The Millennial Money Whisperer

Vicki Robin wrote the book on retiring happy. Now a whole new generation is taking her advice.

- Elizabeth O'Brien

Vicki Robin had no idea she’d become a millennial icon. • The 72-year old coauthor of the 1992 bestseller Your Money or Your Life was recuperating from a hip replacement early last year when a young man she’d met at a sustainability event months prior told her she was popular on a Reddit forum about financial independence. • At the time, she was confined to the pullout couch of her Whidbey Island, Wash., living room, with its view of the Cascade Mountains and Puget Sound. So she had plenty of time to explore the online community where, to her surprise, she discovered she was something of a celebrity.

“It was stunning,” Robin says. “I’m an elder in a community I didn’t know existed.”

Robin’s fans belong to an impassioned, mostly millennial movement known online as the FIRE community, or simply FIRE. It’s an acronym that stands for “financial independence, retire early.” Adherents track down to the penny where their money goes, mindful of how much each purchase will really cost, with the idea that dollar amounts should be equated to “hours of life energy,” in Robin’s words. So if you make $300 a day and want to buy a $100 pair of shoes, you ask yourself: Are those shoes really worth nearly a third of a day of your precious time on earth?

As the first part of the acronym suggests, the goal of the movement is to gain financial independence, meaning you’re no longer relying on paid employment to keep afloat.