Folks need heroes – but you shouldn’t follow them

I wrote a similarly titled post a while back about people getting inspired to follow the FIRE path by finding a blogger who they can relate to.  It’s great to know that there are other people out there at a similar stage in their life to your own and you have someone that you feel a connection with. 

I think it’s fantastic that the Aussie FIRE blogging scene has so many people in different situations that even if there isn’t someone for everyone just yet, there is at least someone for most people and often several someones.  I think it’s important to keep in mind though that even if your favourite blogger is in a seemingly similar situation, that’s not the same as it being exactly your situation. 

Often I see comments in Facebook groups or on Reddit or other bloggers posts where the comment is very clearly taking what some blogger has said as being the only possible viewpoint on a subject.  So this post is about why you shouldn’t be following any of us bloggers blindly and should be adapting everything to your own situation.

We’re not you

For the most part FIRE bloggers (including myself) tend to talk primarily about their own situation, this is pretty much what you would expect given that a lot of blogs are mostly about the bloggers personal journey to achieving FIRE rather than advice for other people. 

Some of us do try to talk about other scenarios, but the reality is that it’s pretty difficult to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.  I don’t know what it’s like to be a single parent, to have a spouse in paid employment who can’t look after the kids, to not have our level of income, to have a mortgage, to have a partner who is not onboard with FIRE, or any of a number of other scenarios.  Obviously I can try and imagine some of them, but it’s not the same as living them.

I do have some experience with other situation like being young and single, being part of a DINK couple, renting, living in expensive cities and a bunch of other stuff, but most of that was at least 5 years ago and often a lot more. So my memory of what it was like isn’t exactly great, and I almost certainly remember the fun stuff a lot more than the boring or stressful stuff.

So when I write about situations that aren’t how I’m living now, it’s generally not going to be 100% accurate and likely will have some major differences compared to how things actually are for someone who is living that life currently.  Likewise when other bloggers write about other scenarios, in particular the stuff they’ve never actually experienced, there’s a good chance that at least some of it is going to be different from the actual situation.

Why does it matter?

Ok so fair enough, we’re not you.  But what difference does it make, surely it’s all near enough right?  Well actually it can make a huge difference. 

I’ve seen people saying that blogger X doesn’t have personal insurance so therefore I don’t need personal insurance.  And if you’re in exactly the same position as blogger X then that’s probably true.  But if blogger X is a 50yo with no kids who owns their own home and has a 7 digit portfolio, and you’re a 30yo with 3 kids and a mortgage and pretty much no portfolio because you’re spending most of what comes in, well then you need to have personal insurance to protect yourself and your family financially. 

Likewise if blogger Y has no emergency fund because they’re living at home, work in a secure job, don’t have a car, and have a big portfolio they can tap as well if they need to plus a partner who is working, then that might be appropriate for them.  But if you have your own home as well as a bunch of investment properties, do contract work that is very on and off, and have a car that is getting to the stage where it is likely to need major repairs, you need an emergency fund.

This applies to pretty much all aspects of what we talk about with FIRE.  I wrote a while back about why I don’t automate my finances, basically it boils down to being able to get a discount by being able to make an annual payment rather than monthly, and being disciplined enough that I’ll still save and invest money. 

But there are lots of people out there who need a system that will do it automatically for them rather than having to manually make investments, and so they’re best off making the monthly payments instead and in the same way making monthly investments.  This might also mean that instead of investing via ETFs they’re better off having a managed fund which will automatically take money out of their account each month. 

Most of us bloggers have a fairly simple holding structure where we hold investments in either our own name, a partners name, or in joint names.  Which works fine for us, but if you work in a profession where you’re a good chance of being sued and having someone come after your personal assets, not so much.  Similarly if you’ve got a more complex family structure like a second or third marriage, or for whatever reason you don’t share finances, then it may make sense to hold your investments through different structures.

There’s lots of other examples like this.  It makes a lot of sense for me to salary sacrifice into super given I’m a fair bit closer to being able to access it than a lot of FIRE bloggers, but if you’re 25 and want to retire as soon as possible then you probably don’t want to be putting extra money into super.

In my house it would be fine to use the physical envelope system for budgeting.  We don’t do it, but it would be fine. If you live in a share house with a bunch of other people who have dubious morals and might “borrow” your money, that might not work out so well unfortunately. 

It’s probably fine for a 30yo to have their investments mostly or even all in shares.  If you’re 60, maybe less so, particularly depending on how much money you actually have. 

Basically almost every aspect of what random bloggers on the internet write about how they do things is specific to them and their situation, it isn’t something which is appropriate for everyone.  And even if it were, almost all of us have changed some of what we’re doing over time when we find better ways of doing things with no guarantee we won’t change again in the future.

To be fair on a lot of the articles I read there is some sort of statement about how what’s being talked about is specific to the blogger or may not be for everyone, but it’s certainly not on every article and to be frank unfortunately no matter what you write someone is still likely to do it regardless of whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea for them.

You need to do what works for you

There’s certainly plenty of good articles out there talking about the various aspects of FIRE, and it’s great to have read of them to see some of the potential options.  But it’s also important to keep in mind that just because it works for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you. 

You need to come up with your own plan for how you want to get there.  Maybe sometimes you can just do exactly the same as someone else.  Sometimes you may be able to use different ideas from different people.  Or it could be that you need to come up with something brand new.  The important thing though is to come up with a plan that works for you rather than just copying what someone else is doing!

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