Fire. Yeah. Dig into fire for me, too. You have to lay the groundwork here, and then we can really dig in. Okay. Perfect. Perfect. So there

is a movement online called the fire movement. And so fire stands for financial independence retire early. And I have my own different acronym for fire. And my acronym, my personal acronym for it is financial psychology investing real estate entrepreneurship. So let's talk about both of those. Yes. So first, the general online acronym of fire, financial independence retire early. Financial independence is the point at which you no longer have to trade time for money. So it's the point at which you have enough residual income typically through investments that you have enough. Right. So if you think about Taylor Swift, if she decided to stop working today, she could easily live for the rest of her life. Right. She doesn't have to go on the era's tour or put out a new album for the sake of putting groceries on the table. Right. She's fine for the rest of her life, right? Warren Buffett, same thing, fine for the rest of his life. So a lot of these people who we typically think of as quote unquote wealthy in a traditional sense are financially independent. They're not working because they have to. They're working because they want to. Right. And so financial independence is anyone who has enough money to do that, right? On a smaller scale, it's the person who works as a registered nurse, but saves 30% of her income and invests it in index funds and does that for 15 years. And eventually the money that she has built up in her portfolio is enough that it's pretty much going to match what she was spending as a registered nurse. And so she's like, cool, I've got enough. That's financial independence. Now the other side of the fire acronym, retire early, I don't actually like those two being like conflated into one thing. So a lot of people are drawn to the fire movement because they're like, Oh, once I have enough, I can retire. So like that registered nurse who doesn't maybe doesn't like her job is like, once I have enough money that it's matching what I make in my day to day life, I can then retire. But the problem is, when we conflate those ideas together, we end up with a bunch of problems. First of all, retirement is one of many options. You could choose to retire. You could choose to change careers. You could choose to do I mean, you could choose to do anything. Yeah, right. Why would you make one of the many possible choices? Why would you confuse that with the idea of having that freedom in the first place?

Yeah, it does kind of take away the freedom. It's like, what if you want to go and, you know, maybe get a job that is, it's like doesn't pay a lot, but you enjoy it. Exactly. That's not retiring technically. Exactly. So it's like this idea that now you need to move to the Florida Keys, like the second, it's like, yeah, exactly. I so what about

yours? All right. So my fire acronym is financial psychology, investing, real estate, and entrepreneurship. And if you can master all of those, then you've got the building blocks of good overall financial wellness. So financial psychology is the first piece. It's the foundational piece. And it's, I would argue the most important piece, because money is not tactical. It's behavioral. And to get to the root of why we behave the way we do with money, we need to understand our own inner psychology. So I mentioned earlier, people tend to fall into one of three categories. They're either anxious, they're avoidant, or they're obsessed. So if you're obsessed with money, you know, we see these people who like they blow it to show it, right? And they're all flash no cash, and they really conflate their self worth with their net worth. Money avoidant tend to be people who have really internalized the notion that like, rich people are greedy, or money corrupts, or the idea I'd rather be happy than rich, like as though they're mutually exclusive, as though you can't be both at the same time. Totally. Right. So they've really internalized these ideas, and they've internalized this notion, like, look, if rich people are evil, well, I don't want to be evil. So I'm just never going to be rich. Right. And by doing so, you sabotage your own success, even at a subconscious level, you hold yourself back, because why would you ever want to be rich or successful or powerful if you deep down believe that rich, successful, powerful people are evil or bad or greedy? Yeah. So like, people who have really internalized that, those scripts tend to be money avoidant. And then you've got then people who are money anxious. And that can either be because you don't have enough. And so you're anxious about, you know, like, as I described myself when I was younger, or it could be because you have a lot. And so now you're worried that you're going to lose it, you're worried it's going to get stolen, you're worried that people are going to use you for it. So like, either way, regardless of whether it's due to scarcity or due to abundance, you are living in the state of hypervigilance.

So then what is the happy state? You know, like, what is the healthy sakes when you're just describing this? I actually think I'm avoidant weirdly. Yeah. Like, I'm always like, yeah, it's weird. It's I've always been sort of avoidant about it. Or no, actually, it's not true. I was anxious as a kid. And then I think now I'm avoidant. Right. Like, I just don't want to see it. I want to believe it's weird. I

wonder if that's because and I don't mean to like play armchair psychologist. No, I love this. But I wonder if that's because, you know, when you were a kid, you didn't have a whole lot. And now you have significantly more, you know, you have probably more than you ever, the 12 year old version of yourself would not have imagined where you are today. Yeah. And so I'm guessing there's probably some imposter syndrome. For sure. Right. There's probably some sense of, wait, do I even deserve this? Because yes, and how did this happen? And there there are all these other people who you see working so much harder for so much less. Yes. Right. And so and so all of that then ends up turning into avoidance because deep down, you don't feel like you really deserve it in

the first place. That's absolutely spot on. Yeah. So what is the like happy like, what's the happy medium? Because I mean, or is it always is the relationship with money? Always one of those three that's a little bit faulty. I mean, what is the is there even a name for for a balanced relationship with money? Right. Like a healthy relationship. I

would say it's a lifelong practice. Like, you know, in the way that a relationship between a couple, you're never done like with your spouse, your partner, your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, like, you're never like, okay, our relationship is healthy forever. Yeah. That's it. That's not a thing, you know, because you the two of you are dynamic and the two of you are always changing. And so you constantly have to be working on your relationship. And the way that you do that oftentimes is just by observing what's coming up within you and then asking yourself, wait a minute, let's unpack that. Like, what's behind that? And so I think the relationship with money, a relationship that a person has with money is similar to that in that you're never done having a healthy relationship with money, because your relationship with money is very much a reflection. It's a projection of all of the gunk and the noise that is inside of you. Yeah. Right. Getting projected onto money. Yeah. It's like your relationship with yourself. Yeah. If you've got a really healthy relationship with yourself, that's gonna that's likely going to translate into a very, very healthy relationship with money. But if there are parts of yourself that are suffering from trauma or from damage or from, just feelings of brokenness or insecurity or inadequacy, that's going to translate into your relationship with money. So what

about investing? Yeah. The eye. The eye of your fire. Okay. So I,

so we'll kind of take this to get the ire. Yes. The ire of fire. Yes. We'll take these together, because when we talk, so investing real estate entrepreneurship, right, as an entrepreneur, if you run your own business, you are investing money into that business, but you're doing so in a much more active way, right? As versus as an investor who's investing passively into things that you don't actually have any day to day involvement in, if you buy a share of Coca-Cola stock, right? If you don't work for the Coca-Cola company, you have no day to day involvement in it. You just bought some stock on the public market and that's that. Yep. So traditional public markets investing is very passive, whereas if we go to the other side of ire, right, entrepreneurship is very, very active. Yep. Owning real estate is sort of a hybrid between the two. So it's kind of fitting that the r falls into the middle. And so if you think of ire, you can sort of see it as a spectrum of moving from passive to active, right, where public markets investing, buying stocks, buying bonds, things like that. That's the most passive. Building your own business, that's the most active and that gradient in between. That's how you move along the passive to active continuum.

So it's almost like those are sort of the main ways to get to a point where you're financially independent. It's like you can, is it a combination of investing real estate in entrepreneurship? Is it choosing just one? Is there sort of no rules? If you were to be giving advice to the average person, what would that advice be? So remember

how with the financial independence for tire early? Yeah. So the Fi is really the heart of it and the retire early is one of many options. The same thing is true in my acronym of fire. Yes. The R in the E, the real estate in entrepreneurship, those are options. You don't have to do it. If you want to find, if you don't,

don't.