From 2009, when I first started writing about FIRE, until now, the FIRE movement has had a great run. It was born out of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, when hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs.
To cope with the sudden disruption of their economic livelihood, the concept of FIRE was adopted as both a definition and an aspiration. Instead of admitting you’ve been laid off, you can just tell your family, friends, and colleagues that you’ve decided to “retire early” and live a free life.
FIRE has not only been a great personal shield, it has also given us a better excuse to get out of the corporate press and stay. After all, study after study shows that most employees are either apathetic or uninterested in work.
Yes, once the economy starts to stabilize in 2010 and starts in 2012, many of these early retirees are going back to work. Jobs were plentiful again, and FIRE temporary unemployment was over for thousands.
Fire Agency Growth 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 35+ years in a row, maybe we can take a mini-retirement to give ourselves an occasional break.
Maybe we can take several years off to care for a baby before preschool without jeopardizing our jobs.
Or maybe, just maybe, we can leave the corporate world for good and find interesting ways to earn money, feel productive, and have more freedom.
Lifestyle design and being a digital nomad became a thing.
As a result, the FIRE movement gradually grew around the world, and reached the peak of FIRE when the COVID-19 shutdown began in March 2020. Millions of people were stuck at home, wondering what to do with their lives. Greater uncertainty has also emerged as personal business has stalled.
If life was this dangerous, maybe it was time to really live when we were free again. The YOLO economy came alive as people stopped putting their dreams on hold in 2022.
COVID was another major trigger for FIRE.
But Then The FIRE Movement Came Out Again
From 2021 to 2024, the FIRE movement began to lose momentum. One silver lining of COVID was the widespread acceptance of remote work. Once the world realized that business can still be successfully and profitably run at home, the work style has stagnated, even after the end of COVID.
A lot of paying jobs no longer required you to go into the office. For several years, millions of knowledge workers enjoyed a great deal of flexibility: running errands, taking care of their children, exercising during the day, and simply living a balanced life.
For example, I used to play pickleball for hours on a weekday morning with Google, Uber, and Meta employees who were working remotely. They told me that they have flexible hours and will just finish their work in the evening.
I started to wonder what is the point of giving up so much money to retire early when you can earn a lot of money to play during the day. Sign me up.
If Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse had allowed me to work from home even just two days a week, I’m sure I would have spent 18 years at the bank instead of just 13. Eighteen years, or until I’m 40, was my first goal when I joined the industry in 1999.
I Gave Homework – And It Was Good
Trying to live up to my convictions, I returned 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 great flexibility.
I have to admit, getting paid to work from home was amazing.
Experience showed me that FIRE was running out of time for many people who did not like going to work and traveling to meet clients. Once those burdens were lifted, the work was much more enjoyable.
Unfortunately, I wasted a good thing because I couldn’t stand being told what to do in my career after 14 years of freelance writing. Most people who have never been FIRE’d are likely to follow orders without issue. I couldn’t. So I left after four months. It was so, as a year later, the company was acquired by another fintech company.
As long as working from home seems to be here to stay, the FIRE movement will likely continue to lose momentum.
Strong Fire Recovery Thanks to AI and Office Instructions
Unfortunately, nothing good lasts forever.
From the beginning of 2024, big firms like Meta and Google started to encourage employees to return to the office once a week. Then it was two days a week. Then in 2025 three days a week.
Now in 2026, most large firms require workers to come five days a week. With COVID long overdue and hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on AI, executives believe it’s important to get 100 percent of employees fully engaged again in person.
Not only are these companies spending heavily on AI, AI is also attacking their core business models, e.g. Google’s search business. Companies have made many layoffs due to over-employment during the COVID-19 pandemic. But they have also cut roles because AI has created huge productivity gains, making thousands of workers redundant.
This is no time to mess around.
Given the increasing adoption of AI and the rigor of the workplace, I officially declare that the FIRE movement is back in 2026, and more relevant than ever.
If AI depresses wages and eliminates roles, ownership and savings become more critical. For the financial well-being of your family, I challenge you to apply the principles of FIRE this year and every year until you achieve financial freedom.
Follow Basic Fire Rules for Survival
If you don’t want to be trapped in the underclass forever, you must embrace the FIRE with everything you have before it’s too late. You may have 10 years to build enough wealth and disposable income to survive without a day job.
Take these principles seriously:
- Save 50 percent of your income or more. That could mean saving an entire paycheck if you get paid twice a week.
- Withdrawing from tax-advantaged retirement accounts such as a 401(k), IRA, SEP-IRA, Solo 401(k), or Roth IRA.
- Aggressively build taxable merchant accounts, making them at least twice as large as your taxable accounts for flexibility.
- Build an emergency fund equal to 12 months of normal living expenses.
- Cut down on unnecessary expenses like unused subscriptions, overspending, and memberships you rarely use.
- Sell things you haven’t used in six months to spend and raise money.
- Invest in income-producing assets such as equity stocks, rental properties, private real estate, or small businesses to build income.
- Start a side hustle to diversify your income stream.
- Learn to be humble and accept that nothing good or bad lasts forever.
Get comfortable living with dependence now so you won’t be forced into it later. If you are laid off, the impact will be worse because you have created financial obstacles for yourself.
The Worst Situation Is Not Just Being Unemployed
Some people mistakenly believe that the worst case scenario is losing your job to AI and never finding a relatively paying role again. That would be painful, but it is not a very serious crime.
The worst case scenario is losing your job and experiencing a big drop in your investments at the same time. This one-two punch may force you to sell near the bottom. If you sell out of necessity, you may never recover.
During the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, many people were forced to short sell or foreclose on their homes after prices dropped 10 – 50 percent. They lost their jobs, their credit scores were ruined for years, and they had no money to invest when assets sold. And they couldn’t borrow to re-enter the housing market.
Losing it all and missing out on re-gaining for 16+ years creates a permanent low. That situation could easily happen again if a bear market arrives and speculative assets are liquidated.
We are already seeing AI disrupt the publishing industry, the movie industry, the software industry, the search industry, and the video game industry. It’s only a matter of time before it reaches yours. And if it does, your company’s stock price may plummet and massive layoffs will follow.
There is no question that disruption is coming. The question is whether it will be financially prepared when it arrives.
FIRE Keeping You Safe
FIRE is fundamental to security. If you live long, good and bad things will happen to you. The goal is to find the FIRE before something really bad destroys your livelihood.
The modern FIRE movement was born out of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. It got worse as the economy improved. Then it comes roaring back in 2020 during the COVID season. After that, it faded again due to the variable function of the remote control. Now it’s back, and more important than ever, because of the existential threat AI poses to billions of workers.
If I didn’t have kids, I wouldn’t worry so much. All I 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 little kids, it’s a whole different ball game. You can see the disruption coming. They don’t know.
That’s why it’s important to adjust your educational and financial strategy now to prepare for a very different future. Another strategy is to make so much money that even if you use the wrong education system, your children will still be fine. That’s certainly one way to sleep at night.
However, helping your children develop flexibility, resilience, and dignity through work – so that they can support themselves without technological change – seems to be the most admirable and lasting goal.
Because in the end, FIRE is not just about early retirement. It’s about protection. It’s about options. And in the age of AI, choice may be the most important asset of all.
Student Questions and Suggestions
Readers, do you believe that FIRE is more important than ever because of AI? Even though the FIRE movement has never lost momentum since 2009? Are you using any FIRE principles now to protect yourself?
To find financial freedom soon, join 60,000 others and sign up for my free weekly newsletter. I started Financial Samurai in 2009 and everything is written based on personal experience and expertise.
