From 2009, when I started writing about FIRE, the FIRE movement has taken off until now. It emerged from the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, when hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs.
To cope with the sudden disruption of their economic livelihoods, the concept of FIRE was embraced as both an explanation and an aspiration. Instead of admitting that you’ve been fired, you can suddenly tell your family, friends, and coworkers that you’ve decided to “retire early” and live a free life.
Not only did FIRE become a great shield for the ego, it also gave us a better excuse to get off and stay off the corporate treadmill. After all, study after study shows that most employees are disengaged or disinterested at work.
When the economy began to stabilize in 2010 and pick up again in 2012, many of these early retirees naturally returned to work. Jobs became plentiful again and FIRE’s period of temporary unemployment was over for thousands of people.
The growth of the FIRE movement continued from 2012 to 2021
But that intense three-year period of FIRE from 2009 to 2012 really started to spread the idea of what was possible.
Instead of working 35+ years straight, perhaps we could take mini-retirements to give ourselves a break every now and then.
Maybe we can take a few years off to care for a newborn before he starts kindergarten without completely jeopardizing our careers.
Or maybe, just maybe, we can leave the corporate world for good and find more interesting ways to make money, feel productive, and experience more freedom.
Lifestyle design and becoming a digital nomad became a thing.
As a result, the FIRE movement grew steadily worldwide, culminating in another spike in FIRE when the COVID lockdowns began in March 2020. Millions of people were stuck at home wondering what to do with their lives. Maximum uncertainty occurred again as in-person businesses ground to a halt.
If life was so precarious, then maybe it was time to really live once we were free again. The YOLO economy came to life when people stopped putting their dreams on hold by 2022.
COVID was another major catalyst for FIRE.
But then the FIRE movement disappeared again
From 2021 through 2024, the FIRE movement began to lose momentum. The one silver lining of COVID was the widespread adoption of remote work. Once the world realized that business could still be done efficiently and profitably from home, the work style stuck even after COVID ended.
Many well-paying jobs no longer required going to the office. For years, millions of knowledge workers enjoyed much greater flexibility: shopping, taking care of their children, exercising during the day and simply living a more balanced life.
For example, I played pickleball for hours on weekday mornings with Google, Uber, and Meta employees who worked remotely. They told me they had flexible hours and wouldn’t finish their work until later in the evening.
I started to wonder what the point was in sacrificing so much to retire early when you can get a lot of money for playing during the day. Sign me up.
If Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse had let me work from home even two days a week, I’m sure I would have worked in banking for 18 years instead of just 13. Eighteen years, or until I was forty, was my original goal when I joined the bank in 1999.
I gave working from home a try – and it was great
Since I try to consistently act on my beliefs, I returned to work in November 2023, consulting for a fintech startup 25 hours a week. I wanted to experience what it was like to work with so much flexibility.
I have to admit, it was great to get paid to work from home.
Experience taught me that FIRE was becoming outdated for many people who hated commuting and traveling to meet clients. Once these burdens were eliminated, the work became much more enjoyable.
Unfortunately, I messed up a good thing because I couldn’t tolerate being told what to do in my field after fourteen years of writing freedom. Most people who have never done FIRE can probably follow orders without any problem. I couldn’t do it. That’s why I left after four months. And that was a good thing, because a year later the company was acquired by another fintech company.
As long as working from home seemed to remain an enduring trend, the FIRE movement would likely continue to lose momentum.
The strong return of FIRE thanks to AI and internal mandates
Unfortunately, nothing good lasts forever.
Starting in early 2024, major companies like Meta and Google began encouraging employees to return to the office once a week. Then it became two days a week. Then three days a week in 2025.
Now, in 2026, most major companies require their employees to come in five days a week. Now that the coronavirus crisis is long over and hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent on AI, management believes it is imperative to get 100 percent of the workforce fully engaged in person again.
Not only are these companies spending fortunes on AI, AI is also attacking their core business models, for example Google’s search business. Companies have made mass layoffs due to overstaffing during COVID. But they have also cut jobs as AI has driven huge productivity gains, making thousands of workers redundant.
It’s no time to mess around.
Given the rise in AI adoption and tightening in the workplace, I am officially declaring that the FIRE movement is back in 2026, and more relevant than ever.
As AI compresses wages and eliminates roles, ownership and savings become even more important. For the financial well-being of your family, I challenge you to apply the basic principles of FIRE this year and every year until you achieve financial independence.
Follow the basic principles of FIRE to survive
If you don’t want to be trapped in a permanent underclass, you should embrace FIRE with everything you have before it’s too late. You may have up to 10 years to build enough wealth and livable passive income to survive without a day job.
Take these principles seriously:
- Save 50 percent of your income or more. That could mean saving one full paycheck if you get paid biweekly.
- Maximize tax-advantaged retirement accounts, such as your 401(k), IRA, SEP-IRA, Solo 401(k), or Roth IRA.
- Aggressively build taxable brokerage accounts, ideally making them at least twice the size of your tax-advantaged accounts for flexibility.
- Build an emergency fund equal to 12 months of normal living expenses.
- Cut unnecessary expenses such as unused subscriptions, excess clothing purchases and memberships you rarely use.
- Sell stuff you haven’t used in six months to clear out and raise capital.
- Invest in income-producing assets such as dividend stocks, rental properties, private real estate or small businesses to build passive income.
- Start a side hustle to diversify your income streams.
- Learn to be humble and accept that nothing good or bad lasts forever.
Make sure you live comfortably slim now so you aren’t forced to do so later. If you are fired, the consequences will be much less serious because you will have built up financial buffers.
The worst-case scenario isn’t just unemployment
Some people wrongly think that the worst-case scenario is losing your job to AI and never finding a comparably paid job again. That would be painful, but it is true not the worst case.
The real worst-case scenario is that you lose your job and at the same time your investments suffer a sharp decline. This one-two punch could force you to sell near the bottom. If you sell out of necessity, you may never recover.
During the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, many people were forced to short-sell or foreclose on their homes after values fell by 10 to 50 percent. They lost their jobs, their credit scores were damaged for years, and they had no capital to invest when assets were available for sale. They also could not borrow to reenter the housing market.
Losing everything and then missing the subsequent recovery of over 16 years creates a permanent underclass. That scenario could easily happen again if a serious bear market hits and speculative assets are wiped out.
We are already seeing AI disrupting the publishing industry, the film industry, the software industry, the search industry, and the video game industry. It’s only a matter of time before it reaches yours. And if it does, your company’s stock price could fall sharply and mass layoffs will follow.
The question is not whether there will be disruption. The question is whether you will be financially prepared when the time comes.
FIRE keeps you protected
FIRE is fundamental to safety. The longer you live, the more good and bad things will happen to you. The goal is to reach FIRE before something really bad destroys your livelihood.
The contemporary FIRE movement emerged from the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. This disappeared somewhat when the economy recovered. Then it came roaring back in 2020 during COVID. Then it faded again thanks to flexible remote working. Now it’s back, and more important than ever, because of the existential threat AI poses to billions of workers.
If I didn’t have children, I would worry a lot less. All I need to do is allocate my assets properly to benefit from the AI boom. That means investing in AI-related companies and reducing exposure to companies most vulnerable to AI disruption.
But with young children it is a completely different story. You see the disruption coming. They can’t.
That’s why it’s essential to adapt your education and financial strategy now to prepare for a very different future. One strategy is to simply make so much money that even if you implement the wrong education plan, your children will still do well. That sure is one way to sleep at night.
However, it seems like a much more admirable and sustainable goal to help your children develop adaptability, resilience, and dignity through work – so they can take care of themselves regardless of technological changes.
Because at the end of the day, FIRE is not just about early retirement. It’s about protection. It’s about options. And in the age of AI, the power of choice may be the most valuable asset of all.
Questions and suggestions from readers
Readers, do you believe FIRE is more important than ever because of AI? Or has the FIRE movement never really lost momentum since 2009? Are you now adopting FIRE principles to protect yourself?
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