Should FINE Replace FIRE?

A recent CBS News/YouGov poll found that 69 percent of Americans are optimistic about their own personal finances, generally. That’s an amazing turnaround from the early pandemic days, when millions of workers lost jobs and were unsure and anxious about the future.

In just over a year, the worst recession since the Great Depression appears to be in the rear-view mirror, a far faster recovery than that seen after the Great Recession. The difference between the two downturns has a lot to do with the causes of each.

The Great Recession, which officially began in December 2007 and concluded in June 2009, was caused by the housing boom, which was financed by easy lending from banks to consumers, and exacerbated by financial institutions’ packaging up loans to make massive bets. The pandemic recession occurred because global governments shut down their economies to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Those same governments also provided ample relief to workers, who were sidelined from jobs, through no fault of their own.

The unique nature of the current recession and recovery has done something seismic to the U.S. labor force. There seems to be a tectonic shift amid the reopening of the economy, one which has workers and employers scrambling to adapt and thrive. Consider the most obvious example: the U.S. economy has 7.6 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic hit, but at the same time, job openings have reached a near two-decade high.

In the post-pandemic period, we are seeing a major shake out of how workers are thinking about their jobs and careers. Some of them are not enthusiastic about returning to difficult jobs with low pay and no benefits. Can you blame them? While warehouse work may not be easy, it sure pays better than many hospitality jobs, and it often comes with health insurance and a retirement plan.

For others, the pandemic has refocused their attention on work-life balance. Who among us wants to sit in traffic or navigate public transportation for hours each week? Isn’t it better to be able to spend that wasted time managing your household and family obligations and in fact, be more productive when you do work?

These questions are prompting many to consider their options. Recent work indexes, and surveys find that about a quarter of employees are planning to look for a different job this year, and more than a third of millennials, the biggest generation currently in the labor force, say they are ready to kickstart their searches. Many job-changers are motivated by dollars, but more and more, they want flexibility, and they want to be part of an organization that considers new approaches to getting work done and achieving goals.

The shifting labor market made me think about the FIRE (“Financial Independence, Retire Early”) movement, which encourages people to save as much as possible, as early as possible, to retire early. Clearly, the lockdown economy has prompted a rethinking of working, retirement, and potential career options. As a result, I am calling for a new post-pandemic movement, which one of my podcast listeners dubbed “FINE”. FINE stands for “Financial Independence, New Endeavor” and I think it could be the next iteration of how we adapt to the disruption that we have just experienced.

Imagine if you could save enough over your early working years so that you could afford to explore other options mid or late career? Perhaps the move to hybrid work, a blended model where some employees return to the workplace and others continue to work from home, will open doors to different jobs that some might not have ever considered. And that would suit most of us, just FINE!