Irish Financial Independence & Personal Finance Podcast

Wednesday 4th June 2025

Why Reaching FIRE Doesn’t Mean Quitting Work

I always wondered why so many FIRE influencers never actually took the plunge and retired once they hit their FI number. It was a question that eluded me for many years as I pursued my own FIRE journey. I wanted to be different. I wanted to hit the number, and be done - leaving the 9-5 and maybe just moonlighting the odd hour or ten in the evenings.

It wasn’t until we found a way to generate €40,000 a year from our portfolio, and hit a stage where we technically could retire if we wanted to, that I realised why no one really retires early.

For years we have delayed our gratification. We prioritised FIRE over so many other expenses: new cars, holidays, home renovations, concerts. We found reasons to say no to these things, under the premise that we were working towards a bigger goal.

But what happens when you reach that goal, and you can no longer use FIRE as an excuse? As I write this article, Metallica just announced a two day concert in Dublin in June next year. As a fifteen year old boy, living in New Zealand I loved Metallica. I missed their New Zealand concert back in the early 2000’s. It would be a dream to get tickets to both nights. To make it even better, my older son is also now a huge fan, so what an opportunity for us to see them together. (PS: we were lucky enough to get tickets!)

I may have used FIRE as an excuse in the past as a reason not to go. I don’t want to keep doing that.

My wife reminded me during May that we have some renovation work we need to do around the house that we have been putting on the long finger.

“But I want to go part time”, was my response to her.

And here lies the challenge of FIRE. Unless you try to bake every possible expense into your FIRE number (which will likely add years to your grinding stage), you have likely calculated your FIRE number based on some average cost metric. In our case, I factored €40,000 per year, which we defined as covering our basic living costs, but still giving us enough freedom to live a comfortable life - a simple annual holiday, family day outs and enough personal and discrepancy spending to feel content. I hadn’t factored in the trip to New Zealand back then, as we didn’t decide to take the trip until early this year. Now, factoring in potentially another €40,000 worth of renovation work we need to do over the next few years, things get a bit more complex.

When reading a lot of the MMM blog posts, he talks about hitting your FI number and walking away from your main 9-5. For the most part, I love my job - but I do want to start reducing my hours sooner rather than later.

I always thought FIRE would solve all of our money problems, but the reality is, there is always scope of expanding one's expenses. After years of grinding and living frugally, we want to now enjoy life a little bit more, start to cut the slack a little and give ourselves the freedom to spend on what makes us happy.

We hadn’t factored that while it is great to be technically FI on €40,000 per year, €40,000 doesn’t allow us to live with full financial freedom. It covers the life we lived when we were grinding, where we were deliberately frugal as we worked our way to FIRE - but we want more from our life in parts now - we want to go to the Metallica concert or take the odd overseas holiday.

It could be easy to say that the solution is to grind for another year or two. This was the advice my friend gave me last year, to continue to work until the portfolio hit around €2.2 million. However, I think there is a better option.

I think Barista and Coast FIRE are hugely underestimated in the FIRE community, and likely not talked about enough. The reality is, most FIRE influencers do exactly as we have done. They hit a FI number which might be slightly above their Lean FI number, declare themselves financially independent and then either adopt Barista of Coast FIRE, or a combination of the two.

This is exactly what Tina from Money Flamingo has talked about for years - the ability to understand that you won’t really stop working once you reach your FI number.

But here is my key point - I think this is the right way to do FIRE. I think defining a FI number a little bit more than a Lean FIRE number, and aiming for that is a good idea. For us, seven years of grinding was about the perfect length of time. Now, we are subtracting the bad from our lives, and replacing it with the good and we will continue to do this overtime.

I am currently negotiating with my main work contract to move to a four day work week next year. I am planning to take Monday’s off, giving me 50% more weekend each and every week! All going well, the following year I will then push for a three day week, and the slow downgrade to semi-retirement, and eventually full retirement is taking place, one step at a time.

Equally, we are still planning to take withdrawals from our portfolio from August. I am planning to withdraw €2,500 per month - effectively, withdrawing the rental income that comes in from our four investment properties. The best part about this strategy, is while we have some portfolio income to live off, it still allows the portfolio to grow in the background. Better still, the mortgages are being paid down at the same time, allowing the portfolio to continue to build overtime, while moving closer to the day when the mortgages on the three remaining mortgaged properties are paid off.

Meanwhile, we get to live our best lives. I got to experience this first hand during May. My parents are currently in London for two months. They are due to come and stay with us for a few days in June, but we felt like we wanted to see them a bit more before they left. I checked the school calendar, and realised the last day of school for our kids was the 24th June, so I jumped onto RyanAir, and sure enough I could get the whole family return to London for a couple of nights for €370 flying from Shannon. “OK if we all just bring a backpack”, I said to my wife, as I avoided the €100 return suitcase cost!!

It wasn’t until the next morning, I woke up, and thought - opps, what about work! I had completely forgotten to check if work was OK with me taking some time off, and hadn’t even considered it when booking the trip. In my head, the kids were good to go, so I was too.

As it was, work was completely understanding and there wasn’t an issue, but the mindset shift was still telling. In the past, I would have factored in the cost of two missed days of work into the equation and checked with my team leader before taking any time off.

FIRE grants us the permission to live an easier, better life. It allows money to be more of an afterthought, and ensures we can relax a little more when it comes to money decisions. But I don’t think early retirement is really what FIRE is about, in fact, now that we are technically at a point where we could retire, I am learning more and more that the early retirement aspect is nothing more than a myth.

However, this isn’t to say that FIRE isn’t worth pursuing - it 100% is. But pursue it for the other reasons I have described above, rather than early retirement. Here are my main realisations for what FIRE gives you:

• The ability to be able to buy yourself out of a problem.
• The ability for money to be an afterthought, where you can make a decision not just about the price, but other considerations first.
• The ability to know you can walk away from a toxic workplace at any stage.
• The ability to work less overtime.
• The ability to define work on your own terms and negotiate better working conditions.
• The freedom to work because you want to, not because you have to.
• The freedom to work on things you are passionate about, not just for the pay cheque.
• The ability to take the trip you always wanted to take, or spend on things just because you want to (especially when you still bring in additional income).

No doubt I have missed a lot of other benefits, but I guess I want to push the idea that FIRE is about a lot more than early retirement - or to put it another way, that FIRE really isn’t about early retirement at all.

This isn’t to say we won’t retire early - we will likely still retire well before the traditional retirement age, however, it really is a case where financial independence comes first, and this gives the freedom to start the slow transition to retirement from there - rather than it being something that follows straight after.

The Raffle that saved the day

In late April I was asked to help manage a hockey tournament. As part of managing the event, I was required to keep a tournament budget, which was passed onto me by one of the team managers. It wasn’t until five days before the tournament was meant to start, we realised we hadn't budgeted for an ambulance, which is required as it was an international tournament.

We readjusted the budget, and cut back on a few extras we were hoping to have, but in the end, we were around €750 short. Not to worry, I thought. This is a problem that I am able to simply buy us out of! I suggested that I just pay it - after all, FIRE allows us to just buy ourselves out of a problem!

The team manager however had other ideas. On Saturday night, we had arranged a dinner for around 270 players and supporters. Just as the main meal was coming to an end, he came up to our table and said “anyone want to buy a raffle ticket?”. He turned to me and whispered “it’s going to the ambulance fund”. He had pulled in with his players to get prizes, including two tickets to a show in London, and all sorts of great prizes. In the end, the budget deficit was solved, all by this manager using his innovation to solve a problem.

It made me think that my first instinct had just been to buy my way out of the problem. In some ways, FIRE makes us less innovative. It stops us solving problems, because it can be that much easier just to throw money at it.

I reflected on this a little, and realised that just because we can buy ourselves out of a problem, the solution to any problem shouldn’t just be to throw money at it, and thinking of ways to solve it without just buying our way out of the issue should always be the first priority. We can always throw some money at it as a worse case scenario.

Our Spending Revealed

As mentioned two months ago, we stopped budgeting in April, and instead just tracked our expenses into various categories. It was an interesting experiment and highlighted some interesting things about our spending. Here is a quick summary:

Our spending was better in May as we didn’t go on holiday! It was great to have a somewhat more normal month to track our spending.

Our basic spending was consistent with last month. We spent €2,950 to cover our basic spending in May, which covers: our bills, mortgage, transport, food and child related costs. There was one extra day in the month in May compared to April, so this likely accounts for the extra €50.

Our discretionary spending was also low - although I did take my wife to Galway for the night - we celebrated 15 years to the day that we met, and stayed in a fancy hotel to celebrate with a nice meal! We also bought flights to London and Metallica tickets - which we definitely wouldn’t have purchased if I wasn’t bringing in additional income! The power of the Semi-Retirement phase!

When removing the cost of the flight and Metallica tickets from our spending, we actually spent less in May than what our FI portfolio + State fixed income (children’s allowance) would have provided. This shows that if we wanted to retire today and live on our fixed portfolio income, we could - we just wouldn’t get to make last minute overseas trips or enjoy expensive concerts! This again highlights the difference between FI in theory and in practice. I will stick with the impromptu trips!

May 2025 Portfolio Update

And we are back! Equities were back up in May, and while we aren’t in the black just yet for the year, it certainly appears to be heading in the right direction.

All was well on the property front, with no major issues. I mentioned last month a shower in one of our rental properties was having issues - it turns out, the tenant was using it on eco mode, which was causing the shower pressure to be too low - it was a relief to have that problem solved!

All is heading in the right direction with the portfolio. Next month we will be revaluing our investment properties, which should move us closer to the €750,000 mark. Our cash cushion continues to increase also, we are in a good position to start making withdrawals from August.

Here are the overall portfolio numbers:

Monthly Portfolio Growth Report

Portfolio Breakdown

The table below shows the breakdown of my portfolio into the various asset classes:

2025 Year to Date Returns

Here is a summary of my year to date returns for 2025.

2025 Year to Date Growth Report
Opening Balance	€705,026.37
New Contributions	€0.00
Equities Capital Gains + Dividends	€-10,162.90
Real Estate Capital Gains + Rental Income	€17,550.65
Interest on Cash Savings	€228.06
Closing Balance	€712,642.18
Portfolio Return	€7,615.81
% Return	1.08%

Lifetime Portfolio Returns

Here are my returns since I started in 2018.

* In 2020, some of the new contributions came in the form of an equity release, as we turned our primary residence into a buy to let and purchased a new home to live.

** In 2018 & 2019 I made several bad investments in peer to peer lending, forex trading and unregulated investments, which resulted in losses overall.

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