Burned out FIRE followers are now “Coasting” their way to early retirement

The financial independence, retire early movement — a strategy that prioritizes early-career saving and investing so workers can retire young — has been around for more than three decades. But the movement, known as FIRE, really spread in the last several years, spurred in part by disgruntled millennial workers and a pandemic-era boost in Americans’  savings.  Now, though, many FIRE enthusiasts are burning out on living hand to mouth in the name of early retirement.

The general philosophy behind FIRE is to save a big chunk of your income, as much as 50%, and invest those savings heavily by maxing out your 401(k) and other retirement accounts. If all goes according to plan, you can retire as soon as your 30s and spend the rest of your life enjoying shrimp cocktail (and maybe the other kind of cocktails) aboard your boat.

But as Money reporter Adam Hardy writes in his latest feature on the FIRE movement, workers are more likely to run themselves ragged trying to achieve a luxurious retirement before gray hair and wrinkles set in. (Not to mention that many simply don’t have the income required to make such lofty savings goals possible.)

“The well-manicured lifestyle videos on social media belie a very difficult period of austerity and belt-tightening needed to achieve early retirement that, frankly, most people aren’t cut out for,” Hardy writes.

Enter the ‘Coast FIRE’ movement, the more easygoing sibling of FIRE that prioritizes sustainability and enjoying life while still making prudent retirement savings choices.

You can learn more about Coast FIRE — and how to join the growing movement — by reading Adam’s story.

— Mary Ellen Cagnassola, Money reporter

A new poll from Gallup finds that Americans’ optimism about the future of Social Security has increased despite concerns about insolvency and the program disappearing completely. Half of U.S. nonretirees expect that Social Security will provide them benefits when they reach retirement. That’s a shift from polls conducted between 2005 and 2015, which found respondents were more likely to say they didn’t expect to receive benefits. About 53% of current retirees, meanwhile, said they believe they’ll keep receiving benefits, a decent jump from the 37% and 49% who said the same in 2010 and 2015, respectively.

• The Social Security Administration has demanded benefit overpayments back from more than 2 million people a year — more than twice as many program recipients as the agency’s chief told Congress in October.
• Social Security beneficiaries should look out for these changes coming in 2024, according to AARP.
• Pension-like benefits may actually make a comeback thanks to IBM’s announcement that it will stop matching 401(k) contributions in favor of Retirement Benefit Accounts, a new type of defined-benefit setup that shares some similarities with pensions.

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