That’s not a health plan. That’s wishful thinking. Your health is a lottery, even for vegan ultra-marathoners.
Human fallibility is one of our fundamental universal shared experiences, leading us to believe that, like the children of Lake Woebegone, we are all above average. Individually, we acknowledge the truth of statistics, yet emotionally we chuck our rational faculties to the curb in citing the grandparent who survived into his 90s as incontrovertible proof that we will live to the same age. Never mind the grandparent who passed in her 60s.
In the ED, the anecdotal wisdom runs that the nicer the patient, the more devastating the diagnosis they are likely to receive from us. The raging meth addict who vomits on my shoes bounces between the boundaries of life and death like a weeble that wobbles but won’t fall down. The endearing church lady who passed out ladling soup at the homeless shelter? She gets diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
But don’t take my word for it. Several brave bloggers have offered their own stories as proof of life’s injustice. OB Doctor Mom shared the harrowing experience of being diagnosed with a lung mass 8 weeks after delivering her third child, and how it altered her professional trajectory. Liz at Chief Mom Officer notes how complications following her otherwise young, healthy husband’s routine surgical procedure nearly cost him his life due to septic shock.
The great thing about the FIRE philosophy is that it is designed to help us use money as a tool to allocate time in accordance with our priorities. Although there is no guarantee how long that time will be, it’s beside the point.
Once you establish your values as the axis around which your life should revolve, other things fall into place. Your career becomes a tool to support living your values – whether to provide for those you love the most, connect with others, or impact the human experience in a meaningful way.
Joe Dominguez, co-authored “Your Money Or Your Life,” the seminal book that laid the foundations for the FIRE movement. He died at age 58 of cancer, a young age to leave the planet. Yet in his short life he made a deep impact on our thinking, left a legacy in the blogs and books that followed in his footsteps, and showed by example that a frugal but meaningful alternate path was possible.
Your health is a lottery. While you can hedge your risk through healthy living and eating, accept that most of what happens will be beyond your control. Many people are attracted to FIRE because financial literacy imparts a sense of control over one’s destiny, and FIRE bloggers in particular are control freaks.
Accepting the arbitrary nature of health empowers us to individually define what constitutes a good life.
The meaning you impart to the hours you are allotted is fully within your control.
You don’t get to decide if your life will be brief; you do, however, get to decide if it will it be well-lived.
Comments 6
Youth comes with a sense of immortality. With age and experience, realism creeps in. With two friends from my (6 person) fellowship class dead by the age of 50, in addition to a 20+ year medical career, I understand that no amount of kale will scare away the grim reaper.
Health care costs and plans in retirement are difficult to predict, enormously complicated, and ever changing. To assume that your 40k per year LEANFIRE will cover you for the next 60+ years is foolish and unwise.
Author
VagabondMD,
That’s a truly frightening statistic from your fellowship class. I could not agree more that health care costs remain the black swan event that risks undermining early retirement, especially for those with minimal buffer.
Thanks for stopping by,
CD
Going to have to share your content some. I can’t believe I’m the sole commenter on some of these.
I also noticed from a previous post where you finished with your Blog name initials, “CD”. So that people can keep us apart, just know I am always “cd :O)” (I refer to the character codes as my big-nosed-smiley since I clown around a bit).
Anyway, I’m glad I saw your interview and hopefully you gain some additional readership.
cd :O)
Author
cd :O),
Thanks for the kind words (and for using a distinctive signature). While you and my mom likely have the site mostly to yourselves, I just migrated my site from weebly to wordpress, inadvertently losing several months of comments in the move (huge bummer). I’d be grateful for any sharing you are willing to undertake!
Welcome, and please do poke around some more,
CD
“I’m troubled, however, by a recent trend of bloggers confounding their admirable health maintenance activities with presumptions of future health.”
I was reading a book by Bogel and he said the same thing about portfolios. It’s the reason I don’t much believe in 25x and 4%.
Author
When it comes to major planning decisions with huge potential down sides, I’m a big fan of under-promise, over-perform. Looking to get to 30-33X before we call it quits for the same reason.