Don’t get me wrong. I love Millennials as much as the next person (insofar as I can love any generational cohort based on gross generalizations). In my workplace at a tech company, I’m basically surrounded by Millenials, so I’ve come to know and appreciate (for the most part) their much-discussed worldview with a kind of detached indifference. Why? Well, because…
I’m a GenXer.
I was born in the late 70s and I’m a part of Generation X. I did not get helicopter-parented. My mom and dad granted my brother and me the kind of freedom that, today, would basically have gotten most parents arrested. Our parents worked, so they didn’t walk us to the bus stop, let alone drive us to school. They didn’t do our homework, let alone check it. We cruised the streets on our bikes with other neighbourhood kids knowing we had to be home by the time the streetlights turned on. I started babysitting neighbourhood kids when I was 11 or 12, which nowadays would be tantamount to child neglect by TWO sets of parents. Don’t get me wrong, my parents were always there for me and my brother. It was just a different time and there were different standards. I’m okay with all of it, in fact, I’m glad for it. I’m glad I grew up playing outside and riding my bike instead of staring at screens.
Do Millenials own FIRE?
You don’t need to be a detective to see that a LOT of Millenials are really into the FIRE movement. They’ve made it pretty obvious. When you scan the FIRE blogosphere and podcast landscape, observe that Millenials must announce their generation in the name of their blog and/or podcast, which registers as peculiar to me. Okay, annoying. You don’t see Mr. Money Moustache calling himself “GenX on FIRE!!!!” So what gives?
It looks like I’m not the only one who has stopped to wonder why you don’t see more GenXers on the FIRE scene and Mad Money Monster offers some good theories. I’ll add another one to the bullet list. I think GenXers have a tendency to think they’re too punk-rock to care about money, at least they did when it would have been advantageous to start saving — in our 20s, when we were curating our plaid collections and listening to Pearl Jam.
Don’t delay. Start today!
At the risk of sharing a bit of cat-poster philosophy, it’s never too late. The best time to have started investing was 10 years ago. The second best time is today. I started my FIRE journey at 40. As I have said previously, my husband and were already in pretty good shape financially before we really went gung-ho on FIRE, but we didn’t dig in until just recently. And now we’re probably about 4-5 years away.
So if you’re reading this and you were born before 1981, don’t feel like this thing ain’t for you, or that you’ve missed the boat. Not at all. The GenXers are here and we’re doing it. We just don’t shout about it.
The bottom line
Sure, a lot of the FIRE blogs you’ll read are written by people who will be (or hope to be) retired by the time they hit your age, but press on. Do the work. Even if you’re a late bloomer, you can still finish years before what conventional wisdom would dictate is “retirement age,” especially given the fact that so many North Americans are literally saying they will never be able to retire, period.