I am fascinated by the FIRE community. FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early.
The general gist of it is that if you only spend 4% of your savings per year, then you never have to work again. In all historical situations, with stock market crashes and high inflation, you will still end up with enough money to retire on. For many people, this is $2,000,000 US dollars, allowing you to withdraw and live on $80,000 per year.
I have no interest in retiring. I’m just wired differently. In fact, I like work so much, I want to try multiple careers in my lifetime. I have seen how boring retirement is. I want to try writing a film, being an entrepreneur, a fireman for a day. There are dozens of jobs that sound fascinating that I haven’t even heard of.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the FIRE community and everything it stands for. You can have FIRE, I’ll have a GYRO.
For me and those like me, I propose GYRO (Gap Year, Reinvent Occupation).
It’s sort of like FIRE but on a much smaller scale and for a much shorter time period. For instance, instead of saving up $2,000,000 and retiring at 38, I’ll save up 50,000 and spend a year abroad at 24 trying out a whole new career.
I’ve actually done this several times which is a variation called FAT GYRO.
FAT GYRO = (Funded Aspirations / Temporary Gap Year / Reinvent Occupation)
I know some people who do like their GYROs and FAT GYROs SOGGY style.
SOGGY = (Startup Over Grinding Gap Year)
You work to live. We live to work. Us Soggies are especially opposite to your FIRE people.
That’s all, time to get back to work which I enjoy.
I have explained my philosophy to several members of the FIRE community and the consensus was that this is “obnoxious.”