Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like.
— Tyler Durden (Fight Club)
A couple of weeks ago I ran a workshop on retirement investing for some other co-op folks. I’ve run this workshop before, but lately I’ve been thinking about it differently. Turns out calling it “retirement” investing can be a turn-off when you’re talking to a bunch of mission driven people who are working on things they love, and think they’ll never want to “retire.” The word can have a connotation of hedonism or idleness. The permanent worthless vacation. Or just sitting around waiting to die. “Early retirement” serves no purpose when the work you do is done primarily because you believe in it. There’s also a sense with “retirement investing” that you can’t touch the money until you’re old. Which is a long-ass time if you’re in your early twenties.
So I’ve started thinking about it as “autonomy investing” instead — becoming financially autonomous quickly, so that you can do the work you’re compelled to do. Without having to worry about whether your political activism will put your job at risk. Without caring if your mission is compatible with the Nonprofit Industrial Complex and their funding metrics. Without having to work a soul-sucking day job that leaves you too fried to spend your evenings and weekends on civic engagement and organizing. Or alternatively… without having to beg investors to pay your living expenses while you work on the early stages of your startup idea.
This is, essentially, the project of buying yourself out of corporate servitude.