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The Daily

How to Retire as Early as Humanly Possible

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4102.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2024

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Many Americans work their entire lives and end up retiring with nothing. But a group of frugal obsessives is challenging that. They call their approach FIRE: “financial independence, retire early.” Amy X. Wang, the assistant managing editor of The New York Times Magazine, looks at the people behind this growing movement and their bid to rethink how long we work.

Transcript

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0:00.0

From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisee, and this is the Daily.

0:07.0

Many Americans work their entire lives and retire with nothing.

0:16.0

But a group of frugal obsessives is trying to flip that script.

0:21.0

Today, my colleague Amy X Wong, on the people behind this growing movement and their

0:27.4

bold bid to rethink how long we work. It's Friday, June 14. So Amy you've been exploring this world of people who retire early.

0:49.4

Tell me about that. How did you first discover this movement?

0:52.3

Well I had always been as a child, like, predder naturally obsessed with money and so I was constantly

0:58.1

looking for coupons and blogs about how to stretch a dollar,

1:02.7

how to invest smartly, things like that.

1:04.9

And as part of that, I would read these news stories

1:08.0

about people who were saving or making money

1:10.5

in a different way.

1:11.8

So I came across maybe one or two stories, 10 or 15 years ago,

1:16.0

about people who were following something called Fire, Financial Independence Retire Early.

1:21.4

Financial Independence Retire Early. Exactly. So what? retire early. Financial independence retire early.

1:24.0

Okay.

1:25.0

So what is that?

1:26.0

It's really about strategizing to leave the workforce at an age of your own choosing.

1:30.7

So say you plan to retire at 45 instead of 65 or there are even people who do it at

1:35.6

35 so it's about freedom from work and having the time to yourself.

1:40.3

Got it so it's less about actually kind of retirement and retirement age and more about

1:45.5

work and freedom from it. Right, right. It's a philosophical movement that's kind of

...

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