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“How do I get my family and friends onboard the FIRE train? We’ve had little success. Some friends are excited in the beginning but lose steam over time. Others aren’t interest at all and think it’s deprivation. Some friends even lost touch with us because they think we’re no longer relatable.”
I’ve heard these experiences from at least 3 different couples/families after retiring early and quitting their jobs. It’s understandable when you discover this magical formula to a life of freedom that you want to bring as many of your favourite people along as possible. After all, FIRE can be lonely if you don’t find like-minded people to hang out with after leaving your work social circle.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have all the time in the world to spend with friends that get you, doing whatever you want, whenever you want, instead of only squeezing out a few precious hours on the weekend, once a month, because you have to go back to work?
The thing is, I’ve tried this exact thing. And the number of friends and family members that I’ve gotten to retire early is….wait for it….
Zilch. Nada. Zero.
It’s ironic, given that complete strangers have written in and told me they’ve completely changed their lives after reading our book, going from homelessness to $100K in just 1 year, and then reaching $850K in net worth 4 years later! Yet, friend after friend, whom we’ve known for over 10+ years, haven’t changed their lifestyles one bit.
Here’s the brutal truth: You will lose friends after FIRE.
This is because when you’re working and have limited time, friendships aren’t built on who you are. They’re built on where you are.
You were cubical soldiers together, connected by shared stress, deadlines, and corporate bullshit. But when you stop chasing these things that people believe you’re supposed to chase—money, material things, promotions—you no longer have much in common.
Suddenly, you’re no longer relatable. You still feel the same, but to them, you’re a entirely different person now.
Why?
Because your existence now forces people to confront their shit. When you say, “I don’t need to work anymore”, they hear “I’m no longer interested in living the life you chose.”
You won’t even speak the same language anymore because while you talk about “slow mornings”, “freedom”, and hippie sounding shit like “self-actualization”, they’re stressing about work politics, childcare logistics, and traffic jams.
Even if you have the best intentions to help them do the same, it won’t matter. Regardless of whether you are pushy or supportive about their FIRE journey, you will still piss people off just by existing. They will see you as “out of touch” and “weird”.
What I learned from 10+ years of retiring and inadvertently losing friends is that it’s about them, not you.
Prior to retiring, you were struggling and in the trenches with your friends. But now you’re out, doing your victory lap and they’re still stuck, trying to dig their way out.
They may not resent your success, but they do resent what your success says about them. You’ve lived out their “what if” scenario and taken the path they didn’t choose.
Only the people who are secure in their finances and life choices will be happy for you. This is the exception rather than the rule. Most people don’t have the time and bandwidth to fix their insecurities. This is something that took me years to do and it was extremely uncomfortable. And the first step is realizing that you are insecure in the first place, and that success addiction is bad, which is impossible since society is hellbent on glorifying it and social media amplifies it.
They may not even be aware that they’re jealous of your lifestyle and appear very supportive and onboard the FIRE train on the surface, but inside they are secretly resentful or simply don’t believe FIRE is attainable for them.
This is not to say you should give up on FIRE because you’ll die friendless and alone. It’s just that you’ll have to find a new circle of friends who match your new values and have unlimited free time.
First take some time and mourn those lost friendships. They were real and they mattered, and losing them sucks, even if you love this new life.
The next step is to find new friends.
I’m going to be honest. It’s not going to be easy. Making friends as an adult is already way harder than as a kid, but even harder when you can’t commiserate about work. But it’s not impossible either. You could:
Join the ChooseFI groups for local meetups. Start your own FIRE meetups. Go to FIRE conferences like Econome. Find other adjacent groups that aren’t FIRE, but have similar values—like the digital nomads and WorldSchoolers.
It’s going to be weird and awkward in the beginning. It’ll also take many repeat meetups before you go from an acquaintance to a friend. You have to keep watering that friendship to help it grow.
Here are a few tips I’ve found useful when meeting new people:
Focus on activities, not just “hanging out”
Grabbing a cup of coffee is easy when you already know the person and have lots to talk about. But when it comes to meeting strangers, pick something to DO together. Join a running club. Take a cooking class. Go learn something and chances are you’ll find a lot of like-minded people who want to learn that thing too.
Listen more than you talk
A lot of people try to impress others by talking a lot. Be the opposite. Ask questions, be curious about the other person, and practice listening deeply to their answers and connecting with them. It’s not about you, it’s about them.
Give gifts and favours
One of the easiest ways to make friends is to just give gifts or do favours for the other person. Humans are generally reciprocal people and when other people are nice to then, they’ll want to be nice back.
Ask for advice
People love giving advice to others and feeling smart. Let them feel smart by asking them for advice (even if you don’t need it). This immediately breaks the ice and helps you get to know them better while making the other person feel good about themselves.
Obviously, these tips won’t work on every person you meet. There will be many people who don’t become lifelong friends but you have to go out there and try. The first time you might fail, but keep trying. Making new friends takes effort but is worth it. Some of our closest friends now are people we’ve met after retiring and they have much more in common with us than the friends we’ve lost.
What do you think? Have you tried getting any family or friends onboard the FIRE train? How did it go? Do you have any tips for making new friends after retiring?
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Someone told me, “Those you start with are not the ones you will end with.” Sad but true. Another great article.
This is good advice on making friends as an adult whether you’re FIRE or not!
I just celebrated my two years of being FIREd yesterday and I’m loving life. But you are right in that the work friends we had are quite a bit more distant now. They’ll say let’s get together for a beer soon but that never turns into a date. Every time the contact is us reaching out instead of them. The most frustrating though is trying to get them to jump on the train to FIRE. So far I’d say we are batting 0 on that.
It’s been tough on my wife and I to make friends in the local area because it’s a small town and anyone who is out and about during the week is older. (We’re 55&63)
On the great side my wife and I are best friends more than ever!
Now this is relatable but also still sad. We still want to keep our old friends even if it’s just 2 hours on a weekend meetup.
Honestly we just listen and we don’t talk about FIRE anymore. You are right – when they are stressing about remortgaging we are not relatable.
And tried to attend FI groups. My husband is totally not interested in them and I still feel awkward to be honest so I might be giving up on the search for FIRE friends and just let things be.
After all we have friends who have and don’t have children and for the most part it’s fine. Just talk about our common interests.
Sheryl,
I agree with your approach. We didn’t make any big deal about FIRE with family and friends. And with more people working from home, you can also blend in so easily now. We haven’t lost any of our working friends. We see them when they’re available.
I just finished reading the book quit like a millionaire. this may be fine for young people in their 30s. It does not address issues that can happen as people age. There is no mention of long-term care insurance without long-term care insurance whatever nasty tag you have saved could be wiped out in a matter of months, please rethink this issue
LTC insurance is like any other expense, if you need it, factor it in to your yearly expenses and multiply that by 25. It’s typically a few thousand a year, at most. If that breaks your budget, your budget needed work anyway. It probably wasn’t included in the book because it’ll be at least another decade or two before the authors will likely need it.
I might be in a weird spot being a semi-successful FIRE blogger (or at least I was a decade ago lol), but most of my friends I’m routinely in contact with today are from the FIRE ecosystem. Just more in common with folks on the FIRE path or already FIREd. From travel to frugality (or at least common sense about money/investing), to other lifestyle choices.
A lot of people before I quit told me I’d be bored. I’m never bored, however I have gotten lonely. And this is tough. I now enjoy working part time for the social aspect. I find no matter how fun something is, you can’t do it every day or it takes the fun out of it, whether its snowboarding, drinking, partying, eating out or working. I have found that I’ve cut back a tonne on going out and having drinks. I don’t want to snowboard of hike every single day even though these are my hobbies. But I now get my social fixes from still working a bit which I love. I have also found that lots of friends ask me about FIRE but really they want to know just what stocks to invest in without properly learning about it. One thing I was really looking forward to was the “Extraordinary event” you guys mentioned. I was hoping to join some fire stuff, but Econome doesn’t appeal to me too much, I would prefer a more international event. So hoping this is still happening!!!
Love the article! Awesome work. And you are so right! I have not been able to help my friends. I run a free course that is helping 23,000 strangers from 48 countries online but I have failed to help my friends! Always love reading your articles!
Alan, I’ve heard you and Katie on multiple podcasts but have yet to do your course! Surprising that none of your friends has come on board! But I think Kristy describes it so well here.
I’ve heard podcasts with the venerable JL Collins, and he’s commented multiple times on how people in the FIRE movement are “Unicorns”…… I’m thinking they’re far more unicorny than even JL Collins suggests. I’ve never encountered anyone even remotely interested in FI. FIRE people are more like extraterrestrial life: We know they’re out there at distant stars and galaxies, but it’s astonishingly unlikely that we’ll actually encounter one, in person, during our lifetime (unless we go to one of the suggested conferences/events).
The closest I’ve gotten is friends with a passing interest in investing, mostly trying to figure out what to do with their 401K’s…typically after being with the company for years and sitting in a money-market fund the whole time ! They learn through the grapevine that I’m somehow involved with personal finance so they come to me. I usually suggest a book (“Personal Finance for Dummies” or similar) or an FA… Ultimately, from experience, I know they won’t listen to me so I invest as little as possible into helping.
It can work with immediate family, depending on your family! Among my siblings and parents we are all now to greater or lesser extent in the FI train. This was thanks to my brother coming across it around 2017. I tried bringing some friends along but they really didn’t get it. I stopped trying as I saw it could actually sour relationships. I never mention to anyone outside the family what I am trying to do (not FIRE yet).
If find international school teachers and other expats are open to the idea seeing they need to usually organize their own retirements … like I myself have done ….. as outlined in the books “Millionaire Teacher” and “Millionaire Expat” …. the author is also Canadian but married to an American … and reside last I heard in Panama ….
Well. I am almost 55 and will be joining the sorta early retirement group. I must say, I have a lot of doubts and fears about taking this next step although we are financially fine. This topic makes me realize that a lot of my personal time is spent with coworkers. And yes, I also brushed off previously retired coworkers attempts to get together. Let’s see how it feels on the other side.
I lost many of my friends already due to either no longer having hobbies in common or one or both of us becoming too busy at work. On the other hand, when I participate in my hobbies I make new friends very easily. Doing activities together really is a great catalyst for friendship – it gives you something to talk about that you’re guaranteed to have as a common interest. When I FIRE, I already have plenty of people I’ll be able to hang out with more often, and I’m sure some of those friendships will blossom when watered that way.
The remaining friends from my past are the ones who I can not see for 5 years and we pick up basically where we left off, as if no time had passed. I’m not worried about those friendships!
I don’t plan to push anyone into FIRE, nor will I talk about it much to anyone who isn’t clearly interested. If they are really curious, they’ll ask. It will probably be interesting once we reach fatFIRE, as I have an investment plan that will continue to grow at an accelerating rate, and will be financially quite well off a few years after I actually RE. FIRECracker, your advice about prioritizing experiences/memories over things has stuck with me, and I plan to stick to that as I build wealth. No point only having wealth in a financial sense, while being poor in life experiences, memories, love, friends, family, all the things that matter!
I’ve learned not to try and convince anyone to do anything. I’m happy with my choices, and ultimately, I only know what’s best for me. Most people are comfortable with their lives and don’t want to break out of that mold. To each their own!
I think that this isn’t just a FIRE thing, but rather, it’s a “you’ve moved on, and they haven’t, and they resent it” thing, at least to some extent. Maybe you’ve traveled, gotten a degree, or whatever, and they continued marking time (Army-Speak for marching in place without moving forward) back home in Bumfuck.
Oh, well.
Greetings from Taipei, Taiwan–and next week, Hanoi for two weeks of intensive Vietnamese language training. Today’s my birthday, and it’s my birthday present to myself!
Dan V
great article.. . . and so so true .. once i became wealthy i lost my 3 best friends one after another .. they asked me for money when they hit a wall financially and when i said no ..
they simply ditched me because i wont mix friendship and money .
and since being retired i could only make friends with people who had time . since all this i have not made effort to make new friends . i have some cherished old friends
BUT .. I am much happier now . i have my lifelong partner who is BFF anyway . no more stress in relationships … .
why dont people ever ask me questions ? i am naturally curious when i have conversations with friends .. i dont ask questions to be polite .. but they never ask me .. is it the modern world or what ??
I don’t know why people don’t ask questions. I’ve known a few people who FIREd back before I even knew that term, and I was always curious how they did it. Usually the answer was something I didn’t think I could replicate, but I was still fascinated by their experience and hoped it would be possible for me someday.
Now that I have a realistic plan and my FIRE date is probably 2.5 years out or so, I’m excited to tell people about it but I do run into a lot of disbelief. Some of that probably stems from the fact that I’ve tried the entrepreneur thing a few times over the years, told a lot of friends about it, and then it didn’t work out. Still, being on my 4th or 5th attempt (depending on how much you count the ones I never really got started on) is better than the average success rate for a small business, so it’s not like I’ve underachieved that much!
I think this is one of the things that kills me the most about our former work friends. They’re in much the same overworked and over stressed boat I was and they knew for a few years before we FIREd ourselves that we were on that path. But I think only 1 person has asked anything about how we did it. Do they like killing themselves for the company?
I miss having more friend contact but at the same time I just came home from a 2 hour bike ride while everyone else is working.
As a middle aged early retired woman who’s friends mostly left town after college and doesn’t have any major hobbies, friends are few. My husband is great but women friends is really what I need. We are FI so the people I meet are women with kids, we have none. Not lots in common. Retirees, the normal retirees seem uninterested in being friends when they realize I am retired in mid 50’s and travel half the time with my husband. It’s lonely sometimes. My younger sister is my main friend, but it’s not the same. I am thinking of taking up pickleball. Don’t really have other ideas at this point. I am 1/2 the time in New Orleans.
Who needs friends anyway? It’s highly overrated.
Yup, lonely. I am hesitant to do meetups because I hate people knowing that I have resources. I wish I am as open as you guys are sharing net worth but my family had resources and was always taught to follow stealth wealth. Also, I find it difficult to maintain friendships since I spend 6 months travelling. Love not knowing or caring what day or time is super awesome.
The post also does a great job of balancing truth with hope. It doesn’t sugarcoat the reality that not everyone will join you on the path to financial freedom, nor that some will even feel threatened by it. Yet, it offers practical advice on how to build new connections that are more aligned with your current life phase, which is something many in the FIRE community need but struggle to find.
Overall agree with most of the post. The one that I’ll raise some caution on is GIVE GIFTS AND FAVOURS. I think everyone needs to be careful with this one.
While finding friends is a nice and good thing, you don’t want to be attracting the sponges and leeches.
Absolutely spot on. I’m not at FIRE yet but in my way. I try not to talk about it now because anytime I have my friends either don’t believe its true or seem, for some reason, annoyed that I’m doing it. I guess like you said it’s due to them thinking you’re making a negative statement about the lifestyle they’re living by even being on the FIRE pathway.
I guess this is just another example of the bucket of crabs analogy. People are so stuck in the victim mindset that rather than wondering how you escaped and if they can replicate that success, they’ll try to pull you back down with them, muttering the whole time a litany of excuses for why things will never change for the better for any of us.
I am a recovering work-o-holic, i work in healthcare as a 911 Emergency communication officer-medical, medical response coordinator for my provinces north zone and hold a casual position in acute care. I am very open, chatty and friendly but find it hard to make NEW friends. I can’t imagine what i would talk about with a stranger which i find sad, especially when i leave healthcare. Often when i am approached it’s the typical “What do you do?” question and once they find out the second is what’s the wildest/craziest call you have received. My best friend says that i don’t need more friends just more time with the ones i have, but 95% of my people also work in healthcare or are friends i have made because of my children. I think i would be very lonely without work, not sure how i will navigate that.
It’s interesting how FIRE’s early retirement path can isolate you. Perhaps friends struggle to relate when financial goals diverge. Building a seven-figure portfolio at 31 is amazing, but lifestyle shifts can create distance. Finding shared interests, maybe even exploring some fun io games together, could help bridge the gap.
This is a really insightful point about how achieving FIRE can sometimes inadvertently create a sense of isolation. It’s true that when your financial goals and lifestyle diverge significantly from your friends’, it can be tough to maintain those connections. Finding common ground, like exploring new hobbies or even some fun io games, sounds like a wonderful way to bridge that gap. My Granny always said, “Shared joy is double joy,” and I think that applies here perfectly – finding activities you can all enjoy together is key!