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 Praise for Playing with FIRE
“In Playing with FIRE, Scott Rieckens shares the essence of the
FIRE movement. And he does it with deeply personal, honest,
and captivating stories that keep the pages turning. If you’re at
all interested in financial independence, retiring early, or just
putting happiness ahead of money, you will enjoy this book.”
— Chad Carson, creator of the blog Coach Carson
and author of Retire Early with Real Estate

“Scott Rieckens has done a phenomenal job of embracing the

FIRE movement and making the hard choices necessary to rad-
ically alter his family’s financial future. His book should be an
inspiration to anyone starting in a similar life position. If you feel
stuck or feel that you are not able to flex your creative talents and
live a life where you are in control, then Playing with FIRE might
be just the book you need.”
— Scott Trench, author of Set for Life
and host of the BiggerPockets Money podcast

“This is a fascinating, relatable, and heartfelt story about a cou-

ple’s transition from ultra-consumers to people who discovered
that time is more valuable than belongings. It weaves together
their personal journey with actionable information, and features
examples of dozens of others who are leaving the rat race in
search of meaning. You won’t be able to put this book down.”
— Paula Pant, founder of affordanything.com

“A truly inspirational story that proves saving is not a sacrifice.

It’s a path to a life you love.”
— Grant Sabatier, author of Financial Freedom
and creator of millennialmoney.com

“With the enthusiasm of a convert and a filmmaker’s feel for story-

telling, Scott recounts his own and others’ journeys in pursuit of
FIRE so that readers can try it on for themselves to see if it fits.
 You’ll love meeting the bloggers and writers who’ve stoked the
‘fire’ and the ordinary people who’ve been transformed by it.”
— Vicki Robin, coauthor of Your Money or Your Life
and author of Blessing the Hands That Feed Us

“The path to FIRE is not linear, and this book perfectly captures
the ups and downs many people face along the way. It’s rare,
however, to get such an intimate view into a family’s journey
from the very beginning. This book gives you that and is a fan-
tastic behind-the-scenes look at the upcoming documentary. It
contains interesting backstory, endearing personal moments, and
actionable advice to help you achieve your own financial goals
sooner.”
— Brandon Ganch, Mad Fientist

“What if you could change your life 180 degrees, break free of
the paycheck-to-paycheck grind, and pursue financial indepen-
dence? Scott and Taylor Rieckens chronicle their incredible
turnaround in Playing with FIRE, and their brilliantly simple
advice is applicable to anyone: Spend less than you earn, invest
the difference, and create the space in your life to pursue true
happiness and lifelong relationships.”
— Brad Barrett and Jonathan Mendonsa,
cohosts of the ChooseFI podcast

“To the uninitiated, pursuing financial independence seems ex-

otic, impossible, and/or daunting. But in fact, it is simple and
has roots deep in the American psyche. If you wonder what this
path is like in real life and in real time, Scott and Taylor will take
you along on their journey: not yet finished, a work in progress,
and a very engaging tale.”
— JL Collins, author of The Simple Path to Wealth
PLAYING WITH

E
F
R
I
PLAYING WITH

New World Library

E

Novato, California
F
R
I
HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO
FOR FINANCIAL FREEDOM? SCOTt RIECKENS
 New World Library
14 Pamaron Way
Novato, California 94949

Copyright © 2019 by Scott Rieckens

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic,
mechanical, or other — without written permission from the publisher, except by a
reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Certain names have been changed to protect privacy.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers and Rodrigo Calderon

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rieckens, Scott, date, author.
Title: Playing with fire (financial independence retire early) : how far would you
go for financial freedom? / Scott Rieckens.
Description: Novato, California : New World Library, [2019] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018047667 (print) | LCCN 2018049920 (ebook) | ISBN
9781608685813 (e-book) | ISBN 9781608685806 (print : alk. paper) | ISBN
9781608685813 (Ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Early retirement. | Thriftiness. | Finance, Personal.
Classification: LCC HD7110 (ebook) | LCC HD7110 .R54 2019 (print) | DDC
332.024/014--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018047667

First printing, January 2019

ISBN 978-1-60868-580-6
Ebook ISBN 978-1-60868-581-3

Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

New World Library is proud to be a Gold Certified Environmentally

Responsible Publisher. Publisher certification awarded by Green Press
Initiative. www.greenpressinitiative.org

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
contents

Foreword by Mr. Money Mustache ix

Introduction to FIRE 1

Chapter 1: Work, Eat, Sleep, Repeat 11

Chapter 2: The Million-Dollar Idea 23
Chapter 3: Ten Things That Make You Happy 33
FIRE Story: Jillian ■ Kalispell, MT
How Our Family of Seven Reached FI
with an Average Income of $60,000 45
Chapter 4: I Spend How Much on Coffee?! 49
Chapter 5: BMWs and Boat Clubs 59
FIRE Story: Todd ■ New York, NY
Pursuing FIRE in the Big City 69
Chapter 6: Goodbye, Coronado 73
Chapter 7: The Journey Begins 89
FIRE Story: Kalen & Kyle ■ Evans, CO
Is FIRE the Cure for a Certain Brand
of Millennial Depression? 101
vii
Chapter 8: What the Heck Is an Index Fund? 105
Chapter 9: Getting Schooled in FIRE 123
FIRE Story: Sylvia ■ Seattle, WA
How Hurricane Katrina Made Me Pursue
Financial Independence 132
Chapter 10: Family and Frugality 135
Chapter 11: Dream House or Dream Life? 155
FIRE Story: Hannah ■ Denver, CO
How a Fire Pushed Our Family to Reevaluate It All 164
Chapter 12: Finding Our FIRE Friends 167
Chapter 13: The FIRE Is Spreading 177

The Seven Steps to FIRE 187

Acknowledgments 191
Endnotes 195
Index 201
About the Author 209
foreword

ix
 Modern life is more prosperous and fancy than it has ever been.
The cars are faster, TVs are bigger, and food is cheaper (in
proportion to the average income) than it has been for most
of world history. So why does it seem so difficult to make ends
meet?
The reason is that there’s a huge, well-engineered, bril-
liantly marketed trap sitting between us and our real goal of
living the happy and fulfilling lives we want, and it ensnares us
into the busy, expensive, stressed, confusing existence almost
all of us are leading these days. The trap is sometimes called
“consumerism,” but it is so universal and well disguised that
most people just refer to it as “reality.”
So in rich countries like the United States, almost all of us
live our lives from within the jaws of this trap. We trade most
of our free time for money by working the highest-paying job
we can find, but then we trade most of this money for the most
expensive stuff we can possibly afford, in most cases even bor-
rowing or leasing this stuff so we can claw our way even higher
PLAYING WITH FIRE

up the luxury scale whenever we get the chance.

In the likely event of a money shortage, we assume we just
need to go out and earn even more of it. And when this causes
an even worse shortage of time, we just strap in tighter and re-
ward ourselves with a few of the finer things in life — because
if we’re going to work this hard, we should at least get to see
some of the rewards.
Stop it. It’s a trap — all of it!
But how can you stop, when the entire world around you is
x
caught in the same trap and may even question or criticize you
if you choose not to do the same thing as they are doing? What
if your spouse refuses to give up his comfortable, roomy SUV
or her well-curated wardrobe of professional clothing, even if
it means spending most of your lifetime in debt?
The trap has been laid out for us with over a century of
clever marketing, but its biggest strength is our built-in human
weakness: our tendency to compare ourselves to those around
us and assume that whatever we see in our peers is normal and
worth emulating.
And it is absolutely not worth emulating. In fact, it’s a
proven recipe for failure, which is why the average forty-year-
old American has only a few thousand dollars to their name,
after almost twenty years of work. Obtaining money and free-
dom is just like any other skill in life: in order to be more suc-
cessful than your peers, you need to do things differently than
they do.
I happened to be born frugal — with a desire to get the
most fun out of my own money while having no natural instinct
to follow what other people were doing with theirs. And I also
happened to go through my early financial life with a partner
who felt the same way. So there was not much resistance on our
short career path to retiring around age thirty.
But most people face a much more difficult journey. They
may have started life with higher spending and debt, and grown
into a life with a more vibrant culture of spending all around
them. And they may have married someone who was on that
same program. Once you get locked into a lifestyle like this, it
FOREWORD

can be very tricky to climb back out of it.

That’s why this book about Scott and Taylor’s story is so
meaningful to me. They have been able to share their journey
across a gigantic chasm of life perspective. They ran into hard-
ships that I think a lot of people will relate to, and even more
amazingly, they overcame each of these hardships, kept going,
xi
 and found ways to renegotiate their differences while keeping
their marriage strong and their friendships intact.
They have come out the other side of it all with a decades-
shorter jail sentence of mandatory work, even as their energy
for working on projects that make a difference is higher than
ever. To put it frankly, I never would have imagined this could
happen for a family like the one Scott describes at the beginning
of the story.
But having seen their success, I now have even higher
hopes that more people can reap the benefits of more financially
independent lives everywhere. And I think you will feel that
same hope creep into your own outlook on life as you read it.
— Pete Adeney a.k.a. Mr. Money Mustache
PLAYING WITH FIRE

xii
introduction
to fire

1
 The quest for a happy and meaningful life is not new. Socrates
tells us that the secret to happiness is found not in seeking more
but in developing the capacity to be happy with less. Confucius
states that the more a person “meditates upon good thoughts,”
the happier he or she will be. Aristotle says that “happiness de-
pends upon ourselves,” not on the kind of watch we wear or
the number of countries we’ve visited. Even modern research
shows that, to quote one study, “close relationships, more than
money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their
lives.” None of this is news, I’m sure. If I said, “Having a nice
house won’t make you happy,” you would most likely nod and
agree without hesitation. And yet many of us remain stuck in
a cycle of overworking and overspending, reaching for instant
gratification instead of seeking deeper and more durable satis-
faction. I have been guilty of this, too: My wife, Taylor, and I
sacrificed peace of mind, time together, time with our child, and
meaningful relationships in order to work harder and harder
so we could pay for more and more. We knew better than to
PLAYING WITH FIRE

think fancy cars and nice dinners would equal happiness, but
that sure didn’t stop us from trying.
Then, at age thirty-three, I was introduced to a fascinat-
ing phenomenon known as FIRE, which stands for “financial
independence retire early.” FIRE is a growing community of
people of all types and income levels committed to lives of ag-
gressive savings and low-cost investments in order to take con-
trol of their finances and buy back their most precious resource,
time. The end goal is to achieve “FIRE,” the state of having
2
enough passive income that you don’t need to work to pay your
living expenses. Many people who reach FIRE keep working
out of their passion for their fields, but plenty of others quit to
travel the world, start nonprofits, pursue creative projects, or
just live simply. In fact, despite the term “retire early” in the
movement’s name, I’ve found the people in the FIRE commu-
nity often reject the word retire and its implications; financial
independence is about having the freedom and flexibility to
pursue your true calling, whether or not it makes any money.
FIRE isn’t about drinking cocktails on a beach for the rest of
your life. It’s about spending your precious years on earth
doing something other than sitting behind a desk, counting the
minutes to 5 pm, wishing you were somewhere else.
In the process of writing this book, I came to see FIRE
as the antidote to the “daily grind” of employment. Maybe
you love your job. Maybe you don’t — in which case, you’re
not alone: Half of Americans aren’t satisfied at their jobs. Re-
gardless of how you feel about your job, you probably feel that
you have no choice but to keep working (I know that’s how I
felt). On the other hand, if you were financially independent,
you could quit at any time. Even if your job is fulfilling, you
probably wouldn’t mind the freedom to move on if and when
you wanted to. If you depend on your paycheck, you are likely
compromising on some aspect of your life, and quitting your
job would mean facing financial uncertainty. But what if you
INTRODUCTION TO FIRE

didn’t depend on a paycheck? What would you choose to do

then? FIRE, ultimately, offers that freedom.
Sounds pretty good, right? So how do you achieve this
carefree life? Well, you spend less, save more, and invest the
difference. The general path to FIRE is to save 50 to 70 per-
cent of your income, invest those savings in low-fee stock index
funds, and retire in roughly ten years. Of course, the actual
numbers differ for everyone, but I’ve provided the key equa-
tions and FIRE formulas throughout the book, and you can
3
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