J.L. Collins

You know, I started my blog in 2011.

And that's when Mr. Money Mustache Pete started his.

And his rapidly became far more successful than mine, make no mistake.

But

He became aware of my work and he liked it.

And he reached out and asked me to do a guest post.

This would have been about 2012.

And the title of that guest post was, it's never been about retirement.

Because for me, first of all, when I was going through my career, I never heard the term early retirement.

It wasn't even something that I considered.

Sometimes I wonder if I'd been aware of it, would I have made different choices?

I don't think so.

I liked my work.

I just didn't like to have to do it all the time.

So my career was punctuated by sabbaticals between jobs of, you know, I think the shortest was three months, the longest was five years.

And that's what that FU money allowed me to do.

so that was that was my take on it and i've never used the fire acronym personally because i think it's very clever but fi is really what i was all about and what i write about and it's to that last part of of your of your comment there that it it allows you to do whatever you want to do so i i've had conversations with people who show me their numbers

and you know they are clearly financially independent they are actually could be spending more money given the amount of wealth they had and uh they'll say something like well but i don't want to quit my job i like i like my job and the same thing i say the same thing to them that was your last line that you know it doesn't mean you have to quit your job it just means you get to choose whatever you want to do and

The other thing is, and I think this is a really exciting for this new generation.

And my daughter is a case in point.