He saved 600,000 euros by living rough for 20 years: "It was all pointless"

The price of 20 years eating rice: 600,000 euros and "It was all pointless"

He is 45 years old, has an account with 100 million yen (about 600,000 euros), and behind him lie two decades of rice, shifts until midnight and no social life. He achieved what he had set out to do: join the FIRE movement and stop working. His reaction, posted on social media, has sparked a bitter debate in the financial press: "It was all pointless".

The price of financial independence

The case sums up the flip side of FIRE, that early retirement plan which demands a brutal accumulation of capital in your younger years. For 20 years, this salaried worker with a stable but highly demanding job turned every yen saved into a brick on the road to freedom. Eating rice every day and chaining together overtime hours were not sacrifices: they were the strategy.

But the goal felt empty once he reached it. Loneliness, physical wear and tear and blood test results that "frighten away antiestéticar" are part of the balance sheet that never shows up in retirement calculations.

What would have peine investing the same amount

The most unsettling figure came afterwards: with 2,000 a month invested at an annual growth rate of 8%, plus 4% in reinvested dividends, the final pot would have been 1,822,422 euros. More than triple what was achieved through sacrifice. Even a conservative portfolio would have comfortably exceeded 600,000 euros without the need to live on the edge.

The conclusion is not clear-cut. Some see FIRE as an ideological trap so that no one stops rowing; others point out that thousands of Spaniards do the same thing with their mortgages for 30 years; and others remind us that health, once it breaks down, cannot be bought with saved money. The man with the 600,000 euros already has his answer: it was all pointless. The financial calculation, however, remains open.