The Seven Year FIRE Itch
The other day, I wrote how Todd Tresidder (Financial Mentor) says there are three purposes of money:
To express your values.
To live your dreams.
To reduce negative stress.
I like this framework a lot.
It would be hard to add another purpose that these three do not already cover.
Perhaps two additional ones would be:
To create the conditions for freedom—both time freedom and psychological freedom.
To recreate yourself—to transform your identity.
You can probably collapse those into the first three that Todd proposes.
However, I think they are important subsets to highlight, at the very least.
You do not necessarily need to spend your money to do these two things, but achieving financial freedom from a paycheck certainly allows them to happen.
Dave Ramsey has also written about three purposes of money (or wealth):
To live.
To give.
To have fun. (Right?)
Two of Ramsey’s three clearly reflect two of his own values and dreams: giving and having adventures.
Well, guess what?
I realized today that I have essentially been FIRE for almost seven full years.
I basically stopped going into an office and drawing a paycheck in July 2019, although I continued to receive benefits and other forms of compensation for the remainder of that year.
Where did the time go?
2019 — Debauchery…and it was fun. Lots of little trips, and I completed my PhD research with participants. A best friend died.
2020 — Began searching for a second “home,” then the pandemic hit. Got into some of the best shape of my life. Another best friend died.
2021 — Pandemic. Continued work on my PhD. Started taking two- to three-month road trips to visit family and friends.
2022 — Continued searching for a second home. Finished my PhD. Launched The Leavers website. More—and longer—road trips.
2023 — More trips. Got out of a disastrous second-home contract. Tightened the spending belt after a disastrous 2022 for my portfolio.
2024 — Yep, more of the same. Wrote 80 new songs. More cool trips and road trips. Decided to test renting an apartment instead of buying a second home. Another best friend died.
2025 — Continued the apartment test. More road trips. Hernia surgery. Released our first album, Hot Burning Trash. Cleared my backlog of nearly 1,300 songs, selecting the best 60+ to focus on going forward.
2026 — Continued the apartment test and renewed the lease. Recovered from surgery by getting back into shape. More road-tripping.
I am sure there is more I could list for each year, but those are some of the bigger events.
But here’s the heart of today’s article.
How did my spending align with Todd’s three purposes of money during those seven years?
My overall average withdrawal rate came in at about 4.8% of my average liquid net worth.
Of that 4.8%, about 0.8% went directly to paying federal taxes.
That first year—2020—after leaving work was a doozy. You need to prepare for this yourself when you finally cut the cord and go live your own version of the Highway to Yeah.
Where did the remaining 4% go?
I spent about 1.7% on my values.
And that is only two values—not all of them.
Helping my kids and giving gifts.
Where did the remaining 2.3% go?
I spent about 0.7% on my dreams.
Vacations. Music (equipment, lessons, supplies, albums, concerts). Highway to Yeah “enterprises” (The Leavers, this blog, etc.). The apartment experiment. Finishing my PhD. And the scooter I never ride.
The remaining 1.6% is my “nut”—what Dave Ramsey would call spending to live, or what Todd would call spending to reduce negative stress.
Things like housing, insurance, car repairs, home maintenance, healthcare, and simply being free from needing a paycheck.
So why do I call this the seven-year FIRE itch?
Because as wonderful as these seven years have been, I am nowhere near where I imagined I would be by now.
It is a little anticlimactic.
Somewhat disappointing.
When I pause and really reflect, I realize how little I have actually done that I dreamed about before achieving FIRE.
Oh, it has been a great seven years, for sure.
But…
Really?
I am still considering doing something truly outrageous.
Exactly what that might be, I don’t know.
This year?
I doubt it.
But my goodness…
When I stop for a moment, I can feel the call to adventure welling up inside.
However, I keep coming back to the last three articles.
What would Aragorn do?
Since starting these daily blog posts, I have gained a great deal of clarity about what really matters.
I think this year—the past four months and the eight-plus months still ahead—is probably going to be about building twelve sustainable core habits that bring my radical lifestyle design into sharper focus and closer to reality.
But I really don’t know.
We will see.
More to come on this topic of the purposes of money.
For now, I simply wanted to set the stage for why I think it matters—not just for me, but perhaps for you, too.