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We didn’t start the FIRE: The true history of financial independence
I used to be a collector. I collected trading cards. I collected comic books. I collected pins and stickers and mementos of all sorts. I had boxes of things I’d collected but which essentially served no purpose.
I can’t say I’ve shaken the urge to collect entirely, but I have a much better handle on it than I used to. A few years ago, I sold my comic collection and stopped obsessing over them. Today, I collect three things: patches from the countries I visit, pins from national parks, and — especially — old books about money.
Collecting old money books is fun. For one, it ties to my work. Plus, there’s not a huge demand for money manuals, so there’s not a lot of competition to buy them. (Exception: As much as I’d love a copy of Ben Franklin’s The Way to Wealth, so would a lot of other people. That one is out of my reach.)
One big bonus from collecting old money books is actually reading these books. They’re fascinating. And it’s interesting to trace the development of certain ideas in the world of personal finance.
For instance, there’s this persistent myth of “lost economic virtue”. That is, a lot of people today want to argue that people were better at managing their money in the past. They weren’t. Debt (and poor money skills) has been a persistent problem since well before the United States was founded. It’s not like we, as a society, once had smart money skills and lost them. The way people manage money today is the way they’ve always managed money.
Or there’s the notion of financial independence (and the closely-related topic of early retirement). The standard narrative goes something like this:
- In 1992, Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin published Your Money or Your Life, and that marks the “discovery” of FIRE.
- In the late 2000s, Jacob from Early Retirement Extreme picked up the FIRE banner, then handed it off to Mr. Money Mustache a few years later.
- Today that banner is being carried by newcomers like Choose FI and the /r/financialindependence subreddit.
When you read old money books, however, you soon realize that FIRE isn’t new. These ideas have been kicking around for a while. Sure, the past decade has seen the systemization and codification of the concepts, but people have been preaching the importance of financial independence for about 150 years. Maybe longer.
Today, using my collection of old money books, let’s take a look at where the notion of financial independence originated.
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How to do great work
I’ve been frustrated lately with the quality and quantity of my work. I haven’t produced as much here at Get Rich Slowly as I would like — due largely to Fincon and its aftermath (calls and meetings, calls and meetings) — and what work I have produced isn’t as good as I would like. This lack of productivity makes me agitated, which makes me even less productive because I’m not in a good place mentally. It’s a vicious circle.
How nice, then, to rediscover the transcript of a 30-year-old talk from Richard Hamming, a former math and computer professor and researcher. (Hamming was also part of the team that worked on the Manhattan Project during World War Two.) Hamming titled his talk, which he presented on 07 March 1986, “You and Your Research,” but his actual subject was how to do great work.
I re-read the transcript this morning while I was once more feeling exasperated with how little time I’ve had for writing lately. (For me, writing is my yardstick for productivity. It doesn’t matter how much other work I’ve been doing behind the scenes here; if I’m not publishing, I’m not happy.) Although this talk discusses the work of researchers and scientists, I believe that much of the advice applies to me and to writing. I suspect that many of you will find its lessons valuable too.
It’s a long talk, though. In order to make it more palatable — and in order to help me remember more of this material — I’m going to summarize Hamming’s message. I hope you find it useful.
What Greatness Isn’t
Most people think greatness is achieved by luck, Hamming says. They’re wrong.
Yes, great ideas and achievements all contain elements of chance, but hard work and preparation are the necessary groundwork to bring about this luck. “Luck favors the prepared mind,” Pasteur once said. And the brash Newton argued that, “If others would think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results.”
Hamming would agree that luck is no accident. Unexpected good things are more likely to happen when you do the work needed create favorable conditions for them.
Nor is greatness achieved solely by genius. Sure, there have been many brilliant scientists. But there’s been more great work done by folks who were less gifted yet willing to put in the time and effort to achieve the results.
Finally, it’s never too late to be great. Yes, many researchers did their best work when they were young. But plenty of others produced greatness later in life, after they’d had a chance to accumulate knowledge and experience.
So, if luck and youth and brains aren’t pre-requisites for great work, what is necessary? Let’s take a look.
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