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Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) is a concept that has been gaining traction across India primarily after Covid-19. Professionals are pursuing this trend driven by the need to “live life on their own terms” rather being dictated by employers and family pressures.
Basis a survey by PGIM India Mutual Fund in 2023, nearly 67% of the respondents stated that they have either planned or are planning for an early retirement, which is 18% more than the previous survey results of 2020. People as young as 33 years of age have started planning for retirement.
This trend have been gaining prominence due to factors like rising levels of stress and work pressure, and long working hours leaving less time with people to pursue other hobbies. People are also changing career trajectory by shifting focus to set up their own venture in the fields like bakery, cooking, creative writing, digital marketing and others.
Key benefits in achieving Financial Impendence
- Gives you more control of your life with regards to time and money. You can chose your destiny basis your needs and ambitions.
- Provides you more time to pursue passions, and pay attention to family and health.
- Learn new things, travel more to get experiences, and makes you more calmer from daily shackles of work deadlines and pressures.
Certain drawbacks in pursuing FIRE
- Taking early retirement from work may result in a lack of meaningful purpose in life gradually over a period of time.
- Lack of social interactions with new and young people that is inherent part of work may have a psychological and mental health effect in longer run.
- Retiring early may have a negative impact on the cognitive abilities of a person as jobs offers challenges, project timelines, and scope to think out of box.
- Pursuing FIRE may result in high levels of pressure and stress in early part of career to create a corpus or wealth.
The above-mentioned scenarios offer strong arguments in favour of the person of either mindset. However, it is essential to understand what is driving this mindset – Are more people today working in jobs with less satisfaction levels? Are jobs or workplace becoming more toxic? Are people having lesser time for family, travel and health? The answers may vary from person to person as each individual have better perspective of his/her life.
The ideal scenario for a job seeker would be to find a work that gives satisfaction while also allowing him/her to pursue other interests (travel, music, sports, etc.). However, in today’s time finding work basis your passion and requirement is very difficult owing to high competition and limited seats.
A person is free to retire early, however it is advisable to have a proper plan in place to pursue some constructive work in the extra time that is now available. Many psychologists say that a working person have high self-confidence, better sociological skills and gains respect among family members and friends.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.