving to take care of myself financially or otherwise, and to the extent reasonably possible within the society you live in, as respect to my community.
Woke up to 62 comments and just want to say I love how engaged and thoughtful this conversation is - particularly amongst people whose opinions differ. I’m still working out how I feel about these concepts, too; I think a lot of us are. Reading through comments like these (and figuring out how to articulate your own comment) is so useful, and I’m so grateful for this discussion!
I'd love to see a follow up interview that teases out 1) where bookkeeping and understanding your monthly cash flow ends and "budget culture" begins, and 2) what she has to say to YNAB and Ramit Sethi people (which I think is the majority of your audience) vs Dave Ramsey people. Focusing on the latter feels like a straw person argument because left-leaning upper middle class PMC types are not really on the Dave Ramsey train, but there are valuable conversations to be had in the more nuanced space.
This would be a great discussion for the podcast, please submit a question there!!! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1x-9yH31NLM77GKHwsgKw5PHdtzZsGt9kjp3P2UuWidw/edit?usp=drive_web
I keep thinking there's some interesting crossover here with Prosperity Gospel and Kate Bowler's work--but the Dave Ramsay stuff as a secularized version of it. Good studies of Prosperity Gospel like Bowler's locate it as a specific and pernicious subculture in Christianity, though, and not a stand-in for any/all gospel messaging. I'd love to see a more nuanced version of this critique that gets more specific about the different kinds of budget/personal finance messages are out there.
Oh I really love bringing Kate Bowler's work into this. What a great insight.
another person I would add to the Ramit Sethi/YNAB camp is Chelsea Fagan (The Financial Diet) who also rejects the hoarding/FIRE approach to personal finance and is more focused on frugality and entrepreneurship. She is also quite conscious of the echoes between budget discussions and dieting; but doesn't come at it from a strong anticapitalist lens.
Yes! Also Katie Gatti Tassin from Money with Katie. She does a lot of research and interrogation about the influence of capitalism and patriarchy on economics, but combined with practical personal finance information that we all need in a world with essentially no safety net. As much as I love the idea of "community care," I think we have to be realistic about the fact that our neighbors are not going to pay our rent every month and we need to protect our ability to pay our bills and provide for our families.
Yes please — and that you can ingest the ethos of FIRE without going FIRE extremes. The reality is that we live in a society that doesn’t normalize what she advocates for (which I hate! I wish we did!) *and* that aging is really expensive. I hope I do have community and government resources to support me as I age (esp as someone who chose to be child free) but relying on it seems risky. She argues budgets have been restricting, but it’s actually been quite freeing for me personally, as an anxious person. Looking at the numbers helps me make decisions without too much fretting.
Yes to all of these names being part of the discussion please!
Oh and going more into the non-Ramsey version of FIRE, since there are really interesting conversations to be had there.
I love this space for discussion so much! One thing I would really love is a more nuanced look at FIRE folks. It’s a much broader and more interesting sub-culture than is being portrayed here, and it’s often caricatured or conflated with tech bro/Dave Ramsey nonsense, which is a bummer.
Yeah, I was kind of surprised that she dismissed it with such broad strokes. In my mind, the book "Your Money or Your Life" is the classic FIRE text, and it really is *not* advocating wealth hoarding. If anything, the ideas of the book are anti-consumerist and pro-social. Yes, there are absolutely people who associate who assume the FIRE label that just want to...be rich. (I especially bristle at the contingency that call being a landlord "passive income" -- if you're a slumlord, sure, I guess) There's also the element of people hustling online to sell themselves, and that has led to more ridiculous claims/gross snake oil/'get rich quick' online courses. But this isn't a full reflection of the "movement."
"Financial independence" and "retired" mean different things to different people. There's a lot of folks who are choosing to work lower-paying jobs for the sake of their time or personal fulfillment. There are a lot who choose under-consumption for environmental and ethical reasons. (Think: shopping at thrift stores over Shein, even though both are 'cheap.') My point being that 'FIRE folks' includes a lot of people who swap babysitting nights with neighbors, live in communal housing, and trade food from their garden. These are not folks who are worshipping wealth; if anything, they are skeptical of the importance of it and choose to live more simply.
I echo your idea that it's a bummer, because I think our culture would benefit from a serious examination of our consumption and spending habits, and highlighting the more 'ethical' strain of the FIRE world might provide more avenues for people to do so.
After reading more of her work and sitting with this more, I think I see how she got there and where it goes off the rails for me. If we want to continue the diet culture parallel, FIRE people are basically financial vegans.
Does veganism/FIRE intersect with diet/Budget culture in some extremely gnarly places that should be challenged in that community? Yes. (I would put the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad in the same garbage can as Skinny Bitch)
From the outside, can vegans/FIRE people come across as extreme, anti-social, hyper-restrictive, elitist/out of touch, preachy, or just plain old weird? Certainly.
Are they both individual choice responses to frightening and horrible systemic problems? Yup.
Does either group deserve to be wholesale held up as the awful poster children for diet/budget culture? Certainly not.
It’s frustrating because I’m super onboard with using the diet culture parallel to challenge “personal responsibility” financial culture.
Yeah, it also doesn’t help that most mainstream coverage of it is either “Hayden and Angela retired at 26 with 10 million dollars to travel the world, but now they’re tired of being so frugal” or “check out these cheap weirdos”
Our Big Journey or Family on YouTube is one of my favorite normal type FIRE accounts btw.
I echo many of the thoughts as someone who loosely budgets and formerly restricted my diet. I appreciate the reminder that budgeting can tailspin into something more toxic. I remember a comment in a FIRE forum where someone was asking the online to scrutinise her budget because she couldn’t save, and the answer was that it wasn’t her fault, she was just being exploited and then made to feel guilty for not saving. That said I’ve also gained a lot from budgeting, namely questioning overconsumption, as well as great achievement that I can feel ownership over. I also think a complete dereliction of budgeting can also be its own form of egotism. I hope I can count on community financially or otherwise if things go really go south, but they will know that if I ask for that help it won’t be because I haven’t worked my ass off to make ends meet. Misfortune can strike anyone but I don’t want to disrespect my community by not trying. That’s not to say the interviewee is necessarily suggesting to give up. It’s just that I see striving to take care of myself financially or otherwise, and to the extent reasonably possible within the society you live in, as respect to my community.