Work Optional: Rebranding FIRE

Inspiring, thoughtful, and detailed to the point of wondering if a book can be too well researched, Tanja Hester's Work Optional examines financial independence and early retirement with a scope that sets the book apart. This easy read can surely introduce "FIRE" to a newcomer, while forcing long-time enthusiasts to question how well they've really thought their early retirement plans through.

Engaging and thought-provoking throughout (no small feat considering most people will get up and walk out of a room to avoid a discussion about money), Work Optional deserves a spot beside A Simple Path to Wealth: the two books you should share with a friend or coworker asking what this whole financial independence thing is about.

Hester manages to balance the small-but-necessary details (for example, have you, thirty-something early retirement enthusiast, budgeted for the fact that Medicare will only cover 60% of your medical expenses thirty years from now?) with the motivating, why-are-we-doing-this big picture items. (What kind of life do you want to live? What does your ideal day actually look like?)

There are checklists at the end of each chapter, but these feel less like busy work and more like truly helpful suggestions: reminders to spend some time pondering the things that matter if you want to create a plan that works.

Work Optional has good, well-researched sections on investments, safe withdrawal rates, and frugality, of course. These are the financial foundations of an early retirement and no book on the subject should be written without them. But Hester shines in the spaces that go beyond showing readers how to achieve financial independence, in the pages where she invites the reader to question why he or she wants to pursue this sort of life in the first place.

Avoiding the temptation to paint early retirement as a panacea, Hester discusses the material costs of retirement, which can be significant. Citing Robert Weiss's The Experience of Retirement, Hester notes that "there are very real losses that come from retirement, most notably a loss of community, life structure, and personal identity." The book also cites research finding that couples "tend to experience an increase in conflict during the first year or two after retirement." 

Out of context, these quotes might make it seem that Hester is down on retirement itself, and instead leans more into the financial independence side of FIRE. But that is not the case here. As she does throughout the book, Hester takes a straightforward look at each aspect of the transition away from work: emotional and physical well-being, leaving work without a clear plan, stress on relationships, the possibility of underestimating medical costs. She shares the potential downsides precisely so readers can better prepare for them: so your next life will be as joyful as it can be.

That last part is critical. At its core, Work Optional seems to be more about life design than it is about personal finance. This is a fairly common theme in FIRE circles, but one which its leading voices have often struggled to articulate. When early retirees are branded as penny pinching, money-hoarding nerds, the blogger's response is typically to insist this goal is not at all about money, but instead is about...something else. It's really about freedom or happiness or some other good-sounding-but-hard-to-express goal. 

I've always thought that FIRE had a branding problem. Just take a look at any comment section in a mainstream publication. A concept that so many workers fantasize about each Monday morning shouldn't be that hard to pitch to those same workers.

Hester tackles that branding problem as well as anyone, save perhaps Mr. Money Mustache (who saw early on that it was better to go with "badassity" instead of frugality). Rather than stopping at the clichéd take that financial independence gives you "the freedom to do whatever you want", Work Optional nudges readers to figure out what that next life looks like, in a real way, and for themselves.

What does your ideal day look like? What setting are you in when you imagine this day? What do you think will provide a sense of purpose in your new life? How can you maintain relationships and stay connected socially? What does your partner want out of all of this -- are his answers similar to yours?

My gut says that Hester believes the key to loving life in your second act are found in those answers and, somewhat ironically, in the aspiring early retiree's commitment to put in the work. As someone who often balks at putting in maximum effort, this is not an approach to early retirement I initially thought I would like. But as with most things I procrastinate about, it turns out the effort involved with self-reflection is not as awful as my fear of it. 

Below is a very fancy visual of the themes and activities we want to build our next life around.

Amazingly, even after writing about financial independence for over six years, I'd somehow neglected to put these sort of life goals into a cohesive plan. 

I suspect my experience is not all that unique. With so many people on the path towards financial independence or early retirement, but relatively few who have already made it, there simply aren't all that many helpful, detailed guides to what the process entails, beyond the basic financial aspects. 

Work Optional certainly is one. If you are contemplating an early retirement, you would be doing your future self a favor if you picked up a copy.