This review of the best FIRE films is by The Mr & Mrs from Team Monevator.

Beneath my article (writes The Mrs) about owning a dog while pursuing FIRE1, Monevator reader TahiPanasDua commented:

“This seems like a radical departure from the boring old Monevator diet of investment. Maybe now we can have regular sport, menswear, and film review articles.”

Well, sport and menswear are not our thing – but films? You bet!

The Mr: They’re more The Mrs’ chosen specialised subject for Mastermind than mine. But like a lot of families we watched far more films in 2020 and 2021 than in previous years, so we’re all film experts now…

So I got to thinking: what films most ably represent and reflect on the concept of financial independence?

The best FIRE films would:

• Have a theme of saving for the future.
• Explore what money can and can’t do.
• Highlight a driving sense of purpose and graft.
• Showcase the required resilience.

Alas these ingredients are hardly the stuff of on-screen drama. It takes real skill to make opening a high interest bank account look exciting, compared to choreographing a bank heist.

We’re not looking for the films about the world of high finance here either. So no battling moguls or city slickers…

The Mr: …although Wall Street, The Big Short, and Margin Call are all terrific.

Despite these constraints, me and The Mr have come up with seven films worth busting out the popcorn for, and that we also believe impart some useful wisdom.

Seven magnificent films about FIRE

Below, The Mr will run through our nominated best FIRE films. They’re all great viewing and offer contrasting takes on financial independence.

Warning! There will be spoilers. But it’s best to know what you’re getting into before you begin to pursue financial independence, right?

Afterwards you can vote for your favourite. Additional nominations are welcome in the comments. Maybe they’ll make our shortlist in the future.

Without further ado, drum roll please…

Playing with FIRE (2019)

To our knowledge, the only serious documentary about the FIRE movement. This film follows a couple at the start of their journey and was instrumental in getting us started. Lots of ideas and stories about the ups and downs it brings, and cameos from some big names – Mr Money Mustache, The Mad Fientist, Vicki Robin, the Minimalists, and more. It’s a North American perspective, but that largely reflects the movement so far.

It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)

A subversive take on financial independence. The wealthiest character is the villainous Henry Potter. Our hero, George Bailey, in contrast hits middle age with no savings or investments of any sort. He faces bankruptcy and is contemplating suicide. But the story reveals that throughout his life, George ‘invested’ in other people and in his relationships. And these people are spontaneously willing to donate the money he needs, leading his brother Harry to describe him as “the richest man in town”. It’s a crude parable. But the point is financial investment should not crowd out the investments we make in each other. Those are ultimately far more valuable.

About a Boy (2002)

In some ways Will, the central character, is an inversion of George in It’s A Wonderful Life. Will has financial independence – he inherited royalties from a song his father wrote – and never needed to work. He’s got money, looks, and charm but as a friend says to him, “What is the point of your life?” The story is about how he finds one. Yes, it’s a rom com with a redemption narrative, but nothing like as cheesy and predictable as it might have been. About A Boy shows that other people are liable to mess up our plans, financial or otherwise. That’s kind of the point.

The Great Gatsby (2013)

A film about what motivates financial independence and what it can and can’t bring you. We never learn the source of Gatsby’s wealth, but he appears to be a talented young man who built a business empire from scratch. It seems like Gatsby is now dissipating his wealth on parties and exceeding his safe withdrawal rate. (Indeed one pundit calculated Gatsby is likely in debt.) But he is actually spending his money very deliberately to try to achieve the one thing he wants – a woman called Daisy – that he cannot have. We might ask what drives our desire for financial independence? And are we realistic about what it will mean if and when we get there?

Mary Poppins (1964)

From our perspective, the most interesting character is George Banks, who works steadily at the Fidelity Fiduciary Bank. A sober man of regular habits, Banks is no doubt prudently saving a lot of his income, although economies could be made (all those chimney sweeps!) But things come to a head when he is sacked and faces a bleak future. Banks puts a brave face on it and fixes his children’s kite, but if he had pursued financial independence he’d have had fewer worries. He may not then have needed the plot device of a vacancy for a partner to rescue him – and also spent more time with his children. Bonus points for the best explanation of a bank run ever seen on film.

The Minimalists: Less Is Now (2021)

You may know The Minimalists. In fact they might be the biggest celebrities of the intentional lifestyle. (Celebrities with a difference – if you don’t open their emails they will remove you from their list, because they don’t want to clutter your inbox.) This surprisingly hard-hitting documentary reveals the difficult upbringings of Joshua and Ryan, who responded by becoming high-earning, high-consuming execs before it all fell apart and they discovered minimalist living. There’s plenty of motivation and practical tips based on their key message: “Love people. Use things. The opposite never works.”

The Good Life (1975-1978)

We’re cheating a little – The Good Life is a TV series. But has there ever been such a funny, charming, and at times moving portrayal of thrifty living, in any medium? Tom and Barbara aim to achieve financial independence by growing their own produce rather than their investments. Nevertheless many of the steps they take will be familiar to those on the path to FIRE. The couple enjoy a fun, fulfilling, and exciting life without new clothes, trips, meals out, and all the rest of it. That contrasts with their best friends and neighbours, Jerry and Margot, who consume in a way that was only just becoming possible for the middle-classes in the 1970s. Which of us hasn’t looked on at such friends and neighbours with envy at times? But ultimately whose lifestyle would we really prefer?

Vote for your best of our best FIRE films

Seen them all? Now it’s time to choose a winner in our poll below:

Thanks! The Investor will announce the winner in his Weekend Reading article on Friday.

And again, please let us know in the comments what you think of our picks, and whether there are other FIRE films you’d nominate instead.

Happy viewing!

See all The Mr & Mrs’ articles in their dedicated archive.

1. Financial Independence Retire Early [↩]

Political rant time. Feel free to skip and go straight to the money and investing links below.

One of oldest tropes in storytelling – right next to the posh British actor being the villain – is that chickens come home to roost.

There’s that same sense of reckoning in our national drama this weekend. There’s even a posh British actor ruining running the country.

Nearly six years after Johnson won his Pyrrhic Brexit victory, we’ve still almost nothing to show for it except a slower economy, a lorry car park in the South East, and the Pythonesque return of crown stamps on pint glasses.

True, the pandemic makes it’s hard to gauge how much weaker trade is down to our lousy new economic reality (lousy unless you deal in paperwork, red tape, or customs booths).

But it’s not looking good:

Source: Politico

Europe, you’ll remember, was also hit by Covid. It’s shrugged off Brexit.

Meanwhile Northern Ireland teeters, thanks to the consequences of Johnson ditching Theresa May’s deal for political points then whining about it later.

There’s no sign of £350m a week for the NHS either. Shocking.

Indeed National Insurance will be hiked from April to help plug a shortfall in health and social care funding.

Regret

NHS funding would have been stretched even if we hadn’t decided in 2016 to commit the most bizarre act of self-harm in Europe since that poor bloke went on a date where he asked if could be fried in garlic and eaten.

But we did, and that’s made the post-Covid reckoning even worse.

Beside the human toll, Covid has cost the economy untold billions. Much money was well spent, plenty not. But aside from the direct medical costs, shutting down the economy and keeping millions on furlough was always going to leave an immense bill. While we can certainly debate when we should start repaying it, nobody should be surprised it’s in the post.

The bill won’t be covered by any oxymoronic Brexit dividend. As the Financial Times opined this week:

Although unemployment is low, evidence of a labour force problem is mounting, with 1mn fewer people either working or seeking work than we would have expected had the pandemic not occurred. That is roughly a 3% hit to the available labour supply.

As spending has increased, this has stoked inflation far more than almost anyone expected. It means the scope for catch-up growth is running out, now that unemployment is back at pre-pandemic levels.

Worse, the UK growth rate is also artificially boosted by £25bn of corporate tax incentives this year and next, but investment remains weak. In the third quarter of 2021, it was still 4% below pre-pandemic levels, lower than any other economy in the G7. UK exports have also not joined in the global boom.

All this suggests that businesses are looking relatively unfavourably on this country, even before corporation tax rates rise from 19% to 25% in 2023. The IMF also reports good growth now will soon be followed by a slide to near stagnation in the pre-election year. It reckons the UK economy will end 2023 only 0.5% larger than at the start, the lowest in the G7.

What’s that? What about leveling up?

Besides the whiff of pork belly politics, the Welsh government for one has already run the numbers and concluded Wales will be £900m worse off compared to what was lost in funding from the EU.

Again, nobody should be surprised. Smaller pie. Smaller slices.

This is the UK economy in 2022.

Blue Monday

Beset by near-anarchy, when quizzed Johnson obfuscates over all this to tout the UK’s vaccination record like a broken droid stuck on repeat.

I’m glad that an adult was put in charge of the vaccine program, that the NHS and volunteers delivered, and that Britons mostly got their jabs.

But a rich country securing and deploying the Covid vaccine is table stakes at this point. We were quick out of the gate, but that was a year ago.

Figures show Germany and Spain are now more fully vaccinated than us, for instance. Those countries suffered fewer deaths per capita too, for what it’s worth.1

But perhaps the success of the rollout does seem singularly incredible if you were partying throughout much of 2020, in the same way a stoned student might be pleased they can still recite their own name to an officer when pulled over for drink driving.

Bizarre Love Triangle

As if friction-full trade, higher taxes on a weaker-than-otherwise base, and our leaders being under a police investigation wasn’t enough, household energy bills are also rising.

This one we can’t lay at Downing Street’s door. Wholesale prices have soared globally. That’s the main driver here.

However the spectacle of MPs cheering the suspension of planned fuel duty rises for ten Budgets in a row does fit with the Day of Reckoning theme.

The fuel duty escalator was introduced as a (token) measure to help wean us off fossil fuels. Yet even this small gesture was too much.

Now here we are decades into scientific consensus that curbing carbon emissions is vital – stat – to prevent catastrophe, and we’re still at the mercy of what autocratic regimes will dig up and sell us to burn.

The pandemic did precipitate this immediate crisis. Energy demand plunged in early 2020. Oil was briefly worthless. As the global economy has spluttered back to life, supply chains have been pulled all over the place.

Also yes, it doesn’t help that at the margin Western energy companies have been deterred from developing new resources by ESG factors (though the oil price touching $0 a barrel in 2020 must have entered their calculations.)

But here’s the thing – those ESG concerns are warranted. Global heating from fossil fuels continues apace (if you don’t believe that you’re irrational) and we must transition to another path, yesterday.

Politicians and voters alike are complicit in not biting the bullet and investing hugely in renewables – and probably nuclear – decades ago.

Instead, the government slashed green incentives in 2016 and MPs wave their ballot papers every Budget as fuel duty rises are put off again.

Why aren’t all our homes insulated? Why isn’t our coast festooned with offshore wind farms? How did my friend just fly to London from Spain for £9? Why aren’t solar panels on your roof a no-brainer? Why don’t we have several new nuclear power stations? Why are SUVs even a thing?

I guess we had bigger issues to worry about. Like blue passports.

World in Motion

Finally there’s the tension with Russia over Ukraine. In my opinion (worth taking with even more salt than usual here) Putin’s posture is enabled by Europe’s need for Russian gas, at this time of elevated energy prices.

In addition – and again reaping what you sow – years of divisive US foreign policy as absurdist theater under Trump must have emboldened the Russian hawks. The UK has been an international laughing stock since 2016 obviously, but with Angela Merkel off the stage Europe also looks suddenly lightweight. And the Americans are only just re-finding their feet.

NATO seems to be holding together, but 30 years on from The End of History should it really be touch and go?

Again, imagine if we’d spent the past five years on things that mattered instead of a grand delusion. Climate change, the real causes of growing disparity in economic outcomes in the UK, cancer, world peace – maybe even the threat of a new pandemic that Bill Gates was talking about in 2015.

Instead we voted to injure our economy indefinitely2 and only afterwards argued about how to do the deed, for years on end, on the nightly news.

To make it happen we elected the worst Prime Minister in living memory – a man who has fully lived down to his reputation.

Well played Britain. Well played. What a waste of time and effort.

Vanishing Point

So we’re a country where millions can’t afford their fuel bills even as the planet broils, presided over by people who broke their own lockdown rules as even the Queen mourned alone, belatedly attracting police attention.

All with Union Jacks cast about like confetti at a shotgun wedding.

If this doesn’t look a bit ominous, read more history.

I don’t see this as a party political issue. To the dismay of my friends, I have occasionally voted Conservative in the past and I imagine I could again.

But key figures in this government lied to win the Referendum, and have kept the fantasy going since. Johnson is no fool, but his biggest strength is unfortunately his weapons-grade charisma. Less winning personalities might have had occasion to reflect on the consequences of their actions, and even learn a thing or two.

Well, maybe he’s never had to, but we can.

This is not fine. Technology has screwed politics everywhere – it’s hardly just a British thing – but we can only sort out our own house.

Something must change before our will is exhausted and we give up caring.

Have a nice weekend.

[continue reading…]

1. I continue to believe we can’t be conclusive about deaths per capita until the pandemic is over and all the data is in and normalized. [↩]
2. Reminder: I never thought Brexit would be a nuclear bomb for the UK economy. It’s more like a dead-weight that we’ll have to carry for decades, hampering trade and investment, and reducing GDP by perhaps 0.25% in a bad year. And that will seriously add up. [↩]

A big but oft-overlooked question for aspiring retirees is: “Will my spending decline in retirement?” If the answer is yes, then you could retire sooner than you think, or you could spend more money in the early years after your own freedom day.

As it happens, there’s a large stack of research that suggests people really do see their spending decline in retirement. At least on average.

And if this turns out to be you, then the amount you need to retire should be less daunting than previously advertised. You can even afford to decrease your ‘how much should I put in my pension’ target figure.

That’s because sustainable withdrawal rate (SWR) strategies allow for constant inflation-adjusted spending in retirement.

They assume you want to maintain your purchasing power for the remainder of your days. That sounds reasonable.

But the evidence suggests the majority of retirees actually keep saving as their spending needs fall. The net effect is they beat inflation and do better financially than predicted by overly-cautious retirement planners.

So what’s the evidence for the spending decline in retirement?

That’s a 64 million dollar question. (Okay, more like £6.40 in my case).

UK evidence that spending declines in retirement

I’m going to focus on a UK research paper called Understanding retirement journeys: expectations vs reality.

It was authored by Cesira Urzi Brancati, Brian Beach, Ben Franklin, and Matthew Jones for the International Longevity Centre UK (ILCUK).

The ILCUK is a think tank concerned with the social impact of an aging population. 

This paper is based on longitudinal data of households in the UK and England. Brancati and co find the majority of these households experience a real decline in retirement spending:

Our findings suggest that typical consumption in retirement does not follow a U-shaped path – consumption does not dramatically rise at the start of retirement or pick up towards the end of life to meet long-term care-related expenditures.

[…] the inescapable truth is that, regardless of the period analysed, lifestyle or income level, older people in the UK spend less than their younger counterparts, with discretionary spending on life’s luxuries all but disappearing from age 75 and almost all cohorts progressively saving more of their income as they become older.

The findings apply on average to broad populations. Please bear this in mind from here. That way I won’t need to clog up every sentence with words like ‘average’ and ‘typically’.

Also, I don’t want to ruin your day by making you read methodology spoilers. A full discussion on data sources and research parameters is available in each linked paper.

The retiree spending decline headlines

The paper paints a vivid picture of decline:

• Eighty-something year-old households spend an average 43% less than fifty-something households.
• Spending on holidays, eating out, and recreation declines along with other non-essentials.
• Essential items such as food, health, and housing eat up more of the budget.
• Savings increase as the drop in discretionary spending dominates stable non-discretionary outlays.

The research also analyses behavioural surveys. This helps to connect the dots revealed by the expenditure data:

• Time at home alone increases by age, while time spent with family and friends falls. By age 90+, watching television and spending time at home alone are the most common daily activities.

• The age group 70-74 appears to be a tipping point. From this age, the average amount of time spent at home alone increases markedly, while the time spent with family and/or friends falls.

We’ll explore the obvious and not-so-obvious reasons why this is so, shortly. 

An immediate question is: does the fall in non-essential spending apply mainly to the affluent? 

This graph shows that the retirement spending decline affects low-earners and top-earners alike:

Bottom-earners (blue line) spend proportionally more than their income past age 65, but then their savings rate accelerates. 

Top-earners (red line) always have the capacity to save. But again, their spending arc bends increasingly downwards. 

Brancati notes:

This pattern is common to both high and low income groups, is robust to the inclusion of factors other than age, and is not simply the result of the time period in which the data was collected. Subsequently, households make substantial savings in later life.

Choose your retirement tribe

Obviously there isn’t a generic lump of retirees that all behave alike. But Brancati identifies five sub-groups, and all see the same pattern:

Find out who these people are on pages 29 to 33 of Brancati’s paper.

In short:

Transport Lovers and Extravagant Couples are described as high income. Both spend freely on non-essentials. Extravagant Couples even go into hock during their early retirement. 

Prudent Families have ‘relatively high income’ but are predisposed to save. 

Frugal Foodies are low income, spend little on non-essentials, and are diligent about saving. I estimate their annual household income to be around £19,000 at today’s prices (based on the report’s 2013 numbers). 

Just Getting By are also low income and are unlikely to own their own home or investments. They’re disproportionately affected by rising rent and energy prices. They start to save from age 75 nonetheless.

What happens to retirees?

The go-to rationale is that fading health cages older retirees. However that’s only part of the answer. 

And the notion of people cutting back because of dwindling financial resources is confounded by this graph:

A majority feel more secure about their finances as they age, not less.

That’s the good news part of the story. 

Meanwhile, spending on essentials (food, housing, clothing, and health) remains relatively stable:

The exception that proves the rule is transport. People spend less on this when they leave the workforce and stop commuting. Recreational travel wanes, too. 

Notice how gently the health line (in blue-grey) rises at the end. As if wafted by an ill-wind…

In contrast, non-essential spending goes into steep decline long before that – from 65:  

Spending on eating out, hotel stays, and even alcohol take a 50% or greater hit from their peaks.

What about the Lamborghini factor?

Brancati says there’s not much evidence for a post-retirement day blowout:

A closer look at the different categories of non-essential spending reveals that people spend a relatively similar amount of money on recreational goods and services between the age of 50 and 65, and only then do they start spending progressively less.

This seems to contradict the stereotypical image of retirees splurging in the immediate post-retirement phase of life, going on cruises and spending all their hard-earned cash on fun activities.

I do know retirees who’ve gone splurging. I have to remind myself to focus on the overall trend and not my own anecdotal evidence. 

Particularly troubling though is the dipping purple recreational curve from age 65 on.

That slump is a warning that the ‘active’ years of retirement may be short.

This graph plots that story, and it bothers me the most:

The steepening curves reveal that age 70-74 tipping point I quoted earlier.

Spending time home alone climbs relentlessly. Brancati puts it in stark terms:

Time at home alone rises from 3.5 hours a day for those aged 70-74 to more than nine hours a day by age 90+. 

Conversely, time with family or friends falls. I guess that’s partly because funerals become all-too frequent. 

Also notice the big drop in walking and other exercise. 

In contrast, time spent on ominous-sounding ‘health-related activities’ marches upwards. This is an ill-defined category, but Brancati says it likely involves visits to the doctor and other medical facilities.

Why then, does the line subside from age 85 to 89?

The decline after this age group may simply relate to longevity factors, i.e. healthier people or those with fewer health issues are the ones who survive to this age.

Explaining the retirement spending decline

Wondering whatever happened to the likely lads (and lasses) to keep them home alone? Here’s the money shot:

From age 50 to 64, the number of people who often or sometimes agree that their health stops them doing what they want hovers in and around 30%. 

By 70 to 74 that proportion rises to over half. 

And for the over-Nineties, 84.5% of them agree their health limits their lifestyle often or sometimes. 

But health isn’t the only reason that time spent at home increases. 

Other factors with explanatory power include losing your partner (and not being partnered at all), being male, being part of a small household, and not being a carer for someone. 

Inevitably, our advancing infirmity changes us. In Brancati’s words:

The anticipation of ill health and disability may also increase the desire to save in order to help meet potential health and long-term care costs in later life.

She also believes a desire to leave an inheritance contributes to waning spending. 

Some other studies conclude the decline is mainly explained by falling work-related expenses, the substitution of time for spending, and involuntary early retirement. 

Forced retirement is largely due to health shocks. It especially affects low income groups.

Finally, there’s an interesting snippet in a US piece that claims retirees cannily neglect home maintenance later in life. Such slapdashery enables retirees to pile up savings to offset their uncertainty over life expectancy and future income.

But will my spending decline in retirement?

My two big questions about this research are:

• How reliable is it?
• What practical use can we make of it?

I’ll have to dig into those questions in my part two – otherwise, this article would be unreadably long again. (Oops, too late for that!)

Take it steady,

The Accumulator