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Alright, before there are calls made to local enforcement agencies, I will have to explain myself.

I think discovering FIRE, of the financial independence/retire early kind, was one of the most important steps in putting me on the path to financial success that I am currently on.

There are so many wonderful stories of how members of this community fought their demons and overcame obstacles to become financially independent with or without the retire early component.

Using tried and true tested methods, namely living below your means and saving/investing, an individual can make a significant impact on his or her financial well-being especially if this path was discovered early on in life.

However even a noble concept such as FIRE can be misused and you can become consumed by the very thing you are trying to avoid.

Sticking with the fire motif, my goal of achieving FIRE was to avoid burnout in my career.

As I have previously mentioned in my blog, I feel there is a burnout continuum.

You suddenly don’t wake up one day and boom, you are burnt out.

 

Rather it is a little more of an insidious process, where slight annoyances start coalescing to form more significant emotional and behavioral changes if left unchecked.

My path to FIRE was supposed to cure all this.

The goal for becoming financially independent was to be able to walk away from things that I no longer wished to do or to reduce the amount of clinical hours I worked to give me time to recharge again.

Seemed simple enough, but as I am about to reveal, the path of FIRE is not always full of light and there are some dark twists and turns you have to be careful of.

My fall from grace began when I took the concept of FIRE too far.

Without moderation, any good concept can be sullied by an extremist line of thinking.

My initial downfall was when I began to prioritize money in my quest for FIRE.

 

Yes, money is a key ingredient in the FIRE concept, but again it must be pursued in moderation.

I would calculate my net worth to coincide with my payday (bi-monthly) so that I could then use the information to rebalance my portfolio with new money in whatever assets were lagging.

I soon got accustomed to watching my net worth typically trend upwards with every payday and associating it with a feeling of happiness much like Pavlov’s dogs hearing a dinner bell.

The problem was once that payday passed, I could not wait till the next payday came so I could feel euphoria all over again.

The days in between paydays seemed meaningless and I couldn’t wait for them to pass.

Because my net worth had direct ties to the stock market, if the market had a down period I could sense it effected my mood as well.

 

Little did I know but I was on the way of taking the beautiful concept of FIRE and turning it into something darker, turning myself into a pyromaniac.

By not taking time to enjoy the actual journey to FIRE but rather just emphasizing these periodic mile markers and concentrating only on the finish line, I actually was hastening my path to burnout.

Another, thankfully brief, dark period in my FIRE path was related to the competitive side in me.

 

As a physician, my entire educational life was about competition.

You had to get top grades and score well on examinations to be even considered for med school.

Think the competition stops once you get in medical school?

Sadly no.

The heat of competition actually gets turned up even more.

Now you are placed in a pool of students who, like you, have excelled in their respective schools, competing for limited spots in the desired medical specialties/residency programs.

So it is easy to see why that competitive switch just doesn’t get turned off even after all these years.

“That’s great Xrayvsn, but tell me how does this relate to FIRE?”

Well for me the darkness arose when I was no longer just happy with my progress on the path to FIRE.

No.

I had this burning desire to see how I was doing compared to others in my cohort.

 

It pains me to admit this, but I even found myself constantly looking for posts that would mention what the average net worth would be for various ages all so that I could just reaffirm that I was way ahead of the bell curve.

After awhile even that got boring.

Fortunately by this time my net worth had grown even more to the point that I was no longer in the “borderline zone” of financial independence but well entrenched in it.

Coming to the realization that I had “crossed the finish line” made me see the errors of my previous ways and I luckily came back to my senses.

 

Who knows if I really would have completely fallen down to the level of a full blown pyromaniac if my financial journey was longer than it was.

 

So as a word of warning to those about to embark on the path to FIRE:

Be careful of getting consumed by fire when you are trying to achieve FIRE or you may indeed turn into a pyromaniac and likely burning yourself in the process.

 

 

Note:

If you are in search of financial help, please consider enlisting the service of any of the sponsors of this blog who I feel are part of the “good guys and gals of finance.”

Even a steadfast DIY’er can sometimes gain benefit from the occasional professional input.

 

As always please consider subscribing to this blog.  

It is loyal subscribers like you that really want me to continue to pour my heart into this passion project and create worthy content.

You will be kept up to date with the latest post along with bonus material like the net worth spreadsheet template I created (and satisfaction knowing you make Xrayvsn really happy as he is a number/stats guy at heart).

Thank you

 

-Xrayvsn