Several months ago, Stephen Baughier, the organizer of the CampFI gatherings, invited me to speak at their first overseas camp, running for four days in late April in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The “FI” in CampFI stands for financial independence, meaning that most people at the conference are aiming to save heavily in order to live off of their investments. FI is related to the FIRE movement—financial independence, retire early—but not everyone in FI is retired.
I’ve gotten to know and admire many FIRE-aligned people over the years, including Chris Mamula, Paula Pant, Jordan Grumet, Jackie Cummings Koski, Brad Barrett, and JL Collins, mostly through our The Long View podcast. And while I love Spain, I had never been to Santiago or its region, Galicia. The organizers offered to cover my meals and lodging, and I saw that the city, the terminus of the famous Camino de Santiago, was fairly easy to travel to from Chicago. I also appreciated that the conference was small, at just 50 people, and a couple of my Bogleheads friends were planning to go. I told Stephen I was in, even though I was quite likely to be the oldest person there.
I took vacation time for the trip because I really wasn’t there to further work aims. But I did come away with some wonderful, work-adjacent takeaways.
Define Financial Independence on Your Own Terms
A lot of people have a caricatured perception of the FI community. They assume that everyone is trying to live on $10 a day in order to hang it up at age 35. And I did indeed meet some very young retirees who were committed to living on tight budgets in order to step away from paid work. Topics like travel hacking—using certain credit cards to rack up points to score free or deeply discounted travel—are a source of endless discussion.
But I also met people in their 50s with thriving businesses, parents of young children who worked in highly remunerative careers, and people who had retired early with excellent pensions. Many are still working, but all had concluded that they wanted to build up their financial reserves so they could walk away if they decided that work no longer suited them. I already knew that the FIRE community was more nuanced than many people give it credit for, but hearing people’s stories drove this home. Not everyone is committed to quitting work early or a frugal lifestyle. It’s the financial independence piece that’s the unifier, and I think it’s a worthy aspiration for all of us.
If Work Is Making You Miserable, Look for Something Else
That said, the “retire early” in FIRE is alive and well. There was a lot of talk about people hitting “their numbers”—the amount that they had determined they needed in order to declare themselves financially free. People shared stories of how their work lives were a complete and utter grind, to the point of being unhealthy, and that prompted their desire to pursue FIRE. It got me thinking about how suboptimal it is that people work to the point of burnout.
Most people I talked to at the conference allowed that if you love your job, you should keep working. But I found myself feeling a bit defensive about work, sensing that people could be underestimating its benefits. My career has brought me a lot more than money over the years, including a sense of identity and making a difference, as well as some enduring friendships. I disagree with the notion of work as a miserable slog to be gotten through. If your job is soul-crushing misery, by all means get out. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
If You’re Working Longer and Don’t Have To, Evaluate Your Motivations
At the same time, the experience got me thinking more deeply about my own plan. Many FIRE people seem to be iconoclasts. They revel in snubbing US consumer culture and saying no to other norms, such as retiring at the (arbitrary) age of 65. Many don’t have children; some are downright nomadic. I love that about them, but I tend to be more conventional. I started wondering how much of my decision to keep working is an outgrowth of my desire to conform to what people around me have tended to do.
Listening to people who have retired at younger ages and with fewer assets also got me questioning whether I had a well-grounded sense of “enough.” Could one of the reasons that I want to keep working be that saving is comfortable and familiar whereas spending is a bit intimidating? I wouldn’t rule it out. I’ve noted before that I’m going to be one of those people who underspends in retirement because saving is so ingrained in me.
Your Flexibility Is a Superpower
On the retirement spending front, my biggest technical beef with FIRE has always been that people are applying research developed for conventional spending horizons (25 to 30 years) to a seriously longer time horizon of 40 or 50 years or more. Among FIRE people, I hear a lot of references to the 4% retirement spending guideline, for example. As time horizons extend, however, safe spending rates necessarily shrink a bit. I’m not so sure that 4% is safe.
But the conference made me realize that FIRE adherents have an exceptionally valuable tool in their toolkits: the ability to be flexible with their spending. Most of them have been scrupulous about budgeting throughout their lives; they’re good at separating their needs from their wants. And in a worst-case scenario, young retirees could even return to work—a lever that’s not practical for traditional-age retirees. Being willing to be flexible, and especially to spend less in down markets, is an incredibly valuable asset to ensure that a portfolio lasts, as our retirement spending research attests.
Hopping Off the Hedonic Treadmill Can Be Valuable
Finally, the conference experience got me thinking about the hedonic treadmill—the natural human tendency to acclimate to better things and experiences as our incomes grow, to the point that they stop impressing us.
I got off the treadmill for the conference: The accommodations were pretty spartan, and the food was hearty but not gourmet. But when I discovered that Santiago is home to several Michelin-starred restaurants, I booked a solo lunch at one of them on my last full day. It was nothing short of a revelation. I had a spectacular eight-course meal served with an incredible amount of care; I reveled in every sip and bite. The experience was a reminder of the value of balance, contrast, and not taking anything for granted. I plan to hop off the hedonic treadmill more often so that, when luxuries come my way, I’m in a position to truly savor them, as I was on that rainy afternoon in Santiago.
Conclusions
In the end, I was inspired by my fellow attendees and learned some valuable lessons from them. A key one is that we all need to define financial independence on our own terms, including whether our “FI” includes work. It also made me want to challenge myself on my conventional tendencies, including my plan to work until or beyond traditional retirement age. Most of all, the conference was a reminder to get outside my comfort zone from time to time to gain exposure to people and ideas that challenge my preconceived notions of how to do things. Most of us tend to do just the opposite as we age; we self-segregate into groups of like-minded people who share similar lifestyles and hail from similar backgrounds. But it strikes me that a recipe for healthy aging is to do just the opposite.
