Stepping Out Of The FI Bubble And Into The “Real World”

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

This quote from motivational speaker Jim Rohn is so true – who we surround ourselves with is so important because it helps shape who we are, how we act, our beliefs, and our thoughts.

In the FI community I’ve observed that most of us choose to surround ourselves with others from this same community. This makes sense since we all share a strong bond of personal finance/Financial Independence, which is exceedingly rare & hard to find. In addition to that monetary connection, many of us also discover that we have similar goals, similar habits, similar lifestyle choices, and perhaps even similar values.

While I completely understand how & why the FI community is so close, it’s also made me wonder… Can too much of a good thing be bad? Is it healthy to surround ourselves only with others who are just like us? Are most of us in this community stuck in an echo chamber? Are we really that different from the 99.9% of others who live in the “real world”?

Embracing Community

For most of my life social interactions and the concept of community were never a big deal. I am an introvert, so I’ve always been satisfied with keeping to myself and spending time alone. I never had a huge social network, but instead have always had a small, tight-knit group of close friends over the years. In addition to these friends, my family and the casual relationships I’ve had with co-workers seemed to provide all the social interaction I needed.

My thoughts on community started to change when I first learned about the FIRE movement back in 2018. Not only did I learn about new & advanced financial techniques (which is what initially piqued my interest in FIRE), but more importantly I was also introduced to a whole new group of people who were on the same path in life as me. Many of these people were going through the same things, had the same challenges, and were there to help & support each other along the way. Besides close friends, I had never been exposed to others who I could relate with so well.

Since retiring a couple years ago I’ve actually been trying to embed myself more into the FI community by attending large-scale events such as the EconoMe conference, CampFI, & Camp Mustache, organizing meetups in my local ChooseFI groups, and even volunteering wherever I can (like producing & editing the Mile High FI podcast). Each of these activities have been fun & rewarding and has made me feel more connected to others.

Is This Ideal?

I love being part of the FI community and surrounding myself with so many kind, intelligent, caring, and creative people.

In a strange way though it’s started to feel like I’m living in my own idyllic world where everyone I know is doing well financially, we all share the same values, we all do the same things, we all make the same choices, we all get along, and we all live in relative peace & harmony.

This may sound good on the surface, but is it really ideal?

Sometimes it feels like I’m living in a FI bubble.

Comfortable With Where I’m At

I feel very comfortable in this space and have intentionally surrounded myself with only people of my choosing. But why?

I’ve already spent a lot of time cultivating my current community. I’ve considered myself to be a member of the FI community for a while now (~7 years). Even when I first discovered this group it still took me a while to fully embrace the community and get comfortable with it. I interacted only sporadically & virtually at first for years, before really starting to embed myself as a more active participant. I know it takes time & effort to build relationships and sometimes it just feels like “too much” effort to form new ones beyond what I already have.
I don’t want to rock the boat. I don’t like change, although I know change can be good from time-to-time. At this point I feel like I have a good balance overall in my life – both related to my interests & schedule, as well as my social network. I recently wrote about major disruption in my life by adding too many activities, so I am hesitant to try making too many additional changes again that could result in a negative outcome.
I like to avoid conflict. I’m not saying that everyone in the FI community always agrees with one another, but for the most part we’re all on the same page – we tend to share similar aspirations, habits, lifestyle choices, and principles. It seems like the rest of the world is always in conflict, disagreeing with each other and arguing over every little thing. I’d rather avoid all of this as it seems unnecessary and increasingly prevalent.
I’ve found others I can relate to. In the FI community we all share an interest in personal finance/Financial Independence and because of this we are all on similar paths in life. For the most part we’re going through the same things, have the same challenges, have the same goals and can relate to each other more than those who don’t share this financial affiliation. It’s just so much easier to get along with people who share so many commonalities.
It’s easy to stick with what I know. Call me lazy if you’d like, but perhaps one of the biggest reasons I want to maintain the status-quo is that most of the time “doing nothing” is easier than “doing something”. Similar to not wanting to rock the boat, I’m happy with the community that I’ve created so far and don’t feel a strong need to introduce more uncertainty into my life.

Exposure To The Other 99.9%

I’ve recently been exposed to a variety of other people, both intentionally & inadvertently, who live in my local community – from my dental hygienist to other parents at my kids’ sport practices to neighbors. In the past I would’ve done my best to shun all of these people in the “real world” and stick to myself, but with my recent thoughts about living in a FI bubble, I thought that I would give them a chance. Plus, these were all just more opportunities for me to practice my continuing skill of learning to listen to others.

It’s been very interesting talking to all of these people and hearing what’s been going on in their lives…

Of course everyone who’s still working has brought up their jobs, which long-time readers of this blog know I hate talking about. And there’s always surface-level conversations about recent news, upcoming vacations, the weather, etc.

But the interesting part was when people got comfortable enough to open up a little and share what was really going on in their lives. My dental hygienist talked about balancing her career as a divorced mom while raising 2 young kids and requiring a lot of support from her parents. A parent told me that his best friend’s 21-year-old son recently died in a car accident. A grandparent who I hadn’t seen in a year told me about his recent battle with cancer and the subsequent path to recovery. A neighbor talked to me about the strained relationship he’s had with his family throughout the years.

Not Really that Different

All of these specific stories and many more have made me realize that at the end of the day, perhaps we really aren’t that different from each other; we’re all just people going through life simultaneously. As humans we can all experience the same traumas, we can all deal with similar issues, we can all experience the same emotions while at the same time, most of these experiences have nothing to do with money (or are just tangentially related).

I’ve heard a great quote from JL Collins, as repeated by Carl Jensen many times, that “Money only solves money problems”, meaning that money is not a cure-all for everything in life. While money can be used as a very powerful tool to solve financial problems, it cannot fix all other problems such as relationship issues, the loss of a loved one, etc.

All this to say, while it’s great to have money unite an entire group of us in the FI community, money should also not be at the center of everything we do and everything we’re about. We shouldn’t tune out everyone else in the world just because they may not care about money as much as we do; there are many other areas of life where we can find common interests & experiences. In fact, perhaps it’s even beneficial to be exposed to differing thoughts & perspectives to help balance out our own views of the world.

Stepping Outside The Bubble

Although I admit that I’d be totally comfortable living only in the FI world, I also know that I need to venture out every once in a while for my own good. I don’t know exactly who I’ll meet, where I’ll go, or how far I’ll travel, but I think it’ll be fun to try.

I’ve already found other communities with common interests such as music, football, and even getting to know the parents of my kids’ friends/classmates. Similar to the FI community, each of these groups are filled with interesting and passionate people who all have their own unique experiences to share. And because we already share some commonalities, I’ve found that it’s easy to relate to most of these people.

So I highly encourage everyone to get out there as well and see who you can find. Perhaps we’ll even cross paths unexpectedly in other communities and share interests that we didn’t even know we had!

Links/Resources

Reader Questions

If you’re part of the FI community, do you ever feel too insulated or that we’re living in our own bubble?
Beyond FI, what other communities or groups are you part of?

Leave your answers or comments below – or email us directly at info@epicfinancialjourney.com