F.I.R.E Failure

There is a movement sweeping the nation. It is called F.I.R.E. and it stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. But, maybe there is another meaning…

I was working this F.I.R.E. thing when I was 25. I just didn’t have a cool acronym for it. No one had coined the phrase yet. As always, I was ahead of my time. My plan has always been to try to figure out how to get enough passive income to retire as soon as possible. I think most of us who are interested in the FIRE idea or retiring early don’t really mean ‘quit working’. We mean, we don’t need to work. I’m almost to this magical place of not needing to work. I’m trying to get this blog, and my new online business, going so that it can help transition me into a nomadic lifestyle. 

But, let’s be honest. This plan isn’t easy. You don’t half ass your way to early retirement. You don’t see any articles in this genera about “get rich quick” or “one weird way to retire in a year”. If you do see that stuff it is a scam so don’t waste your time. Believe me, I’ve tried half of them because even though I’m way too smart to fall for those things… I have, in the past, been tempted and ordered the program on TV at 2:00 in the morning. 

My goal here is to keep it real. To tell you how I am doing it. And tell you where I screwed up along the way. I don’t candy coat or skip over the ugly parts. In some ways, it’s hard to put all of your mistakes out there for the whole world to see, and judge, and comment on. I do wear my heart on my sleeve; so, when the haters hate, I can feel it. But I really hope that by doing this I can save someone the mistakes I’ve made. And hopefully, and more importantly, I truly hope I can inspire someone to accomplish something they didn’t think they could do. I really want this to be authentic and real and raw. And yes, it would be awesome if this blows up and pays some bills. But, I don’t want to do it in smarmy, asking you for things, kind of way.  

Which brings me to the title of this blog post. I wanted to talk a little bit about failure. And, since I’m trying do this blog with an emphasis towards financial freedom and I read other people’s blogs from the FIRE movement I had another acronym pop in my head the other day.  

FIRE- Failure Is Real and Exhausting. In my effort to retire early I have failed once already. I went broke and lost everything. I had three foreclosures and was left with no job, no savings, and over a million dollars of debt. It takes the same amount of effort to fail as it does to succeed. Yes, if you are half-assing it, you are probably going to fail. But, if you are going all out with intentions of crushing it and you fail, it can be a lot harder to start over again. Not just having lost all of your money. There is a mental aspect of getting kicked in teeth. You think of how hard you worked and now have nothing to show, or maybe you even went backwards like me. You question if you are smart enough, or if you have the work ethic to really do it. All I can say is “Too F’ing Bad”. Lay on the floor and kick and scream and feel sorry for yourself…for like 5 minutes. You deserve it. Then get back up, evaluate what went wrong and get after it.

I’m actually working the same plan I was working when I went broke. But I have a few things going for me. One of them is going broke. That sucks and I don’t want to do it again. When I lost everything the last thing I did before I left Montana was I had a garage sale to sell all my stuff for gas money to drive to the beach to start over. I spent 4 days in my driveway selling every memory I had made. Then I packed what would fit in my truck, loaded up my dog, and we left. I had my first panic attack when I pulled out of the driveway. Seriously, a panic attack. But, now you fast forward to this summer and I just paid cash for a house. I paid CASH for it! The guy that sold it to me had just lost his partner and he didn’t want to deal with all the stuff and the memories in the house. And, let me tell you that house was FULL of stuff. I stood in the living room doing a garage sale to sell all their memories of their beach house. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. The last time I did a garage sale was because I had literally lost EVERYTHING. And now I’m standing in this house I just paid cash for it. And, not only did I pay cash for it, but it was the seventh property I had bought since going broke. It was a very proud moment for me. 

I have been a lot more cautious in the properties I’ve bought. I’ve bought properties mostly on the lower end of the price spectrum (because that is what I can afford). And I always, always, always ask myself, “What is the worst case scenario?”.  I guess my take-a-way for this post is that failure is always an option. And you had better believe that fact. Especially when you are going big and trying to retire early. The normal stuff everyone else does is not going to get them to early retirement. My friends kept saying to me when I bought a half-million-dollar house for my first flip house, “what are you going to do if this doesn’t work out?”. And I kept saying “I guess I’ll start over”. I truly didn’t think it would happen because I was sooo smart.  That kick in the balls has taught me to stay humble, stay nimble, and keep it real. I knew I wasn’t the first person to fail at something that could go on to be successful. In fact, my first idea to get back on top was to write a book about failure. I thought I’d interview some other people that had failed and then turned it all around to be a big success. So the first thing I did was google books about failure to see if anyone else had come up with this genius idea yet. I found there were like 1,578,845 books. That’s when I realized I wasn’t so different, it wasn’t the end of the world, and there was still hope for me.  I also decided the world probably didn’t need another book about it. So I was back to square one.

I hope this post was helpful, and if not, at least you have another little glimpse into what got me to where I am. And maybe you can understand that everything, good and bad, makes up who we are. People ask me all the time, “if you could go back and do it over, would you?”. And, I don’t have to think about that for one second. NO WAY. Maybe if I had a time machine and I could do it over, I would be 10 times richer or have a different life or whatever. Man.. the struggle did suck. But, it all led to where I am right now. And I love this place. And as I’m writing this post, I know there are some new big things coming right around the corner. Maybe the success of this blog is one of them. Maybe it isn’t. But this journey is one hell of ride and you better enjoy the view along the way. Trust me on that one.  

As always, please subscribe and like my stuff and click the buttons and tell your friends and share the content. Maybe you know someone that isn’t trying to crush it in real estate investing or trying to retire early, or maybe you know someone going through some tough times. Share this with them. Or just call them and let them know you are there. Failure has many faces. It can just be hard times, or loss of a job or a relationship, or whatever… and a hug can go a long way for a person who is having a tough time.   So here is to onward and upward