{"id":133349,"date":"2025-11-11T04:08:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T04:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/133349\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T04:08:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T04:08:18","slug":"michael-houghton-ive-realised-that-the-early-retirement-part-of-the-fire-movement-is-in-many-ways-a-myth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/133349\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Houghton: \u2018I\u2019ve realised that the \u201cearly retirement\u201d part of the FIRE movement is, in many ways, a myth\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">All I had really secured was a safety net. My family would be fine whether I worked or not, but we wouldn\u2019t necessarily thrive\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"There's a big difference between financial independence and financial freedom. Photo: Getty\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/5051c84c-3690-46a9-a687-78dd4683a184.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">There&#8217;s a big difference between financial independence and financial freedom. Photo: Getty<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">For years I imagined the day I would finally hit my \u201cFI number\u201d, the amount of money I needed to reach financial independence and which meant I\u2019d never need to work again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">I fantasised about seeing that figure on the screen and handing in my notice. I even had my retirement party planned out in my head.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All I had really secured was a safety net. My family would be fine whether I worked or&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,176,61,60,898,174,175],"class_list":{"0":"post-133349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-latest-news-ticker","13":"tag-personal-finance","14":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}