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From 2009, when I started writing about FIRE, until now, the FIRE movement has had a great run. It was born out of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, when hundreds of thousands of people were losing their jobs.
In order to cope with the sudden disruption to their economic livelihoods, the concept of FIRE was embraced as both explanation and aspiration. Instead of admitting you got laid off, you could suddenly tell your family, friends, and colleagues that you decided to “retire early” instead and live the free life.
Not only did FIRE become a great shield for the ego, it also gave us a better excuse to get off the corporate treadmill and stay off. After all, survey after survey shows that most employees are disengaged or disinterested at work.
Of course, once the economy started stabilizing by 2010 and taking off in 2012, many of these early retirees logically went back to work. Jobs became plentiful again, and the temporary unemployment period of FIRE was over for hundreds of thousands.
The Growth of the FIRE Movement Continued From 2012–2021
But that intense three-year period of FIRE from 2009–2012 really began to spread the idea of what was possible.
Instead of working for 40+ consecutive years, maybe we could take mini-retirements to give ourselves the occasional break.
Maybe we could take several years off to care for a newborn before preschool without completely jeopardizing our careers.
Or maybe, just maybe, we could exit the corporate world for good and find more interesting ways to earn money, feel productive, and experience greater freedom.
Lifestyle design and becoming a digital nomad became a thing.
As a result, the FIRE movement steadily grew worldwide, culminating once again in peak FIRE when COVID lockdowns began in March 2020. Millions of people were trapped at home, wondering what they were going to do with their lives. Maximum uncertainty reappeared as in-person businesses ground to a halt.
If life was this precarious, then maybe it was time to truly live once we were free again. The YOLO economy came to life as people stopped putting their dreams on hold by 2022.
COVID was another major catalyst for FIRE.
But Then the FIRE Movement Petered Out Again
From 2021 through 2024, the FIRE movement began losing momentum. The one silver lining of COVID was the widespread acceptance of remote work. Once the world realized business could still be conducted efficiently and profitably from home, the work style stuck, even after COVID ended.
Plenty of high-paying jobs no longer required going into the office. For several years, millions of knowledge workers enjoyed far greater flexibility: running errands, taking care of their kids, exercising mid-day, and simply living more balanced lives.
For example, I was playing pickleball for hours on weekday late mornings with employees from Google, Uber, and Meta who were working remotely. They told me they had flexible hours and would just finish their work later in the evening.
I started wondering what the point was of sacrificing so much to retire early when you could get paid big bucks to play during the day. Sign me up.
If Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse had let me work from home even just two days a week, I’m sure I would have worked 18 years in banking instead of just 13. Eighteen years, or until age 40, was my original goal when I joined the industry in 1999.
I Gave Work From Home a Go – And It Was Great
Given that I try to act consistently with my beliefs, I went back to work in November 2023, consulting 25 hours a week for a fintech startup. I wanted to experience what it was like to work with so much flexibility.
I have to admit, getting paid to work from home was awesome. Going into the office once a week for three hours was actually fun.
The experience showed me that FIRE was becoming obsolete for many people who disliked commuting and traveling to meet clients. Once those burdens were eliminated, work became much more enjoyable.
Unfortunately, I messed up a good thing because I couldn’t tolerate being told what to do in my craft after 14 years of 100% writing freedom. Most people who have never FIRE’d could probably follow orders without issue. I couldn’t. So I left after four months. It was just as well, as a year later, the company was acquired by another fintech firm for a modest amount.
As long as work from home seemed here to stay, the FIRE movement would likely continue losing momentum.
The Strong Return of FIRE Due to AI and In-Office Mandates
Unfortunately, nothing good lasts forever.
Starting around the beginning of 2024, large firms such as JP Morgan, Meta and Google began encouraging workers to return to the office once a week. Then it became two days a week. Then three days a week in 2025.
Now in 2026, most large firms require employees to come in five days a week. With COVID long over and hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on AI, management believes it is imperative to get 100 percent of the workforce fully engaged in person again.
Not only are these companies spending fortunes on AI, AI is also attacking their core business models, e.g. Google’s search business. Companies have conducted mass layoffs due to overhiring during COVID. But they have also cut roles because AI has created massive productivity gains, making thousands of employees redundant.
It is no time to mess around.
Given the surge in AI adoption and workplace tightening, I am officially declaring that the FIRE movement is back in 2026, and more relevant than ever.
If AI compresses wages and eliminates roles, then ownership and savings become even more critical.
For your family’s financial well-being, I challenge you to adopt basic FIRE principles this year and every year until you reach financial independence.
Follow Basic FIRE Principles for Survival
If you don’t want to be trapped in a permanent underclass, you must embrace FIRE with everything you’ve got before it’s too late. You may have at most 10 years to build enough wealth and livable passive income to survive without a day job.
Take these principles seriously:
- Save 50 percent of your income or more. That may mean saving one entire paycheck if you are paid biweekly.
- Max out tax-advantaged retirement accounts such as your 401(k), IRA, SEP-IRA, Solo 401(k), or Roth IRA.
- Aggressively build up taxable brokerage accounts, ideally making them at least twice as large as your tax-advantaged accounts for flexibility.
- Build an emergency fund equal to 12 months of normal living expenses.
- Cut unnecessary expenses such as unused subscriptions, excess clothing purchases, and memberships you rarely use.
- Sell items you have not used in six months to declutter and raise capital.
- Invest in income-generating assets such as dividend stocks, rental properties, private real estate, or small businesses to build passive income.
- Start a side hustle to diversify your income streams.
- Learn to be humble and accept that nothing good or bad lasts forever.
Get comfortable living lean now so you are not forced into it later. If you are laid off, the impact will be far less severe because you’ve built financial buffers.
The Worst-Case Scenario Is Not Just Unemployment
Some people mistakenly believe the worst-case scenario is losing your job to AI and never finding a comparable-paying role again. That would be painful, but it is not the worst case.
The true worst-case scenario is losing your job and suffering a major decline in your investments at the same time. This one-two punch might force you to sell near the bottom. If you sell out of necessity, you may never recover.
During the 2008–2009 global financial crisis, many people were forced to short-sell or foreclose on their homes after values declined 15 – 50 percent. They lost their jobs, their credit scores were damaged for years, and they had no capital to invest when assets were on sale. Nor could they borrow to reenter the housing market.
Losing everything and then missing the subsequent 16+ year recovery creates a permanent underclass. That scenario could easily happen again if a severe bear market hits and speculative assets get wiped out.
We are already seeing AI disrupt the publishing industry, movie industry, software industry, search industry, and video game industry. It is only a matter of time before it reaches yours. And when it does, your company’s share price may decline sharply and mass layoffs will follow.
The question is not whether disruption is coming. The question is whether you will be financially prepared when it arrives.
FIRE Keeps You Protected
FIRE is foundational to security. The longer you live, the more good and bad things will happen to you. The goal is to achieve FIRE before something truly bad destroys your livelihood.
The modern-day FIRE movement was born out of the 2008–2009 global financial crisis. It faded somewhat as the economy rebounded. Then it came roaring back in 2020 during COVID. After that, it faded again thanks to flexible remote work. Now it’s back, and more important than ever, due to the existential threat AI poses to billions of workers.
If I didn’t have children, I would be far less concerned. All I would need to do is allocate my assets properly to benefit from the AI boom. That means investing in AI-related companies and reducing exposure to businesses most vulnerable to AI disruption.
But with young children, it’s a completely different ball game. You can see the disruption coming. They cannot.
That’s why it’s vital to adjust your educational and financial strategy now in preparation for a very different future. One strategy is to simply make so much money that even if you implement the wrong educational plan, your children will still be fine. That’s certainly one way to sleep at night.
However, helping your children develop adaptability, resilience, and dignity through work – so they can provide for themselves regardless of technological change – seems like a far more admirable and durable goal.
Because in the end, FIRE isn’t just about early retirement. It’s about protection. It’s about options. And in the age of AI, optionality may be the most valuable asset of all.
Reader Questions & Suggestions
Readers, do you believe FIRE is more important than ever due to AI? Or has the FIRE movement never really lost momentum since 2009? Are you adopting any FIRE principles now to protect yourself?
I’ll be heading to the post office at the end of the week to mail out signed copies of Millionaire Milestones for those who went through a free Empower financial checkup. For those interested in the promotion, you can check out what it entails and the instructions in this post on my experience.
To achieve financial freedom sooner, join 60,000 others and sign up for my free weekly newsletter. I started Financial Samurai in 2009 and everything is written based off firsthand experience and expertise.
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