If you’re a social worker and never heard of my blog, this post is for you. If you’re a regular reader, the you may want to check out the prequel first to understand why this post is even here.

Hey Social Workers.

Many of us are working to help people deal with highly unequal systems, which have caused loads of suffering. It’s also causing us to suffer. We are trying to change our world for the better, often at the expense of ourselves. But what if there was a way we could make our own lives better, which would also help to change our system in a way that aligns with social work principles? What if this same thing could help multiply the power of our voices, so we could better serve those with the least? That thing exists, it’s an international movement that’s been around since at least the 90’s, but I’ve never heard it talked about in social work circles. 

A very rough consumption based model, developed from assumptions and limited publicly available information, suggests this somewhat murky movement may currently be responsible for an estimated reduction of about 30 million tons of CO2 every year. Denmark, a high income country, emits about the same amount annually. 

That’s right, this movement is responsible for an estimated annual net reduction of the amount of carbon that a country with 6 million people emits. And best estimates suggest that only 3 million people are actively following the movement’s practices and strategies.

You have likely never heard about it, and if you have, you probably quickly dismissed it, because we in social work have a giant blind spot. In order to do what we’re striving for; live better lives while serving people better, we’re going to have to get over some stigmas we dearly hold which have made us blind to this method of change. 

That stigma is money.

We in social work know how our economic system continually wrecks peoples lives, and we are the ones who have to continually try and work against the oppression that permeates it. We could probably be forgiven for associating anything that has to do with money with harm. But the effects of this stigma have made us blind to the change we can create if only we used our understanding of the existing system to make it better. 

Currently there is a movement that does just that. It’s called FIRE; Financial Independence, Retire Early. You may have seen some clickbait articles about it, and on the surface it sure doesn’t seem like a social movement. That’s kind of the point, and probably why it’s been so effective. 

This movement has roots in the 90s, when a woman named Vicki Robin wrote a book called Your Money and Your Life. She attended a conference on an United Nations environmental report in 1989 and learned that overconsumption was the primary driver of ecological collapse. She got fucking pissed, but saw that raging against the machine wasn’t working. She started working out ways to actually get people to consume less. Telling them to care about the planet clearly was a fail. But what if you made the case that consuming less would make their own lives better?

Her book was the result. It laid out a strategy which addressed overconsumption on the macro scale, and later noted that people who followed its recommendations lowered their expenses by about 20% on average, which was exactly the reduction she believed was needed to get back within ecological limits. 

Robin didn’t bury this framing either. She was on Oprah showing how a rack of clothes was costing people months of their lives, and not making their lives measurably better.  She served on the President’s Council on Sustainable Development’s Task Force on Population and Consumption in the 1990s. She spent years touring the country teaching classes on how to practically implement what she wrote. The woman is totally not subtle about what she is doing. She is not a social worker, but her actions sure look like someone from our field with a macro focus. How no one has presented her with an honorary degree in our profession eludes me. 

While Your Money or Your Life (YOMOYL) was a best seller and sold over a million copies, it was published in 1992. Many followed the book’s recommendations for living a better, more sustainable life through spending only on what brings lasting happiness and cutting all the bullshit that doesn’t move the needed. But as with many books, it tended to fade into the background. Then two things happened.

The internet, and reality. 

Use of the internet became widespread almost ten years after Vikki Robin published her book. With that came the open sharing of information and ideas. It also brought the dot com bubble, and contributed to the Great Recession. Between those years the idea of focusing on happiness instead of money took a backseat to the much more heavily marketed idea that we could buy our way to an always elusive better life. It was no longer your money or your life; most thought you could have both. Then the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) happened, and reality reared its ugly head. Unrestricted consumption fueled by debt with few checks led to 10 million people losing their houses, 8 million lost jobs, and 45 million in poverty. Many realized the systems didn’t have their best interest at heart. A few people came upon  YOMOYL, and started sharing ideas on how to update its methods over the internet. 

One of them was astrophysicist Jacob Lund Fisker, who started writing about what he figured out in 2007 on the blog Early Retirement Extreme (ERE). He was, and still is, on the hard core side of the Financial Independence world. He wrote a book by the same name as his blog; it is dense and sounds like it’s written by someone with PhD in theoretical physics because it is. But the thing to remember is this; Jacob didn’t come up with ERE to help people retire early. While in grad school he had done the math and saw the inevitability of climate change. He also saw that to realistically address it, people would need to reduce their consumption. And like Vicki, whose book he references, he knew shame wasn’t working. People needed more carrot and less stick. His starting pay as an academic in the San Francisco bay area was $40k, and he got up to $69k by year 5. He saved over 75% of that, and by living frugally was able to retire after that fifth year. 

The frugal part was key; despite spending less than $10k a year he still pursued hobbies like sail boat racing, playing in a hockey league, and Japanese swordfighting (lol, wtf man!). Writing about how he was able to leave a sucky job so he could live a fulfilling life on drastically less than most people thought possible was a deliberate, calculated act to inspire others to pursue the same path with the stated purpose of helping others reduce their environmental impact. While his blog was indeed extreme, it planted a seed for a more approachable method. It’s important to note that retiring in 5 years wasn’t a stunt; though the blog isn’t updated, he still runs an active forum and is occasionally interviewed. He’s still living on around $10k a year, and seems to truly enjoy the life he’s created. 

Pete Adeney launched what became the most popular FIRE blog in 2011. It has the ridiculous name Mr. Money Mustache(MMM), and his writing can be just as silly yet highly actionable. When Jacob stopped updating ERE, he pointed people to MMM as a less extreme continuation. The FIRE movement has been criticized for mostly catering to white male high income tech workers, and this was largely due to Pete’s deliberate focus. While many beyond this demographic found his blog a great resource (myself included), Pete strategically directed his writing to this group on purpose. First off, he could relate; he’s a white male that retired in his early 30’s to take care of his son, and got there by aggressively saving and investing his software engineer salary. Second, he saw the typical middle-class lifestyle as an exploding volcano of wastefulness, and knew that his high income peers are at the tip of this destruction. He knew many of them despised the drudgery of their job, and demonstrated how one could be happier while spending less, and the freed up cash could be used to buy freedom from a career decades before most thought was possible. I’m not sure how much he cares about liberating tech workers from cubicles; but he is explicit about the blog’s actual purpose; to reduce climate change by encouraging intentional and responsible consumption. 

And then there’s Tanja Hester, who the New York Times apparently dubbed the matriarch of the women’s FIRE movement; she wrote Wallet Activism; a book that takes the FIRE frugality framework and extends it explicitly into social and environmental justice territory. Her thesis is basically that every spending decision is a vote, and if you’re going to vote, you should know what you’re voting for. She worked as a consultant for the Democratic Party and other progressive issues before retiring at 38, and wrote about how she got there on the award winning blog Our Next Life. After writing multiple books and helping foster a movement to get more women into FIRE, she did one of the biggest flex’s I know and has chosen to live an offline life to focus on her hyper local efforts.

That’s just four people that have been major landmarks among this FIRE movement. It has since spread to thousands of blogs, podcasts, youtube videos, reels, and every other form of media you can think of. These include a diverse range of people which have demonstrated that you don’t need to be a white guy in a high paying tech job to make a life where work is optional. There’s Jillian Johnsrud, a single mom of six who grew up in poverty who is now an innovator in the mini-retirement world, there’s the award winning podcast host Jackie Cummings Koski, another single mom, who literally wrote the book on FIRE for Dummies, there’s Julien and Kiersten Saunders who offer a plethora of resources with the aim of financially empowering the Black community over at Rich and Regular, and many, many more. JL Collins wrote a book called Pathfinders, which details people from all over the world and diverse living situations who have made FIRE work in their own way, from people in Ukraine surviving the invasion, to Russians on the other side of the border living under an oppressive authoritarian regime. 

The Mr. Money Mustache blog was the springboard which launched much of this movement. His blog is still heavily referenced, yet many see his eco-centric mission as something of the past. People in the FIRE community have moved into all sorts of different things now, and you won’t hear much mention of environmentalism or social justice. I’m guessing Pete Adeney doesn’t care, because this whole thing ended up doing what he hoped, even if most modern FIRE influencers don’t realize it. FIRE was a reaction to a broken system, and it shows how you can live a better life regardless of the money. And it’s had the effect of reducing the consumption of millions of high earners, and therefore reducing their burden on the planet. One of the core principles of the movement, based on actual research, is that buying stuff doesn’t make people happier. FIRE has helped spread that, and if people who follow it don’t know or care about how their reduced consumption is helping the planet, that’s fine. It’s still working.

Let’s look at the example mentioned way above. We have no good way of knowing how many people are actually following FIRE principles, but a good guess based on the popularity of current podcasts and websites is about 3 million people. Most of these skew to high middle income earners, which is roughly $130k a year. If these people are following the general guidance of saving 50% of their income, that’s $65k a year not being spent on stuff. Plugging that number into typical consumption patterns(with a best guess for fuel& energy, because that’s a huge moving target)  results in a reduction of about 16 metric tons of CO2 per household. Multiply by 3 million=48 million metric tons reduced. 

But astute readers will ask what that extra money is spent on. Most people following FIRE invest that money into index funds; low cost passive mutual funds which invest in a fraction of every public company. These have a carbon load; my math shows that 3 million people investing $65k a year produce a total of about 6 million metric tons of CO2. When I checked with our AI overlords, they said methodologies are highly variable, and the impact could be up to 16 million metric tons instead. Even when using that higher estimate, that’s still about a net reduction of 30 million metric tons of CO2 every year caused by this FIRE movement. Oh yeah, I use the crap out of AI to get to all of this stuff, to include having a three way deathmatch between Gemini, Chat, and Claude to recheck sources and math, and then backchecking their sources. The final in depth explanation of my assumptions are explained here which explores the methodology behind it all. There’s a high probability my exact numbers are wrong. But I think at the end of the day the idea still stands; millions of people are in this FIRE movement, and overall that’s been good for the planet.

Moving on. 

What does this mean for social workers?

Our profession seems to be creeping closer to coming to terms with the idea that we should get paid what we deserve, and not feel guilty about it. But I worry that even if this catches, we will fall into the more money, more problems trap. And what are we to do in the meantime?

This blind spot about money has likely made many of us blind to all of the resources of living a better life on less that are abundant in the FIRE community. I hope we can change that. FIRE is an acronym that is a bit out of date; most in the community don’t want to retire as early as possible, they just want to have a better balance with work, and more control over when they work. They also deeply desire fulfilling work. We in social work are likely more able to find fulfillment in our jobs than someone making widgets, but I’m guessing most of us would love more balance and less stress. If you poke around the FIRE world, you can probably find someone similar to you, with a similar income and background, who has figured out how to get there. High income tech workers were so ten years ago, they’re still there but there’s a much wider variety. 

Then there’s the environment. 

Most of us already know that climate change “…disproportionately affect low-income countries and poor people in high-income countries, profoundly affect human rights and social justice. “(Levy & Patz, 2015)

We have seen this directly because our profession helps those most affected. FIRE may be a way to reduce climate change disguised as improving people’s personal finances. We in social work don’t need the actual purpose buried. We want to reduce our own personal carbon footprint, but in a world with conflicting information and seemingly no right answers, it’s hard to believe we can do anything. FIRE offers a simplified decision making model to guide people to lowering their impact; generally what’s better for your bank account is better for the environment. For sure; not always, but directionally correct. 

Let me use a personal example. My family goes on a beach vacation most years. We drive to a lesser known place 4-6 hours away, stay in an AirBnB, and walk down to the ice cream shop every night. It’s freaking awesome. We started this years before we got to financial independence(FI), primarily because it cost a hell of a lot less money than flying to some island. We keep going, now with a couple of kids, because it’s more fun. Driving is so much less stressful than airports and immigration checkpoints. Staying in a house instead of a hotel is also way better with kids, and much more relaxing. We hit FI some years ago, and surprisingly my wife and I still work part time jobs for fun and because we care about the mission. Thanks to this, we are now fortunate enough to be able to afford flying to wherever is currently in vogue for our annual beach vaca. But aside from the added stress of the trip, a big reason we don’t is because of the impact. Here’s what gemini came up with on the difference:

Not to mention, it costs about eight grand less. We’ll likely save that for a used EV to replace our current used hybrid, which will lower the impact even more. 

You can run the numbers across the big things people spend money on; housing, transportation, and food. I’m betting that generally, the less expensive way to tackle each of those is going to have a lower impact. We live in a smaller house than most in our area, this cost less, but also costs less to heat and cool. That’s less energy expended. We drive used hybrids because they were inexpensive and super reliable; they use less gas which costs us and the planet less. We cook most of our meals, and less than a third have meat, and usually only one meal a week has beef. This is not only healthier for us, but costs less, and again has a lower impact. My wife and I didn’t just make this stuff up, we heard about all of these money saving techniques repeated constantly in the FIRE world. They all have the added benefit of making our lives simpler, less stressful, and have allowed us to save way more money than most average thus allowing us to leave our full time jobs in our 30’s.

Social Justice.

Reducing consumption is a net good for the environment, and hopefully the above demonstrates how FIRE has helped in this arena. But harder to find is the social justice link. Let me offer this; it’s widely acknowledged that a big reason for many conflicts is the control of resources (Machunis-Masuoka, 2020). Our culture, which equates consumption with happiness, has probably not helped reduce demand for resources. I’m guessing it’s probably made it worse. What do you think the downstream effects of more people consuming less would be, especially in the country that currently has the highest resource demand ? Might it at least send a signal to our elected representatives that we don’t have to bully our way into controlling a bigger piece of the pie? I know, this is a hard one, but at the very least, it sure can’t hurt. 

Collective Action.

There are over 800,000 social workers in the US. We say a lot about collective action, and attempt to make systemic changes through a variety of organizations. Our education teaches us that there are several levers for change, and our curriculum focuses on how to use coalition building and effective communication to drive such change in the service of making a better world. That’s great, but our education also points to the necessity of finding some sort of funding. This boils down to grassroots approaches and finding sympathetic donors. Essentially this means we have to go around begging for money and hope there’s enough altruistic people who care. 

How’s that been going so far?

In learning about systems and how the world functions, we know one thing; all else being equal, money talks. Cue the standard social work criticism of capitalism again. But if we use that same system to our advantage, perhaps we would finally have direct access to one of the biggest levers of change.

Let’s take a break for story time.

If you’re new to my blog, here’s some backstory. I used to be a cop. I know, I know; if there’s one thing I keep hearing in all of my MSW coursework its how cops are the root of all evil, right after capitalism. 

Maybe you disagree with that, if so please skip this next part. If not, let’s pause for a little reflexivity.

When you think cop, what do you think? What do you think cops do?

Ok, now that you’ve pictured that, let’s remember what many people think social workers do.

Go ahead, click the link. I’ll still be here when you get back.

Super messed up, right? 

Also, please remember while the history of law enforcement is super fucked, the social work profession ain’t exactly perfect either. 

What I’m trying to say is that perhaps perception is not always a true indicator of reality, and please try to refrain from judging me based on my profession. Moving on.

Anyways, my first year as a cop I made $46k. I worked there for 15 years, and my last year I just barely crossed into six figure territory and made $101k. My median pay was $80k. Read here for more if you care. This is about what someone with a LCSW makes, and the salary progression is pretty similar. 

About 5 years into my career as a cop I found out about FIRE from that social worker I worked with. 

At the time, I could see the writing on the wall; though I loved serving people, when I looked around at my older coworkers I saw the wreckage of burnout and how they felt trapped in a grind they grew to hate. I decided that wasn’t for me, and started following the basic principles associated with FIRE; spend only on what brings lasting value or is an actual need, figure out cheaper ways to meet existing expenses, and invest the money saved. 

I followed the super simple investing strategy of just buying the exact same passive fund over and over. No day trading or meme stocks. Basically I just did what this guy said. About ten years after finding FIRE, I was done with working nights, wanted to spend more time with my kids, and pretty burnt out. Despite being 5 years away from earning a pension, I left. I felt ok leaving because thanks to following those FIRE principles, I had two things:

1. A precise knowledge of how much money I’d need to support myself and family
2. A million bucks, which when doing the math, was enough to do so.

Luckily, my wife was in roughly the same boat with her investments (which was despite her always earning less than me, thanks to the patriarchy). There’s way more to it, and you can read all about it on my blog, but that’s the gist. The point is, I made about what a licensed social worker does, and after about a decade, I’m a millionaire.

Look, this isn’t about me being rich. It’s more about what is possible. Remember those 800,000 social workers? What if some of them followed the financial literacy principles I did? Yes, I know that not everyone is fortunate enough to have my circumstances, nor is every social worker in a position to do so. I get that. But what if just 10% could?

That’s 80,000 ethically grounded people who give a shit about making the world better becoming millionaires within the next 10 years. 

That’s 80 billion dollars collectively held directly by social workers.

Now imagine, like a lot of us in the FIRE community, that we chose to use that money for causes we cared about. But unlike many, we already know how to best take collective action, build a movement, and work towards sustainable change. Except we’d finally be able to do so without spending so much time seeking funding. Because we would be the funding.

That’s something I get excited about.

Not to mention that aside from the good we could do in our collective efforts, embarking on a path to a better relationship with money leads to less social workers stressed about making ends meet. Which means fewer burnt out social workers equating to more clients being served better.  It leads to us showing up more effectively in our roles, and being empowered to take roles that are in closer alignment with our passion instead of being preoccupied with paying the bills.  My hope is that overall, this helps us make a bigger impact.

So there we have it. Social workers, please check out this FIRE thing. We can do better. 🙂

Here’s some places to check out that can get you started:

Your Money or Your Life-That book mentioned above

JL Collins’ Stock Series-simple primer into investing-check out his books, the audio versions are amazing

Choose FI-Intro to financial independence, with articles, podcasts, and local groups focused on everyday people rather than high-income earners. 

Ask: Do you know any other FIRE related resources we should suggest to social workers? Chuck them in the comments.