Why FIRE Is No Longer Trendy, and What Replaced It for Me

If you're not familiar with FIRE, it's pretty self-explanatory when you expand the acronym: Financial Independence, Retire Early.

FIRE was a bit of a meme in the mid-2010s. I remember sitting in my college apartment with my roommate, making big plans to retire early. We dreamed about ditching the 9-to-5 as soon as we landed our first jobs, even though we were buried under six-figure student debt. The idea of escaping the job market, especially in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, was incredibly appealing. Early retirement felt like the ultimate goal.

But over time, the hype faded. FIRE stopped feeling realistic. I think the reason is simple.

It's not worth spending time setting long-term FIRE goals and crafting rigid plans to achieve them.

Most FIRE advice follows the same playbook. First, you track every dollar you earn and spend in a spreadsheet. Then, you set a target retirement date, usually decades in the future. Finally, you align your savings, investments, and lifestyle around hitting that target.

On paper, it looks rational and achievable. But once you plug in your actual numbers, it becomes obvious that FIRE is often out of reach. That was my experience. I deleted the formulas that calculated my retirement timeline. But I kept the spreadsheets.

The truth is that personal finance is messy. It’s a constantly shifting system, influenced by both market forces and your own life circumstances. Asset prices are unpredictable and hard to model. That’s already a challenge. But income and spending are even more volatile. One major life event can break the entire model. Have a kid. Get laid off. Land a new job. Move to a more expensive city. Suddenly, your entire FIRE plan is irrelevant, and you’re back at square one with a fresh spreadsheet and a different reality.

This reminded me of something I see all the time in software development. The idea of defining goals and building toward them is familiar. And it fails just as often. For years, software teams tried to map everything out in advance with deadlines and detailed specifications. But reality always got in the way.

So the industry evolved. Instead of trying to predict the future, software teams began working in shorter cycles. They focused on small wins and made changes often. They didn’t abandon the end goal, they just approached it in a way that could survive uncertainty.

That’s the mindset I started applying to my finances. I stopped chasing retirement. I shifted into what I now call Financial Momentum.

Financial Momentum is not about hitting a specific number by a certain age. It’s about continuously increasing your financial strength. That means spending less than you earn, earning as much as you reasonably can, and using the difference to build assets.

I don’t have a date circled on a calendar. I don’t know when I’ll retire. But I do know how much I saved this month. I know how much I spent. I know if I'm moving in the right direction. That’s all that matters.

Every month, I review my finances. Every transaction gets looked at. If I spent too much, I adjust. If I earned more than expected, I put that to work. The system is simple, but it’s powerful. Over time, the numbers get better. I get stronger financially. The freedom grows.

How do I know if I’m spending too much or too little?

That’s a personal question, and there’s no single answer. It depends on how much you value long-term financial freedom compared to the satisfaction of spending now. It depends on your goals, your values, and your risk tolerance. But the more attention you pay to it, the more clearly you'll see where the balance should be.

Eventually, Financial Momentum gives you options. You may reach a point where you can take a break from work, start a project, change careers, or simply retire early without needing to obsess over whether you’ve hit some fixed milestone.

The original FIRE model promised freedom at the end of a long road. Financial Momentum brings freedom closer, one month at a time.