The FIRE movement, from the beginning, has not been preaching any kind of “get rich” scheme. This is a lifestyle of understanding what provides happiness in life. In the end, happiness is what we all want. That is the end goal. However, what makes us happy? That is the difficult question.
When Katie and I first started studying FIRE and tracking our spending, we realized that we have some vices in our life. Katie loves good coffee, and I love good beer and whiskey. In fact, I splurged this week and am currently enjoying a $0.53 Bud Light right as I type this. However, I need to recognize with each sip what is actually happening. This beverage is not providing any extra long term happiness.
Each time I sip my beer (especially expensive $10 craft beers), or Katie sips her coffee, we get a spike of pleasure that is really great! Then, after the drink is gone what happens? We want another? Maybe not immediately, but definitely the next day or the next after that. These are instants of happy, like notes hit on a keyboard. We can hit a note over and over really quickly, but it will never sound like one lasting note until those hits are spaced impossibly close together. You need something to sustain it.
Imagine you have a button that you can press to give you instant pleasure. What would you do? Day 1, you might sit by the button and press it over and over again. You would skip some meals, maybe cancel plans because this invention is so appealing! But how long could you do that for? You might get bored and want to find something, anything else because you’ve done the button thing for a while. Our minds have an incredible way of adjusting so that you would eventually get used to the pleasure sensation and need to get an even stronger source that is more powerful or lasts longer for the button to have any appeal.
In the FIRE movement, everyone has started to catch on to this reality. Instead of buying myself a case of beer, I should have saved that money and bought myself an hour or two of life. Many people have realized that buying a new luxury vehicle has a very limited happiness feeling that will depreciate rapidly. A $75,000 2019 Cadillac Escalade can be measured as time in our lives. If our family spends that amount of money in 2.5 years, instead of buying that car, we could buy ourselves two years of retirement and time together instead. And with compounding growth, that delayed gratification will purchase us even more freedom as that money is working for us in investments.
What if you could do your favorite activity instead of go to work? How long would that last? These moments of pleasure are good things if oriented properly, but no one purchase will provide you with actual joy.
Even if I were financially independent now because I had saved enough money to live off of my investments the rest of my life, there would still be something lacking. Purchasing your retirement is kind of like purchasing an extended sip of the greatest beer. This is a very good thing when oriented towards something purposeful, but in itself does not give you joy. Just like the beer you would have a spike of pleasure and it would last for a while. If you keep yourself busy and entertained and even help some others along the way, you could ride this pleasure wave out for the rest of your retirement, but just like the sip of beer, this wave is not infinite.
THE SUBSTITUTION OF CRUEL REPETITION FOR INFINITY
During our preparation for marriage, Katie and I read a book called Three to Get Married by Fulton Sheen. This man had some serious peace and joy and dedicated his life to sharing it with others through radio, TV, and books. It’s a bit long but here is a quote from his book:
“Only God can give what the heart wants. In true Christian love, the husband and wife see God coming through their love. But without God the infinity must be sought in the finitude of the partner, which is to gather figs from thistles. Eternity is in the soul, and all the materialism of the world cannot uproot it. The tragedy of the materialist psychologies of our day comes from trying to make a bodily function satisfy the infinite aspirations of the soul. It is this that creates complexes and unstable minds and divorce courts. It is like trying to put all the words of a book on the cover. Eliminate the Divine Third from human love, and there is left only the substitution of cruel repetition for infinity. The need of God never disappears. Those who deny the existence of water are still thirsty, and those who deny God still want Him in their craving for Beauty and Love and Peace, which He alone is.”
Pleasure is happiness feeling for an instant. It is finite.
Joy is happiness sustained over time and infinite. Joy is a state of being; happiness and peace that lasts even through the least pleasurable times.
Though Venerable Fulton Sheen was talking about marriage, the concept applies to anyone. Joy comes from God. Even for those who don’t believe in God, any lasting joy they receive is from him in the things in their life that are true, good, and beautiful. God within relationships with others can provide joy, and most of all striving to have a relationship with God himself will give peace and joy that we all need.
If we try to experience joy without God, we are trying to hit the pleasure button over and over in order to imitate the one thing that provides the infinite and sustained joy. Substituting cruel repetition for infinity.
THE REAL GOAL OF FIRE
So as our family strives for more financial independence, like many others, we hope to live many years of joy. We want to use our life to share joy with others, to raise our family and be available to them, to spend time in God’s creation in nature, to help and share with others, and to recognize and be thankful for the time we have here and look forward to the infinite time ahead of us!
This week, how can you recognize the gift of long term joy rather than short term pleasures? What unnecessary pleasures do you spend money on each week that you could try to cut out?
