FIRE F.A.Q.

Hi RIPpers,

I’ve recently been discussing with quite a few people about FI, ER, investments and other Personal Finance related topics.

Most of them are personal finance newbies with some strong math background and personal taste for numbers.

The question I get asked more is: “can you explain me quickly and deeply how to invest my money?”

I wrote an investment series to better answer this kind of questions. But when the question comes from real people, in real life, Instead of providing a quick and dirty answer to the question I try to book time with them and talk about the bigger picture. I ask questions like “what are you investing for?“, “what are your financial goals?” and as the discussion goes on it’s very likely that topics like Financial Independence and Early Retirement show up.

At that point I usually get asked: “can you explain me quickly and deeply how this whole FIRE thing works?”

Ouch, it’s not easy to answer this question “quickly and deeply”. I can be very quick, I can even use a single sentence but that won’t be much deep. Or I can go deep in several directions about the philosophy, earning, spending, debts, investing, consuming, time economy, passions, purpose, etc… but that won’t be very quick.

So, to improve myself as a “financial friend” [GIGADISCLAIMER: I’m not a financial advisor bla bla bla] I put up an overview of the whole thing in the form of a F.A.Q. document, where I touched almost everything I think it could inspire you to dig up further, providing a lot of links for the lazy folks.

Since it’s basic material that should not get lost in the flow, I think it’s best positioned as a page instead of a blog post. Say welcome to the new Start Here page! See you there 🙂

… surprised by a short post? Did you check out the page? 😀

“You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.”
― Galileo Galilei

9 comments

  1. Really great work! That’s an awesome piece of content, really well done. This is really invaluable content for every body. I would just add a table of contents to the page, it’s a bit hard to navigate inside 😉

  2. I like how you use the term “financial friend” and I think I may use that myself. Good for you for listening to what people want and delivering + offering more than just a one sentence explanation.

    1. Thanks Steve! I actually like finances and investments more than required by “The simple path to wealth”, maybe just because I’m a nerd? So I see myself as becoming more and more “expert” about finances and able to help. I may decide to become an official financial advisor in retirement (who knows), but for now I like the term Financial Friend 🙂

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