The Ethics of FIRE

FIRE stands for ‘Financial Independence, Retire Early’. Those who adopt the FIRE lifestyle aim at achieving financial independence as early as possible in their lives. They do so by focusing on earning and saving in their younger years, so as to accumulate enough financial wealth that allows them to retire early. We argue that FIRE has what we term ‘deliberative value’. FIRE is a tool that can help individuals think about the bottom-line consequences of their cares and concerns. We argue that unlocking the deliberative value of FIRE crucially depends on individuals reflecting about the value concepts that motivate their FIRE lifestyle choice. Adopted without reflection, FIRE can be dangerous. And yet, ‘the examined FIRE may be worth starting’, because it can be a tool for the effective pursuit of one’s adopted deliberative values. To illustrate this, we provide a comprehensive survey of relevant approaches from philosophy and economics that pertain to scheduling preferences, time discounting, intertemporal rationality, life-planning, freedom, the value of work, broader notions of the good, and individualism, amongst others. We suggest that empirical work is needed to investigate the social effects of FIRE. We also suggest that philosophers invested in specific debates about value concepts would do well to integrate FIRE into the set of examples they theorize about, as it can serve as an instructive case study.