The most popular talking point that sucked me into the financial independence (FI) movement in late 2017 was the idea of getting off the hamster wheel. “Get out of the rat race! Get off the hamster wheel!” (Apparently we’re all analogous to small rodents.)
FI/RE just sounded appealing as I traipsed back and forth between work and home in the dark that winter, spending all my time inside a building with fluorescent lights.
Because after about a year, I began to feel symptoms of (what I learned later was) burnout, the condition in which you’re unable to escape feelings of general overwhelm.
It sounds whiny, I know—working a fake internet job in a climate-controlled office would hardly register as “work” to my meatpacking ancestors who probably stood knee-deep in questionable fluids for 12 hours each day, but something felt inescapably meaningless about the barrages of email threads, PowerPoint decks, and back-to-back 30-minute “touch bases.”
You’d think working from home would’ve helped to alleviate this (and in some ways, it did!), but the expectations at work didn’t slow or cease because we were taking calls from our living rooms. The pressure to prove you were still working hard in the face of layoffs escalated, and new “productivity” software emerged to fill the gap. The chat apps somehow replaced actual productivity with a sort of endless toiling; LARPing your job as opposed to actually doing it.
I realized early in my career that it wasn’t enough to just work hard—I had to look like I was working hard. Actually performing, and performatively performing.
In retrospect, it’s clear the exhaustion was just a byproduct of my financial safety and security being tied up in not just the job, but also in others’ perceptions of me.
You could make the case that none of this stuff would’ve been materially detrimental to whether or not I received a paycheck—but tell that to a neurotic 22-year-old with no money who doesn’t know any better and just signed her first 12-month lease.
There’s just one rather obvious problem with “financial independence” as a solution: It can take a really long time to achieve. So long, in fact, that many throw in the towel before they begin—the polar opposite approach to “gunning for financial freedom” is “conceding in the first inning that you’ll never reach it and just spending everything you make while the going’s good,” as is displayed in this viral TikTok of a 23-year-old with a $6,500 monthly rent payment.
As writer and editor Kayti Christian points out, “it’s challenging to get off the hamster wheel when the hamster wheel pays your bills”—but the fundamental mistake is allowing those bills to swell larger and larger, rendering the hamster wheel that much more necessary.
Most of us do not freely choose to engage in behaviors that lead to burnout—we engage precisely because we feel we have no other choice.
When we talk about this in the context of financial independence, we usually mean the ability to do something extreme—like quit a job. But true independence isn’t about disengaging. True independence enables you to move about your work and life in a way that isn’t rooted in fear.
We move through life differently when we’ve self-insured our own safety and security—and money grants you access to that gated area of invincibility behind the velvet rope more directly than just about anything else. This is the moat that money can build around you. It’s permission to separate your work—your livelihood—from your most fundamental needs, and behave accordingly. Saying what you actually think, taking time off when you actually need it, and doing work you actually want to do.
This is why I pursue financial independence. Not because I think next week (or even next year) my moat will be wide enough, but because it never will be if I don’t keep digging.
Money is power—and it’s the kind of power you can seize for yourself with enough saving and investing. Nobody in upper management has to give it to you.
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