Financial
Independence
Retire
Early

Over the last decade, the concept of FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) has, well, caught fire on the web. Blogs, Reddit boards, and articles have explored how relatively young adults have radically changed their saving and spending habits in order to retire early. While there are variations in the theme, there is a basic formula for FIRE

Live simply/cheaply
+
Save like crazy
=
Achieve financial independence

For educators, there are some really good things that have come out of this 21st century financial fashion statement.

Exploring what it means to save

FIRE has helped (re)define the word, saving. First, it has amplified the importance of saving money for the future, explaining and demonstrating how quantity, frequency, and efficiency of investments over time create wealth and provide adults choice and agency in their lives and employment.

While these ideas are nothing new (cue Benjamin Franklin’s chestnut about a penny saved…), these 21st Century paeans to saving, thriftiness, and investing provide newer generations with both examples and exemplars for this essential component of financial independence. FIRE enthusiasts also follow in the footsteps of Bogleheads (Google it) who seek to invest efficiently, saving money on investment fees. Many FIRE enthusiasts are big fans of low cost and low maintenance investment strategies.

As a flip side to saving for the future, many followers of FIRE also recognize that there is merit to saving money in the present by spending and using less in our daily lives. FIRE followers often promote frugality and cost-consciousness both as a means to save more for the future and to live more simply in the present. While many FIRE enthusiasts seek to build wealth in order to achieve financial independence, there is a necessary and natural recognition that there are opportunity costs to debt, consumption, and acquisition. 

Exploring financial independence

If saving is the means, then financial independence is one of the desired ends for followers of FIRE. I think this is one of the most powerful aspects of this movement. By defining, implementing, and demonstrating ways in which adults can become financially independent, FIRE offers both a how and why adults can control and more intentionally define the work/life balance across their lifetimes.

Younger generations than mine are rightly pushing back from traditional norms and expectations of work and the workplace. While the concept of the work/life balance may have emerged way back in the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1980s, more recent generations have successfully translated this aspiration into practice.

FIRE is very much part of this redefinition. While changes in workplace norms and expectations were well underway before COVID, the pandemic and its aftermath have reshaped the workplace and calculations of work/life balance. Proof can be found in the vacant commercial buildings in once-vibrant cities and pitched battles over ‘return to office’ mandates. These and other transitions suggest that the balance of work and life is being redefined in real time.  

Our bottom line is kids, not dollars

Many adults outside of education are employed in joyless, pointless, and/or aimless jobs. According to The Conference Board, in 2022, 62.3% of U.S. workers were satisfied with their job. While this is an increase from the previous survey, a glass-half-empty translation of this number means that almost 4 in 10 workers are not satisfied with their job. 

Much of the modern workforce works so that others can become richer. I’m not trying to sound like a socialist, but that’s pretty much how capitalism works.

As educators, we are lucky that we work in an enterprise in which the bottom line is not financial growth, but student growth. When I had a bad day as an educator, I would often remind myself that the worst day in a school is better than most in an office, factory, or warehouse. 

For this reason, the prime motivator for FIRE followers to retire early often comes from working in jobs, conditions, or industries which are neither personally or socially rewarding. Sure, teachers and educators have bad days, bad bosses, and bad parents. While I did not luuuvv working as a school district administrator, my departure was not because I didn’t love working in education and in the service of kids and educators. It was because I wanted to do other things in education that were not possible in the cubicle in which I had landed. 

Educators don’t work for Google

It seems like many FIRE enthusiasts and celebrities on the web are current or former IT workers and executives. They may have worked for one or more billionaire megalomaniacs. And as part of their save-like-crazy formula, many FIRE enthusiasts likely make/made WAY more than my educator colleagues. And the last time I looked, most educators don’t have stock options or company 401(k)s. 

Speaking from my own experience, my path to financial independence was, like a child’s progression from kindergarten to graduation, a slow and steady process. My compensation as an educator was fair, but I didn’t enjoy end-of-year bonuses to fast-track my financial independence.

Educators are not show offs

As I’ve written in other posts, teachers and other educators don’t (and don’t like to) talk about money and finance. Even when talking about their work leading, teaching, and supporting schools, they don’t like to get in front of their peers with ideas, lessons, or leadership that say “look at me.”

While I enjoy reading and learning from FIRE articles and writers, there can be an off-putting arrogance, evangelism, and smugness to the FIRE movement. In addition to being able to take their job and shove it (while others still work their 9-5’s), there is often a come-to-Jesus fetishism of frugality in which former well-paid IT workers, lawyers, and executives proudly blog about how much they are saving in their newfound thrifty lifestyle. Other FIRE bloggers who ‘have arrived’ find ways to rationalize their purchase of expensive cars, real estate, and luxuries they originally eschewed.

My experience is that many teachers are already living with less. Many young teachers are effectively living close to the poverty line, paying down student loans while renting with roommates, coaching for cash, working a side hustle, and even leaning on school breakfasts and lunches for a cheap meal. Older teachers with kids and mortgages may have paid off their student loans but may live in a state of artificial affluence — effectively living paycheck to paycheck. 

Educators are in it for the long haul 

Many FIRE enthusiasts revel and even gloat in the separation from whatever they used to do. Like snakes shedding their skins, they contrast their new lifestyle and independence with what they left behind. While I’m no longer working in a school or district office, I don’t look back in anger or regret. If anything, I often miss working in schools, coaching, and watching kids grow up around me.

And looking back at the decades I worked as a teacher librarian, instructional coach, and administrator, the colleagues who left the education profession altogether (aside from retirement) seemed few and far between. There is a sort of stickiness to employment in PK-12 education that for me, was a blend of two ingredients. 

First, educators love kids and support schools as essential things in our society. We show up to work because we believe that education is worthwhile and important. And each educator — teachers, principals, paras, support staff, administrators — has a job connected to this effort in helping kids learn, thrive, and grow.

Second, as a workplace, it’s not perfect, but it’s also a pretty good place to put in your time and effort. While bad bosses, ill-considered decisions, and external forces complicate the work, at the end of the day, we still teach, lead, and support kids as a team. And tensions and disagreements are frequently about what’s best for kids, never about what’s best for shareholders. 

At the end of the day, working in PK-12 education isn’t a bad gig. While compensation varies widely across educator roles and regions, almost all educators in the public sector have access to good health insurance, disability and leave programs, and, in many states, negotiated contracts. For all these reasons, teachers and other educators likely view retirement, early or not, through a different lens. 

FIRE reimagined for educators

I think FIRE has done a lot of good to help adults build financial intelligence and think differently about financial independence. But I also think educators are a different breed of cat. For that reason, I’d like to propose an amended acronym for us.

Financially
Independent
Retire
Eventually

This is my jam. I love working with kids and educators. I find value and joy in the field of education. I am an FIE (Financially Independent Educator). This has allowed me to continue working with schools and educators, but I get to choose when, where and what I work on.

These days, I’m teaching adults who want to become teachers themselves. As adjunct faculty, my pay is meager. (That’s a nice word for it.) I’ve made more money coaching high school tennis or selling women’s shoes.

But because I’m an FIE (Financially Independent Educator),

I DON’T CARE.

I didn’t take the gig because I wanted to get rich. I took the gig because I wanted to teach. And I genuinely look forward to each class and love teaching future teachers.

This can also be your jam — knowing that the days and weeks you spend serving kids and educator colleagues are not because you have to, but because you want to. Speaking from experience, that’s the profound and empowering shift that financial independence makes possible. 

What lights your FIRE?

What would being a FIE (Financially Independent Educator) look like to you?

Starting a school year knowing you could choose to make it your last
Funding an end of year field trip for your class ‘cuz this is the BCE!!! (Best Class Ever)
More regularly buying a round of drinks at TGIF happy hours
Becoming a principal or coach because you want to, not because you have to
Taking a year off for travel
Teaching part time
Doing volunteer work
Finding a side hustle
Pursuing a different career in or outside education
Getting a new certification or degree
Retiring early and enjoying your family

My goal with this blog is simple. I want to help my fellow educators build their financial intelligence and hopefully find their way to financial independence. If/when you do, you too can become a Financially Independent Educator — someone with the freedom to choose your own path inside, alongside, or outside education.

You. Can. Do. This.

Now

1. Make a list of those you know who have retired or chosen to stop working (either in education or not).
2. Think about the circumstances of them leaving their job.
   • Did they leave due to age, illness, or family circumstances?
   • Did they leave by choice?
   • How do they feel about their current situation?

Next

1. While it’s not quite the same as winning the lottery, imagine what you’d do if you became an FIE (Financially Independent Educator).
   • Would you remain doing what you do now or do something different either in education or outside education?
2. If you haven’t already, calculate your net worth to begin assessing your state of financial independence.