Review: "Playing With FIRE" The Documentary

I wanted to do a write-up and a review of the Documentary "Playing With FIRE".

A little background on myself. While I did make some stupid decisions in my late teens and early twenties in regards to money, ever since I dug myself out of that hole, I've been pretty frugal.

I think I was living a FIRE style lifestyle, before I even knew that FIRE was "a thing." I've always been pretty frugal naturally. I've always valued leisure and free time to pursue hobbies, and spend with friends and family over material things, but didn't necessarily know that FIRE was actually an actual thing, or a lifestyle people pursued.

I don't recall how I initially learned about FIRE, most likely from a Youtube video or Reddit post, but upon learning about it, it just made sense for me.

So I've been following the "FIRE Movement". It's actually funny we call it a movement, because it's actually a very individualistic thing. That said I've followed FIRE blogs, watched FIRE Youtubers, and regularly stay up on the r/financialindependence , r/leanfire , and r/fatfire subreddits for a while as well.

Being sort of a member of the "community", for probably the past year or two on podcasts and blogs I've heard about this Documentary "Playing with FIRE" and was anxious for it to come out. Every couple months I'd hear Scott Rieckens (the main character in the Documentary) on a podcast talking about the movie and wonder to myself, "hey I wonder if that's out yet".

Well I must have signed up for their e-mail list at some point because yesterday I received an e-mail telling me "Playing With FIRE" was going to be released "tomorrow" November 19. I of course wanted to see it.

I got home from work this evening and was initially planning on having to give up the family room to my girlfriend who would likely be watching some vampire show on Netflix, and I had planned on retreating to my office to watch "Playing With FIRE". When I asked her if she wanted to watch it she intially made a vomit noise and said no thanks, and we began negotiating who was going to get the big tv in the living room.

Well turns out she's sick and her defenses were down, and she wanted some company, so she begrudgingly agreed to watch it with me. I'm also going to add some thoughts from her, and her opinion of the film at the end, as I think it would be interesting to get the take, or a review, from someone who's not interested in the FIRE movement, and not particularly financially saavy. No offense to her if she reads this.

Playing With FIRE Synopsis

So going into the movie I was curious what the overview would be like. Is it going to be following one man, or one families journey? Would it be a Documentary about Mr. Money Mustache? Would it be a documentary talking to experts and showing news clips?

So playing with FIRE begins with a few notable bloggers and "influencers" in the FIRE community talking a bit about how most people live, and how most people view money and handle money. They played a few news clips which reference how most people don't have $400 to cover an emergency or unexpected expense. 

They also broke down how on average most people save about 3%. How a financial advisor might recommend people save 10%, and how a really aggressive financial advisor might recommend people save 15%. And even at that level, the high end of what's recommended by many, you're looking at about a 50 year working life to be able to retire.

Now those of  you in the FIRE movement, or who are at least a little financially saavy, might be familiar with the 4% rule, or the concept of how if you save 25x your yearly living expenses you can retire and live off the interest or dividends from those investments. The Documentary talks about how if you up your savings rate to 50%, as opposed to 3%, you can knock that 50 year working life down to about 17 years.

Early on in the movie when they are kind of setting the stage, and interviewing some of these FI bloggers, they are showing their retirement ages. As someone's talking they'll show their name on the screen, and below it, it would say "Retired at 31", or "Retired at 33". 

So at this point they introduce 35 year old Scott Rieckens and his wife Taylor, along with their toddler daughter Jovie. The couple lives in Coronado, a small island off of San Diego. And they seemingly live an idyllic life. They live in a nice home in a beach community. They live in probably one of the most desirable areas of the country. They drive nice cars, go out to expensive dinners, and sip wine on the beach by a bonfire with their friends.

Scott works as a videographer and his wife a corporate recruiter. While I don't believe they mentioned their incomes, I'd imagine they both made pretty healthy incomes. But Scott talked about how while they lived an amazing life and were happy, when he looked at their bank account he felt as if there should have been more. He realized that very nice lifestyle of living in a nice community, driving nice cars, and eating nice dinners was costing him a lot of money and preventing him from saving much money, even though both he and his wife made a good buck.

I'll try to spare you from a play by play of the entire movie, but essentially over the course of a year Scott and his wife sell their home. Stay with her parents for a few months. Move to Iowa and stay with his parents for a few months, before finally relocating and renting a place in Bend, Oregon.

What's really impressive about this however is that he pretty much went from his former lifestyle, embarking on the "FIRE Lifestyle" selling his home and relocating his family all in the matter of a couple months after first learning about the concept on a Tim Ferris podcast. 

Now I was kind of surprised Scott and his wife fell into the FIRE Lifestyle as easily as they did. While some people are just naturally frugal, or at the very least, just not used to having much. He and his wife made good money, lived a pretty fancy lifestyle, and seemed to be fairly materialistic. At one point in the movie he talked about how they had a $2,000 a month food budget, more than most people's mortgages.

Without giving too much away, in the end it all seemed to work out well for them, they seem to have settled into their new lifestyle, and seem to be happy with it.

My Thoughts on the Documentary

Overall I thought the Documentary was very well done. I'll be honest I expected to be disappointed. I'd been waiting for this Documentary to come out for over a year and if for no other reason than all the build up, I expected to be disappointed. 

It was interesting to see someone's journey through FIRE. It was interesting to see how the director laid out the concept of FIRE, since FIRE is kind of a loose idea with everyone creating their own version of FIRE based upon their priorities, their income, their values.

I thought it was informative, educational, and thought provoking, while also being entertaining. 

I really don't have any criticisms of the film, however if you pushed me to come up with a few, here's what they would be.

The film, for the most part followed a very high income family. This is often one of the criticisms, or frustrations of those not earning six figures or even multiple six figures. This is kind of what the subreddit r/LeanFire grew out of. People who earned 40k or 60k, who couldn't relate to those in the r/financialindependence subreddit who were engineers or programmers earning multiple six figures per year. 

And it's an understandable frustration. Someone earning 50k, who manages to live in 25k, is still going to have to work for a decade to save, what a high income earner could save in even just a year or two, while still living on a $100,000 of it. 

What's important to remember however is it's all relative. A Google programmer could probably FIRE after one or two years of work if they were willing to move to the midwest, and cut their lifestyle to that of your average middle class person. But a big idea in FIRE is roughly maintaining your current lifestyle in retirement. So the high income earner who wants to  maintain their high income lifestyle in some ways isn't that much better off than the middle class worker, assuming both are going to roughly maintain their lifestyle. I would say however to some extent, it's going to be tough to FIRE, without having at least a certain level of income.

To the films credit however, when they visited "Camp Mustache" where they talked with others living the FIRE Lifestyle, one couple interviewed were couple comprised of two teachers who are currently FIRE after having made salaries of 35K and 15K each for most of their career. They did say however they didn't do it just teaching 9-5. They taught summer school, tutored, taught extra classes at the local community college, and began buying real estate. 

My Main Takeaways

Being that I'm living the FIRE Life myself, and am familiar with the concept, the lifestyle, and the community, I can't necessarily say that I learned anything groundbreaking. It did however reinforce some key principals of FIRE.

One of my main takeaways was they said sit down and decide what's important to you. Spend on what's important to you and cut out the rest mercilessly. In addition to that, knowing what you want, and having an end goal or a reason for the frugality and sacrafice, is what actually makes it not only tolerable, but worth it. 

I think that's one area I could stand to hone in on. Figuring out what's truly important to me.

My Non-FIRE Girlfriends Take on the Film

Okay, so my girlfriend of 6 years watched the film with me. She's not someone who likes documentaries. She's not someone who's particularly interested in money or personal finance either. While she is naturally pretty frugal, it's not something she really puts a focus on.

I kind of anticipated her complaining through the whole movie, kind of like when I make her watch Queen of the South with me, another show she hates. Surprisingly however the film kept her pretty engaged throughout. And despite being a bit under the weather today, she actually stayed up through the entire thing without falling asleep even though we were watching it in bed, so that's a high mark for the film right there.

At the end I asked her what her thoughts were. Her first comment was that it was scary. I think the talk about social security not being there in the future and some other aspects like that scared her a little. She said she liked the film and took some stuff away from it, however she was left with an impression a lot of people are left with when learning about FIRE.

She said well yeah, that's easy for people who have a ton of money put way already to do. Or that's easy for a couple making 200K plus a year to do, but what about average people. 

Wrapping Up

Overall I was impressed with the film. Having been someone who had been waiting forever for it to come out, I was expecting it to be a flop, but it was actually very good. 

I was happy I was able to watch it with my girlfriend. We've been dating for 6 years, I'm fairly confident we'll wind up together long term, and I thought watching the film together was not only a good way to kind of start a discussion about money, but also to kind of share a lot of my mindset and values with her, without actually having to sit down and try to explain FIRE myself. 

I would highly recommend couples watch the movie together. I noticed from the FIRE subreddits, forums, and even Youtube videos, the topic of finding a like-minded partner who's on board with FIRE is a concern, as well as a challenge for a lot of people in the FIRE community. 

I'd highly recommend giving it a view. I initially bought it on Google Play for $3.99, before realizing the idiots at Google won't let you mirror your phone to your ROKU and play their movies. So I ultimately had to buy it a 2nd time on Amazon for $4.99. Not very FIRE of me, but I will be calling Google tomorrow to complain and to try to get a refund.