My immigrant grandfather never climbed the social ladder and didn’t retire young or rich. I’m not sure he even understood or subscribed to the concept of investing or retirement.
Yet similar to FIRE walkers, he managed both his money and his lifestyle in a way that made him rich in stability, freedom, and the opportunity to put his own interests before his employers’.
In some ways, like in his unwavering frugality, he exhibited FIRE principles long before it was a thing. Yet in other ways, he secured financial freedom by following his own ethos.
Here are 7 money lessons I learned from my immigrant grandfather that FIRE does not teach.
(1) He worked for more than money.
FIRE largely teaches that full time work is an exchange of time for money. This viewpoint is largely conceptualized by burnt out office professionals in modern times.
Not my grandfather. He didn’t see work as the thief of time. Not only could he not understand an entitled white collar attitude; he couldn’t understand blue collar entitlements either. He was a no-collar, minimum wage immigrant that saw the opportunity to work for an American wage as tantamount to winning the lottery of life.
He could have retired in his mid-50s but instead joyfully worked full time until he was 80, when he “retired” to give full time care to my ailing grandmother.
While I don’t expect many to emulate this, there is still a lesson here: you can view work like a burning building you want to escape post haste . . . or can you view work like a winning lottery ticket you get to cash every time you badge in. Work is what you make of it.
(2) Frugality has endless possibilities
My grandfather could be the godfather of the scarcity mindset popular with some in the lean FIRE crowd. But his frugality was more extreme.
Typical FIRE frugality can be summarized in one simple list of major items: used cars, house hacking, MNVO cell plans, home cooked meals, and credit card points. An effective list, no doubt and probably cuts far enough for middle to high income earners. But my grandfather’s frugality could even lead the lower classes to financial abundance.
His frugality mindset touched every dollar he spent (or didn’t spend). To him, everything was a precious commodity that could disappear tomorrow: plastic containers, milk jugs, ice, left over food, paper plates, clothing, electricity – you name it, and he found a way to buy it cheaper or make it last longer.
(3) Saving trumps investing
Aside from real estate, the FIRE community couldn’t be any more forceful about the value of stock investments and its historical 10% year on year returns. This focus in FIRE sometimes overshadows the value of pure savings firepower.
My grandfather never invested in a single stock or equity fund in his life. But this sole earner of a family with 4 kids still managed to amass FI money relatively early in life primarily by saving alone. No doubt stock investments would have made him wealthier, but he is proof that spending habits and saving alone are even more foundational to financial independence.
(4) Real estate is an expense to cut, not an asset
Americans generally tout home ownership as a wealth building tool. FIRE usually takes it further and encourages you to strategically buy a home with appreciation prospects.
But this can be out of reach for lower/younger earners. The allure of future appreciation can encourage people to take on too much house, or to amass too much debt, or to move to a too expensive city.
My grandfather went the opposite route in the 1950s. A house bill was a cost like any other that should be trimmed down or eliminated. He bought an outdated, 50 year old house no one else wanted. Not only was he able to pay it off in just a few years, he also locked in absurdly low property taxes for life.
This is an alternate path to consider if buying a $2M house (and $20K in annual property taxes) for the privilege of living in an expensive city like San Francisco seems like an absurd rate race to you.
(5) Who needs a handyman?
My grandfather’s extreme frugality naturally extended to whether to call in the professionals. His example shows how rare it is that you truly “need” to hire out work, other than auto-mechanics.
Even when he had need beyond his ability, he might barter for help from someone he knew. Or better yet, he’d conscript family to build a deck, chop trees, etc. I know this first hand because my brothers and I as teenagers alI had the (dis)pleasure of helping haul shingles and nails up his roof on a blazing hot summer day, all while getting cussed out by my uncle.
But my grandfather usually didn’t have to conscript family and opted to jerry rig everything himself. If it could be fixed, reused, or repurposed, he made it happen. Although I’ll add, he made it “happen” with varying degrees of success and finesse.
My personal favorites: a toilet handle “fixed” with a bent metal hangar, “new counter tops” he made from scrap linoleum, reused paper plates (with complimentary chile stains), and 30 year old scrap shingles repurposed as “mulch.”
(6) He jobhopped before it was fashionable.
Followers of FIRE are often jealous of retirees or public sector employees with pensions, especially those that have guaranteed benefits earlier than the 59 /12 year old threshold for 401K holders.
My grandfather came from this supposed Utopian past, when pensions flowed from the promised lands of milk and honey. Surely his financial security I am boasting about was attained due to a pension, right? Wrong.
The longest job tenure he held was at a hot, smelly paper factor with one of those “guaranteed” pensions. That is of course until the company went up in smoke along with its pension.
After that episode, he was never loyal to a single employer again and he found that his work ethic and high savings rate was a suitable replacement for a pension.
Of course, he impressed many employers over the years. But he also was known for quitting a job every year or two when he was denied time off to see family in Mexico. “Okay, I quit,” he’d say, “but I’ll apply again in a month.” Many years he quit and rejoined the same job – other years he bounced to some other work if it suited him better.
(7) He was an OG Side Hustler
The FIRE community is certainly full of advice on side hustles. But this guidance is largely confined to a few sexy categories: freelancing, landlording, entrepreneurship, or various forms of online gigging.
My grandfather was a side hustler from a bygone era. He didn’t have the knowledge or the skills to participate in more professional class side gigs like FIRE followers. Instead, he embraced his lack of professional skills and always found work that suited him.
He had three types of gigs / side jobs.
- Sweat gigs. This one should be obvious. If the work was physically demanding, he was your guy. This could be one-off construction helper gigs for a small business, seasonal work for a local farmer, or a part time job anywhere there was an opening.
- Geoarbitrage entrepreneur : He didn’t have the funds or know how to start a business in America. But he found his dollar went a lot further in Mexico, where he got into the taxi business with a single car and a few employees. Investing in lower cost cities (or countries) is not just a passing immigrant fixation; its the same reason why some wealthier Americans are starting to buy dirt cheap homes to rent in low cost places like Memphis.
- Barter gigs. Who said side gigs had to be for money? You can barter your skills or labor in exchange for something else of value. My grandfather for example served as a personal assistant to a rich doctor in town, where he bartered for off the books healthcare services and also earned extra pay.
Everything old is new again
In an era of remanufactured television stars and nostalgia entertainment, its often said that “everything old is new again.” The d-bag lead singer of Poison got his own reality show, flip phones are suddenly cool again, and somehow the mullet is making a comeback.
Should FIRE followers, then, pay attention to money lessons from people like my grandfather? The answer is: it depends.
The truth of the matter is – there is no single right way to earn, invest, and save. My grandfather’s life is full of interesting alternatives to FIRE, but I’m not going to shingle my flower beds or reuse dirty paper plates any time soon.
Without a doubt, frugal FIRE barbarians like Mr. Money Mustache are more complete financial role models. But are you willing to ride a bike with a pull behind chariot for your weekly Costco runs like him? I’m not, and neither would my grandfather.
My advice to those on the FIRE path; be open minded enough to continually learn, progress, and adapt on your financial journey. FIRE is a rock solid, time tested approach. But its not the only approach.
Don’t be afraid to try something new that has merit, but also, don’t develop FOMO if you feel the optimal path is to pass up other pieces of financial advice or tactics that don’t suit you. Ultimately, its up to you to develop a lifestyle and financial mantra that works for you.
And if that still leaves you a few dollars short of your goal. . . well, chances are you can survive and maybe even thrive with some ingenuity. You can always reuse paper plates, jerry rig a loose toilet handle, or barter a neighbor to help you fix something.