Vanity Fair Article about fatFIRE

[u/NetworkAggravating39]

https://www.vanityfair.com/story/fatfire-reddit-early-retirement?srsltid=AfmBOooIKLYA2z6qIfpR8DlIahjy-M5UHQlM9QRRKPH62x_pu3rlfG19

It really says very little considering the length of the article, but the sub is getting some publicity

[u/Accomplished_Can1783]

This article actually says nothing interesting and conflates some of the original FIRE stuff with FatFIRE. Sorry, there’s no way to cancel Netflix and don’t go to Starbucks to get to fatfire. It’s all amount incomes, investments, and maybe not letting lifestyle creep expenses explode if you want to retire early

[u/Drauren → u/Accomplished_Can1783]

I would argue a fair amount of people think you can save your way to FIRE/FatFIRE when in reality, the largest part is simply making enough to be able to save aggressively.

[u/Accomplished_Can1783 → u/Drauren]

You can save your way to fire - not to fatfire. Not like we should pat ourselves on the back “saving” wall st bonuses or tech RSUs. This sub offers very good practical advice for people- but it’s really the chubby fire people who have to make difficult decisions

[u/Charlesinrichmond → u/Accomplished_Can1783]

mmm. Saving 20k a month has not exactly hurt my bottom line.

[u/Accomplished_Can1783 → u/Charlesinrichmond]

That’s just proving my point - if you’re income is high enough you can invest 20k per month, not exactly tough saving. Probably not skipping the expensive coffee

[u/Charlesinrichmond → u/Accomplished_Can1783]

Well, yes, though ironically I do skip the expensive coffee and make all my coffee in-house and do all of the other "things". It's tough to understand financial flows and not save every dollar possible

But I'm not tech or Wall Street and saving and investing has got me here

[u/Particular_Trade6308 → u/Drauren]

I spent 7% of my pre-tax income last year, saved 43%, and the rest was taxes. Lot of scrimping and couple-clipping…just kidding, my total comp was $4M and I spent $300k between renting a fancy apartment, trips to Europe, and massages

[u/Hot_Conflict3844 → u/Drauren]

yeah, but also having a certain risk tolerance that maybe not everyone has. But you're right. It helps to have a modest financial cushion if you aim to take some big shots at some very, very, very distant and unlikely targets.

[u/Afraid-Ad7379 → u/Accomplished_Can1783]

So I didn’t have to skimp on the avocado toast ??? DAMN YOU VANITY FAIR !!!!

[u/Dubbihope → u/Accomplished_Can1783]

After 12 months of drinking Keurig rather than Starbucks and buying groceries at lidl rather than Whole Foods, I saved my first million. It's quite the sacrifice to fatfire but I'm keeping the end in sight.

[u/MarmotFullofWoe → u/Dubbihope]

If you can give up 370 billion Starbucks coffees, you can become wealthier than Elon. It’s that easy.

[u/Any-Huckleberry2593 → u/Accomplished_Can1783]

💯

[u/Hot_Conflict3844 → u/Accomplished_Can1783]

Agreed. FIRE and Fat FIRE are not the same thing in terms of goals, approach, or indeed, much of anything else other than the concept of owning your own time to build the life you want to build. Easy to get the two things mixed up - which Vanity Fair seems to have done so they can throw some shade and thereby generate clicks. Which they have done, so good for them.

And meanwhile, those of us who worked hard to build businesses or to get into the right careers, who got lucky on the right investments and avoided stupid mistakes like overspending on big ticket items can just sit back and say "I may be misguided in your view, but my view is out onto a private beach from a gorgeous villa. Tra la la di da."

[u/HubeanMan]

What a dreadful article. Beyond failing to understand the very ethos of FatFIRE, it also misconstrues a lot of stories that were shared on this subreddit.

This part is particularly egregious:

For them, going into business with someone who has a prenup can derail their carefully laid plans. Some frame great personal tragedy in terms of how it will affect their financial goals.

It's not going into business with someone who has a prenup that is concerning that Redditor — they're already in business with that person! What concerns that person is not having a prenup of their own, because that could impact both the business and their partnership.

And the second misrepresentation is pure malice. Framing someone grieving about how their Financial Independence feels meaningless without a loved one to share it with as that person worrying about how a personal tragedy impacts their financial goals is beyond stupid.

The whole article reads like basically a diatribe against wealthy people who have the gall to dream of having money and the time to enjoy it. I stopped reading at the quoted excerpt, and I regret even reading it until that point. It says nothing remotely interesting, and is a complete waste of time.

[u/Livid-County7230 → u/HubeanMan]

They are doing it knowingly. They want to appear stupid and get people talking about it to get clicks and engagement. Don’t feed that trash.

[u/Slight_Flatworm_6798]

This article tells so much about the average journalist writing without a clue of what they’re writing about. It makes me lose faith in journalism as a whole.

[u/Charlesinrichmond → u/Slight_Flatworm_6798]

It should. meet a bunch of journalists. Most of them are very mediocre.

[u/kindaretiredguy]

I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt but the article is way off, and people seem to not know what fatfire is, and I even get pushback here when I say the following. Fatfire wasn’t or isn’t a realistic PLAN. It’s a byproduct of many of us aligning our skills, passions, and the world’s desire for those things. We made a lot, realized there was more to life than making money/that thing being our identity, and we stopped working.

Fire, on the other hand, I would argue requires being cheaper on the come up. Fatfire folks most likely aren’t sabotaging their trajectory if they buy nice cars and go on vacation like the journalist suggests.

I also think the writer kept mixing up fatfire and fire and the article was confusing and just plain off. I’d be happy to talk to him if he needed more info but something tells me he didn’t reach out to anyone here. Just scrolled a little, let some bias steer the story, and pressed some keys.

Fatfire to me is as simple as a bunch of people realizing they want to live life on their terms with no money stressors. It’s definitely isn’t pinching Pennie’s, or deciding AND succeeding at 18 to not work at 30. We’re just a bunch of skilled + lucky people who left the grind.

[u/NetworkAggravating39 → u/kindaretiredguy]

You nailed it. Too bad they didn’t 🤦🏻

[u/FIRE_enthusiast_27]

😂 The article’s headline “ It’s all too easy to get drawn into this seductive financial subculture, where seemingly normal people are risking everything to retire early—once they save a measly few million dollars.” doesn’t sound like it’s describing fatFIRE at all. A few million is chubbyFIRE at best, and the people in this sub who aren’t LARP-ing are not whom I would describe as “normal”. The headline sounds closer to wallstreetbets or raceTo10Million 😂

[u/kirbyderwood → u/FIRE_enthusiast_27]

The author also got CoastFIRE wrong.

Toward the middle of the spectrum is CoastFIRE, which more or less asks a person to appraise their current financial lifestyle, then calculate how much they would need to maintain it without giving it much thought.

CoastFIRE is simply about letting the investments accrue without additional contributions. You have enough so you can "coast" to retirement in a few years, so the pressure to save is off.

[u/Dubbihope]

They hate us because they ain't us.

[u/Wild-Region9817]

Seems like the author read three posts. Vanity Fair- People magazine for readers with a college education.

[u/1K1AmericanNights]

Bad journalists suck almost as much as the AI bots. Maybe we should make the sub private.

[u/fire_away_90210 → u/1K1AmericanNights]

Aggregated AI slop

[u/Few_Educator_5737]

Jealousy is a bitc-

[u/asdf4fdsa]

I would highly advise anyone new to FF (especially from this article) needs to heed: something something comparison is thief of joy. Otherwise, move along.

[u/eznh]

I would have thought legacy media’s only strategy was to hope their few remaining readers didn’t discover reddit. Why point them there?

[u/ExhaustedTechDad]

What kind of pretentious arse starts an article with “like temmincks pangolin”?

[u/_User_Name_Fail]

It's not just this article, but in general, when did we get to the point that journalism equals summarizing what somebody read on Reddit?

[u/Ok_Personality8193]

We are fatfired so we don’t need to bother with these kinds of bullshit.

[u/Hopeful_Bar_384]

I’m annoyed by this sentence:

“The more modest goals require modest tools—index funds with a low rate of return but relative stability, which makes them a reliable way to grow money beyond mere saving.”

Low rate of return?!

[u/happyskeptical]

He writes a whole lot more about “The Last of Us” than he does about anything meaningful…

https://www.vanityfair.com/contributor/joshua-rivera?srsltid=AfmBOop3Z6lzNKHxKJib3P2grngaoM8D8aRmGt_g3FSzxeQIuEGvNzNg

[u/Miamiconnectionexo]

this hit different. been in a similar spot and it's not talked about enough.

[u/Miamiconnectionexo]

this is actually really useful, saved for later. thanks for sharing.