Sorry about that. You probably didn’t come here to be told you could save money on your car insurance. And you don’t need to be reminded that you could easily afford a house somewhere you don’t want to live if only you scrimped on flat whites and avocados. At Men’s Health, we pride ourselves on not being your father-in-law.
But something has been stirring on the personal finance dark web – something subversive and perhaps a little cultish. “I see earning money like a game that I want to beat,” the anonymous Saving Ninja puts it on his or her blog of the same name. “It’s fun. Being a completionist is in my nature. I need to get that high score.” The Saving Ninja is part of Fire, a movement built around the twin aims of achieving “financial independence” and “retiring early”, ideally in your thirties or forties.
Success requires an obsession with your balance sheet, as well as an iron discipline with regards to Pret baguettes. It also demands an anti-consumerist spirit and the level of commitment you’d need for any training regime. Indeed, for many of Fire’s adherents, the discipline required to put away 40%, or even 80%, of each pay cheque benefits from training of a more literal sort.
“If you want the mentality to do this, first you need to improve the clarity of your thinking,” says Barney Whiter, 48, who blogs about his personal finance at theescapeartist.me. “If you’re a cubicle rat, leading a sedentary lifestyle, it’s a natural reaction to comfort-spend on holidays and takeaways, and so on. People get run down.” Weight training helped him to end this downward spiral. “It changes
your mindset… Get yourself out of doors, exercise.” Whiter retired from accountancy at 43, having saved half of his salary over two decades. Five years later, he spends his time lifting weights, blogging and hanging out with his kids, while “watching all the wage slaves trundling towards the station like zombies every morning, to work in jobs they don’t like”.
Self-Preservation Society
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