Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, I was told the way life should be lived by my parents: go to school, get a good education; find a job and then get a job and work your way up. For the vast majority of folk this makes sense. That said, over the past decade bloggers (mostly from the US) have been mapping out alternative ways to live life, ones in which good old Victorian ideas of thrift combined with savvy investing, have culminated in people retiring in their 30s and 40s. This post looks at some of the ideas and if they are all they're cracked up to be.

Something I notice when reading random FIRE blogs is how easy it appears to be to achieve financial independence. All you have to do is save, tighten your belt and dump your money into index funds. Done. Life for me hasn't been...