This summer, I rented out my house to a couple of law students and went on a three month road trip up and down the West Coast with my dog Wu Wei. Slept in the car at times, but mostly stayed with friends and family in California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia (and side trip for Modern Elder Academy alumni week in Baja!).
Wu Wei, looking out the back of the Mazda 3 hatch.
O Canada! BC Ferries to Cortes Island.
There are a lot of stories from the trip that I could tell you if we hang out sometime. But I’ll share with you some lessons I got. First, the grass is greener in Portland. What I mean by that is that I have a certain soul restlessness that flares up and every year, I want to do something different. Or move somewhere else. Part of this road trip was to explore where I wanted to move away from Portland, maybe get a job to work with people again, or maybe go get a doctorate in education at Stanford, or maybe move a small town on Vancouver Island. Despite hitting FIRE, I’m still on the hedonic treadmill, still seeking novelty and new experiences in a “pursuit of happiness.” But after three months of exploring other possibilities, I’ve realized that all possible paths have drawbacks and annoyances, and I’ve already optimized for what’s important to me with my Portland life.
Still the trip was amazing and I should plan trips regularly, just with the knowledge that I’m always going to return home. One of the highlights of the trip was staying a couple of days on Whidbey Island with Your Money or Your Life author Vicki Robin.
I made a tofu curry dinner for Vicki!
I read YMOYL in college and it was a major inspiration for my own FIRE journey. So it was a real treat to get to hang out with her for a couple days. She’s wise, intellectually dazzling, and fun to be around.
A couple of interesting things Vicki shared with me. When she wrote YMOYL, she thought she had the solution for saving the world. If people really understood and bought into frugality and time wealth, the consumer engine driving climate change and our environmental destruction would run out of fuel. For years, she devoted herself to the effort, helping set up The Center for the New American Dream and promoting her book. But 25 years later, consumerism is more rampant than before and we’re accelerating towards the environmental cliff.
Here’s my take and this is what I told her: just because she couldn’t stop global capitalism (haha), doesn’t mean that she wasn’t right about the problem. And that she’s wasn’t right about the solution. Our consumerism and our insatiable need to have more drives our economic system and our environmental collapse. I don’t have a solution myself.
Vicki also talked about the FIRE (Financial Independence Retiring Early) movement and whether it’s crested. In the last few years, FIRE has certainly had its moment and pushed Vicki back into the limelight (the resultant revision of YMOYL is great). But Vicki thinks that the Retire Early part of FIRE is misleading. “No one I know who has achieved financial independence has ‘retired.’” she says. “And people with the drive and high function to achieve financial independence early aren’t the type of people who are going to do nothing for the rest of their lives. They continuing working or creating new things in different ways. My goal is to have them think about how to serve others with their all their life energy.”
The people I know who have hit FIRE usually have a “party phase,” when they crossover, where they travel and play for a couple of years. But at some point, you have to do something with your life; even traveling gets monotonous after a while. I’ve found that you’ve got to keep growing and learning, making a difference, and feel part of a community. For me, it was creating Portland Underground Grad School and School of Financial Freedom. For Vicki, it’s local civics, environmental activism, and food security.
Vicki’s big message is that FIRE people should stop talking about “early retirement.” Early retirement simply isn’t attractive to people with the motivation and ability to reach financial independence early. And it’s not even accurate. FI is the freedom to do what you want, with integrity, without regard to needing to make money. And that’s certainly a core part of my soul restlessness I’ve had in the last few years: trying to find that thing that will occupy my interest and energy post-FI. I’m grateful that I own the time to breathe, relax, and enjoy myself. But what’s going to occupy the core of my time and life energy?