“Playing With FIRE” Documentary Actually Made FIRE Seem Less Attractive

As someone who follows the “FIRE Lifestyle” and listens to Podcasts about FIRE, contributes to Subreddits, etc, I’d been hearing about this movie for years, anxiously awaiting it coming out. Well a couple weeks back it was finally released and I bought it on Amazon the first day it came out.

My initial reaction was very positive. You can read my full write-up here. I liked it because it was relatively informative, yet still entertaining, and because I thought it was something that would get people thinking about and talking about their finances, and their lifestyles. I also liked it because it kept my girlfriend engaged enough to watch the whole thing as opposed to telling me to turn it off so she could watch Vampire Diaries.

Over the following couple weeks however I found myself questioning some things about the film, and even questioning the idea of FIRE itself.

A Story of Geo Arbitrage Not FIRE

So a pretty common thing Californians do is leave California because of the high costs. Housing prices and cost of living in California have always been high, but have been rising to unsustainable levels over the past decade. Many Californians finally just decide to throw in the towel and move to Denver, or Austin, or other very…