F.I.R.E. Movement & Financial Integrity

Hi, everyone. It's Alexandra. I hope you're having an awesome day. So today's video is Financial integrity and the Fire Movement. And we'll start with the Fire Movement. The fire Movement, if you haven't heard of it, is financial independence. Retire financially independent. Retire early. And I heard about this a couple years ago and just kind of went into a deep dive on it. And the short of it is you basically save 50 to 70% of your income and then you invest it, and then over a period of time, it compounds, and then you can retire and live off of your investment. So I. Some of the pushback I think, on this is that only people who have really great jobs or make a lot of money can actually do this. But I've seen amazing stories of people who are homesteading and school teachers. So I don't necessarily agree with that. And I think it's more about the intention than the actual outcome, although the outcome is cool, but which I'll get into later in this video. So I was super inspired by the Fire Movement, and some of the resources that I really liked was Mr. Bunny Mustache. He was kind of like my go to of learning about it. He is like. He's like the man in the movement. And Vicki Robin was also, I think, what's her book, Your life or your money? She was great, too. I read a lot of stuff that she wrote. And Playing with Fire, they wrote a book and then they also did a documentary, which I love the documentary just for a quick intro. And I think their story is so inspiring and great. And I think those were the basic ones for me. So I did, like, kind of a deep dive into it was so inspired by it. And I shared with Brian, he wasn't as excited, but he turned. He, like, you know, it. It started a bunch of conversations for us. And then eventually we got on the same page and he got really into it and he, you know, read Playing with Fire, and he just read, I don't. Maybe a couple books and got really inspired by it. So it just kind of helped us shift our focus a little bit more. And we didn't really love financial independence. Retire early. That didn't really do much because we love what we do, and it just wasn't totally it for us. So he cleverly and geniusly created financial integrity, realizing eudaimonia. And eudaimonia is a Greek word translated to happiness, but more closely related to flourishing. So essentially our intention is to be in financial integrity and realizing our eudaimonia. Realizing eudaimonia, like Creating and cultivating, flourishing in ourselves, in our life. So that's kind of the game that we are currently playing. But it really got us on this, this, this thinking and like altering the way that we spend and choose to invest our money and our time and our energy. So the short of what we did was we, as I said in my video, maybe, I don't know, five videos, oh no, long, maybe two weeks ago, I guess about trusting yourself and trusting your intuition. I just had this vision for a smaller house and more land. And then we had this, this second intention of radically simplifying and decreasing our expenses. So we moved to a house that was half the price of our other house. We sold our Tesla SUV Tesla and just simplified that and we went moved from like a 3000 square foot house to a 1500 square foot house and literally just radically like took 50, 50% of our expenses off. So that is, that's kind of how we went about it and that's where we currently are and, and we feel really good with those choices. And the best part about it is I feel like we upgraded our life. Like we got even more in integrity for what we wanted and what we wanted for ourself and for our family and for our business and for our community. And it's just really helped us realize our eudaimonia. So I think this is an important topic and whether you choose to play the fire game or not is really irrelevant. But I think being an intentional about how we are spending our money and how we are investing it is an important one. Especially like I wish I had this wisdom 20 years ago when I got into personal development because I feel like in personal development I got introduced to somebody who is super awesome and helped me change my life in a lot of ways. But I felt like there was a lot of focus on wealth and that you needed to have, you know, the house and the cars and things like that. It wasn't always said, but I think there was just this energy and personal development that you need to have the nice cars and all of that. And what I love about the fire movement is they're kind of like screw that stuff. Why would you waste your money on that when actually when you look at what gives you happiness, it's not so it's not those things. It is the true things that, that give you joy, meaningful work, relationships, connection, eating well, moving your body, sleeping, like all things that we talk about in the optimized coach program that actually create that sense of flourishing. It's not spending the money and this is not a conversation about money being good or bad, how much you should spend because everybody needs to figure out what their financial integrity is. But I think we can be influenced. I know I was influenced in my 20s for sure and if I could go back I would give my 20 year old self this wisdom of like no, the things that you love are really simple. Like write out a list of what you love to do and focus on doing those things and save your money. Don't spend so much money, don't get in credit card debt, all of these things that more is not always better and in fact less is usually better. So there's just a lot of lessons on this. So if you are feeling the pull for personal development to extend yourself for bigger, better, faster, etc. I would just question it. And it doesn't mean that, that you can't go for that because some people, that is your path. For some people it's not for some people they just like me. I just, I like, I genuinely enjoy a simple life and we are abundant and, and I'm very grateful for that. But it's when it comes down to it, the things that give me joy, they're really simple. And so in the Playing with Fire video movie they had a, a moment where the couple wrote down like what gives them joy and they're like wow, the things that those are like almost free. Like those don't cost a lot of money. So I think it's just an important conversation. I think just bringing it to light of being financially in integrity with what we value and what we've, what, what we want to create in our lives. And then when we create from that place we, we're in, in integrity. And that feels really good. Like I feel really good about the choice to drastically simplify and to decrease expenses. And like I said, I feel like we've upgraded our life. Like I just feel such an alignment and such a truth and much more mindful about how I spend money. And I think it's kind of fun and I just love simplicity, minimalism. Like I just am all into these things as well. I think it's good for our souls, I think it's good for the planet. I just think there's so many benefits of less consumption in all areas of our lives. So those are some thoughts for today's video on the fire movement and financial integrity and just thinking about what, what gives you the most meaning and how can you align your finances with that and not feeling like you need that. Your worth is tied to money. And I know that we can all be like, oh, that's not the case. But I think it's so subtle in our culture. You know, like, you see the bling and the celebrities and doing this and the big fancy houses, and again, those are all fine. But if we're not in alignment and we're not doing what we're here to do and feeling fulfilled and creating the meaning that we want in our lives, I think it's an important conversation to ask, like, how do I want to spend my money and make it fun? Like, I think saving sometimes get a bad. Gets a bad rap. But it can be fun to save money, it can be fun to live simply, it can be fun to live in a smaller house and decrease your expenses, etc. Etc. So those are my thoughts. I would love to hear your. If you're familiar with the Fire movement, what have you learned about money and financial integrity? Yeah. So I hope this was helpful and I hope that it was because I know, like, this would have. This information would have changed my life in. In beautiful and inspiring and really joyful ways. So I hope that it does that for somebody out there. And I'm sending you lots of love and blessings.