2 Reasons why Cops can Kickass at FIRE

So you’re a cop. That’s great.

Maybe you ran across this FIRE thing on the internet. And then you notice a trend. Seems like a bunch of these FIRE peeps were engineers. Or even a Quant (someone who uses hardcore math to trade stocks and stuff). Most of these people made lots of money and have some fancy sounding degree or career.

But you’re a cop.

You don’t make lots of money. And in many places, the job doesn’t require a degree. Maybe you’re an overachiever and got an associates in Criminal Justice.

Last time I checked, junior college CJ programs don’t cover applied macroeconomic theory or some shit.

It’s all good though, I’ve got you covered. I was a cop too, and I retired before I was 40 after 15 years working the job. I didn’t even stick around for a pension. You can too! Because you’ve got two important things that lots of people don’t. And they’re essential if you’re going to do this Financial Independence thing.

There are two things that required to achieve FI:

Save a large percent of your income

No matter how much you make, you’ve got to save a big chunk of your income if you’re going to get financially independent. At least 50% of your pay would be good, that’ll get you there in 17 years. Go hard and save 75% and you’ll be there in 7 years.

Know how much you’re spending

Saving more means spending less, earning more, or both. You can’t improve something if you don’t even know where you’re at. You gotta figure how much you spend, so you can figure out how much you need to buy your freedom. And you need to do some simple math(think it’s called “division”) to figure out what percent of your salary your saving. Then you can chart that out and figure out how long you got. Don’t like what you see? You guessed it, spend less, earn more, or both. Redundancy, fuck yeah.

Luckily, the internet exists. Unless you really want to, you don’t have to do all this math by hand. Use Mint, Personal Capital, YNAB, or something else to do the math for you.

But we’re not talking about those two things in this post.

To achieve FI, especially if your don’t make shit tons of money (looking at you, cop), you have to do two other things:

Embrace the Suck

-and-

Be OK with being different than most people

As a cop, you’re probably going to do just fine with these. Because you’re already doing them.

Being a cop kind of sucks. This factor may have been why you ran across the idea of Retiring Early in the first place. We could go on bitching about the job for a while. But you can sum up a lot of the big ones with: Shift work. People try to kill you. Many people hate you just because of what you do. And wearing 25lbs of gunbelt and armor may not seem like much, but over the years it adds up. Raise your hand if your back hurts.

So with all of that, you’re used to life sucking a bit. Sure, you’re not living in a third world country. And we’re not gone for months or years at a time like our friends in the military. But still. The job can suck.

And getting used to a relatively small amount of suckage can be very useful when working towards FI. Working the big three to reduce your expenses can mean:

1. Living in a less expensive and smaller house than most. My family of four lives in an 1800 square foot house in a decent neighborhood. Days when the kids are both screaming, I wish I was like some of my old coworkers who are in houses twice our size. But I like that I’m retired, they’re still slogging away.
2. Driving a cheap car; no frills, just gets the job done. Fuck yeah I want a $80K Ford F150 Raptor. But I’m not racing the Baja 1000. I haul my kids, groceries, and mountain bike on normal roads, not blasting through the desert. My used prius that I got for $15k does that just fine. Any reliable, used 4 door sedan will likely do what you need too. You just won’t look cool.
3. Not eating like you’re Kim Kardashian. Man, it would be super easy if I doordashed for lunch everyday, and then went out for dinner all the time. Maybe get a baseball steak from ruth chris or whatever a couple times a week. That shit would be expensive though. Instead I get most our food from Aldi and cook it myself. Beef prices went up? Looks like we’re eating ground turkey, pork, or maybe just some fucking beans. We’ll go out every few weeks, and not somewhere that costs more than a couple hundred rounds of 9mm.

Then you can start working the smaller stuff. Keeping the thermostat set closer to what it is outside. Pick a cheaper hobby. DIY as much as you can.

Does all of this suck? Yeah, a little. Sure, we can dress it up and talk about how you’ll get used to the lower level of consumption and maybe be happier for having some challenges in your life. But shit man, it will ALWAYS be easier to just chuck some money at the problem. Not doing that (which seems to be the default solution everyone else does) can kind of suck.

Being a cop can make you feel different than most people. Yeah, you know- we’re just people too. Trying to do a necessary job and make it through the shift. But lots of people treat you like you’re some mindless representation of the Man put here by some uncaring system.

And then there’s that whole “training and experience” thing. Other people walk into a gas station and think “where’s the coffee?”. You think “which one of these motherfuckers are going to try to kill me, how do I kill them first if they try, and where’s the motherfucking coffee?” You got taught this in the academy, and it’s even money you’ve got firsthand experience that this mindset keeps you alive while you’re on the job. But it also sets you apart.

As you watch the sun go down at the beginning of your shift, you watch most of the world go to sleep while those that would harm them come out to play. You play wack a mole trying to keep the small dark side of humanity from causing too much damage to the innocent. Sure, you have a role in society-to protect it. But just like a parent is an authority figure first, and maybe a friend somewhere down the line, being a cop can make you feel like you’re apart from the society you bleed to protect.

When you’re a rookie, you notice your normal life begins to fade, and eventually you accept your job has made you different. You’ve probably accepted this, as you’ve realized what you’re doing is essential, and at times fun.

Guess what? If you’re walking the path to FI, you’ve got to be cool with being different too. Bring your lunch when your coworkers go out to eat twice a shift. Driving an older car, living in a smaller house. Going fishing or biking on your days off instead of boating. It can suck being different, but as we talked about above, you’re used to shit sucking. And you’re already used to being different. Now you’ll be different in yet another way.

Just like you were OK with being different because the job is keeping the chaos tamped down, you can become OK with being different from your coworkers. Your financial choices will let you escape while you still have some good years left. Your coworkers will be lucky to get out after three decades of the slog.

There you have it. Sure, it’d be nice if years ago you had decided to go to medical school or law school instead of chase bad guys, and then had a firehose of cash to throw towards FI. But you’ve got something that most people don’t. The ability to embrace the suck, and being OK with being different.

So my friend, you may not have a fancy degree or make shit tons of money. But you’ve seen shit people don’t even know exists(is that crack whore cleaning herself out with some urban pioneer’s boutique sprinkler?) and done shit most people can’t imagine (hold a crying 4 year old way past the end of your shift, who found her mom cold dead from an OD).

You fucking got this.

Not a cop? The above probably applies to firefighters, paramedics, most people on shift work, and I can attest it definitely applies to my peeps in the military. Shit, if Mike Rowe did an episode about your chosen profession, it probably works too.

Are you a cop, and struggling with the path to FI? Is there some other profession out there I didn’t mention that has the same reasons to kickass at FIRE? How are you embracing the suck?