但朗說，他做這份工作非常不開心。在他的職業生涯中，他目睹了藥品價格飛漲、生病的人與醫保公司鬥爭、過度的阿片類藥物處方和成癮危機。那些憤怒的、經濟拮据的顧客經常對藥品櫃檯後面的人發洩。
“There were days when I had 12- or 14-hour shifts where I didn’t use the restroom, where I didn’t eat, because so much work was piled up on me,” Long said.
“有的時候我一次要上12或14個小時的班。我不去洗手間，也不吃飯，因為我有成堆的工作要做，”朗說。
Like Jensen, he had been saving a sizable portion of his income over the past decade, and he and his wife had a paid-for house and an investment portfolio worth a little more than $1 million. Why stick around?
和詹森一樣，在過去的十年裡，他把相當一部分收入存起來。他和妻子有一套已付清的住房，並擁有價值略高於100萬美元的投資組合。為什麼還要繼續下去？
“The reality is the numbers are there for me,” Long said. “To go to a job that’s making you miserable every day, it doesn’t make sense to pad the bank account at that point.”
“現實的情況是，我已經有那麼多錢了，”朗說，“這時，去做一份每天都讓你痛苦不堪的工作來充實銀行賬戶是沒有意義的。”
在一個格外殘酷的工作日後，詹森上谷歌搜索了“如何早早退休”。
在一個格外殘酷的工作日後，詹森上谷歌搜索了“如何早早退休”。 ROSS TAYLOR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Quitting the rat race isn’t a new concept. From the Shakers of the 1700s to the back-to-the-land hippies of the 1960s and ‘70s, a strain of Americans has always embraced simple living. One of the bibles of the FIRE movement, “Your Money or Your Life,” which teaches readers to reduce their spending and value time (or “life energy”) over material gain, was published in 1992.
放棄對財富的激烈競爭並不是一個新概念。從18世紀的震教徒(Shaker)到60和70年代的嬉皮士，歷史上有一連串的美國人信奉簡樸的生活。《富足人生：要錢還是要命》(Your Money or Your Life)一書是“FIRE”運動的聖經之一，該書教導讀者減少花銷，珍惜時間（或“生命能量”），而不是物質財富。該書於1992年出版。
But Vicki Robin, who wrote that financial guide with Joe Dominguez, said the FIRE crowd is a different breed of dropout from those in the ‘90s. “Our aim was not just to have a whole bunch of people quit their jobs,” Robin said. “Our aim was to lower consumption to save the planet. We attracted longtime simple-living people, religious people, environmentalists.”
不過，與喬·多明戈茲(Joe Dominguez)合著這本財務指南的維姬·羅賓(Vicki Robin)說，“FIRE”的追隨者與90年代的隱居者不同。“我們的目標不僅僅是讓一群人辭掉工作，”羅賓說，“我們的目標是降低消耗，以拯救地球。我們吸引了長期生活簡單的人，宗教人士，和環保人士。”
The FIRE adherents are, by contrast, “very numbers oriented, fascinated by the minutiae of taxes and accounting,” she said.
相比之下，FIRE的追隨者“非常喜歡數字，對稅收和會計的細枝末節很著迷”，她說。
They are also benefiting from a lengthy bull run in the stock market and, in some cases, the privilege of class, race, gender and background. It’s difficult to retire at 40 if you work a minimum-wage job, say, or have crushing student-loan debt, or did not have the same opportunities as others because you grew up poor in a crime-ridden neighborhood.
他們還受益於股市的一段長期牛市行情，在某些情況下也因為享有階級、種族、性別和背景的特權。比如說，如果你從事的是一份拿最低工資的工作，或者你揹負著沉重的學生貸款債務，或者因為你在一個犯罪猖獗的社區中長大，沒有和其他人一樣的機會，那你就很難在40歲時退休。
But if, as Robin said, FIRE adherents “don’t have the aspirational part” of earlier generations, why are they so determined to quit the workforce? Many millennials haven’t been working longer than a decade, if that.
但是，如果FIRE的追隨者如羅賓所說，和前輩相比“沒有那些遠大的目標”，他們為什麼會如此堅決地退出職場呢？如果實現這個目標，許多千禧一代的人參加工作的時間還沒超過十年。
It’s about having agency, she said: “The worker in this economy has very little sense of control over their existence. People are expendable. You’re a young person and you look ahead and you say, ‘What’s there for me?'”
她說，這與能動性有關：“在這種經濟環境下，工作者幾乎沒有能控制自己存在的感覺。人是耗材。你是個年輕人，你向前看，然後問自己，‘我能得到什麼？’”
裡肯斯夫婦從加州搬到了俄勒岡州。
裡肯斯夫婦從加州搬到了俄勒岡州。 LEAH NASH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
That accurately describes how Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung felt. The married couple from Toronto became minor celebrities (and the target of online haters) when they retired from their tech jobs in 2015 to travel the world full-time. They were in their early 30s at the time.
這準確地描述了克里斯蒂·沈(Kristy Shen)和布賴斯·梁(Bryce Leung)的感受。這對來自多倫多的夫婦於2015年從他們在科技行業的職位退休，開始把全部時間花在環遊世界上，這種做法讓他們成為了小小的名人（同時也成了網絡仇恨者的目標）。那時他們剛30歲出頭。
Shen’s wake-up moment came when she watched a fellow IT colleague collapse at his desk after clocking 14-hour days. For several years before that, she and Leung, following the path laid out by their parents, had tried to buy a house in Toronto’s ever-escalating real estate market.
讓沈警醒的時刻是，她看到一位IT同事在連續工作了14個小時後癱倒在他的辦公桌邊。在那之前的幾年裡，她和梁一直都在按照父母為他們制定的路線行事，試圖在多倫多價格飛漲的房地產市場上買房子。
But, Shen said: “It didn’t matter how much you saved, it was a goal post that kept moving. And I was seeing people stressed out paying their mortgages.”
但是，沈說：“不管你省下來多少錢，買房子的目標一直很遙遠，而且越來越遠。我看到有人被償還抵押貸款的壓力壓垮了。”
Although they had good educations and well-paying jobs in the booming tech sector, Shen and Leung faced the looming threats of outsourcing and artificial intelligence, and had no hope of a retirement pension, or even that their employers would exist in five years.
雖然他們受過良好的教育，在蓬勃發展的技術行業有高薪工作，但沈和梁也隨時面臨著外包和人工智能的威脅，他們完全不指望將來能拿到退休金，甚至對他們的僱主在五年後是否還存在都不抱希望。
At the same time, their jobs were all-consuming. Rather than chain themselves to a costly mortgage, and therefore to high-pressure jobs, the couple decided to pour their money into an investment portfolio and peace out.
與此同時，他們的工作需要全身心投入。這對夫婦沒有把自己拴在大額抵押貸款上，從而也就沒有把自己拴在高壓工作崗位上，而是決定把錢用於一組投資，告別了他們的工作。
By ditching a big city, Shen and Leung exemplify another reason for the popularity of FIRE: the high price of urban life, especially in places like New York and Southern California. There are the insane housing prices, the high cost of child care, the temptations of so-called lifestyle creep.
沈和梁擺脫了大城市的生活，這種做法代表著FIRE流行的另一個原因：城市生活的成本很高，尤其是在紐約和南加州等地。瘋狂的房價，昂貴的兒童保育費用，還有所謂的“生活方式升級”的誘惑。
“We were spending nearly $3,000 a month on rent, and that was considered a good deal,” said Scott Rieckens, 35, who, along with his wife, Taylor, 33, and their daughter until recently lived in Coronado, California, across the bay from San Diego. “We made something like $160,000 between the two of us, but we didn’t have a whole lot left over.”
“我們每月的房租將近3000美元，這還被認為是相當合算的，”35歲的斯科特·裡肯斯(Scott Rieckens)說，他和33歲的妻子泰勒(Taylor)及他們的女兒直到最近還住在加州科羅納多，與聖地亞哥隔海灣相望。“我們兩人每年掙的錢大約是16萬美元，但剩下的不多。”
裡肯斯夫婦生活在本德，那裡沒有州銷售稅，他們也買得起那裡的房子。
裡肯斯夫婦生活在本德，那裡沒有州銷售稅，他們也買得起那裡的房子。 LEAH NASH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
After hearing a podcast interview with Mr. Money Mustache, aka Pete Adeney, whom The New Yorker called “the Frugal Guru” (he retired at 30), Scott Rieckens became fired up. He told his wife they should ditch their leased BMW and quit eating out so often. But even with those lifestyle cuts, they couldn’t increase their savings rate substantially unless they relocated to a cheaper community, a deleveraging tactic the FIRE crowd calls “arbitrage.”
在聽了《紐約客》對“錢鬍子先生”（真名皮特·阿登尼[Pete Adeney]，《紐約客》稱他為“節儉大師”，他30歲就退休了）的播客採訪後，斯科特·裡肯斯深受啟發。他對妻子說，他們應該放棄他們租的寶馬車，不再經常在外面吃飯。但即使在生活方式上做了這些縮減，他們也不能大幅度地提高自己的儲蓄率，除非他們搬到一個更便宜的社區去，這種去槓桿化的策略被FIRE族稱為“套利”。
The idea, Adeney said, is “to reap the high salary” of a place like Silicon Valley, “then take that nest egg out to any of the thousands of nice, affordable cities and towns we have in this country and begin a second stage of life on your own terms.”
阿登尼說，他們的想法是從硅谷這樣的地方“獲得高薪”，“然後把積累起來的錢帶到這個國家成千上萬的不錯的、負擔得起的市鎮去，按照自己的意願開始第二階段的生活。”
Taylor Rieckens, who works in recruiting, was initially reluctant to give up her BMW and beachy life and the prestige that went with it, until she saw a retirement calculator that showed they could retire in 10 years if they adopted FIRE and moved, or when they were 90 if they continued their upscale lifestyle in Coronado.
泰勒·裡肯斯的工作是為公司招募員工，起初她不願意放棄自己的寶馬車和海灘邊上的生活，以及這種生活的氣派，直到她看了一個退休計算器的結果，計算器顯示，如果他們採用FIRE生活方式並搬走的話，他們可以在10年內退休；如果他們繼續在科羅納多享受高檔生活方式的話，他們需要工作到90歲才能退休。
“I never paid attention to the finances. I thought it will all work out,” she said. “After I had a baby, I had stress around how I could spend more time with her. I was almost a slave to my job because of the way we were living.”
“我以前從不關心財務情況。我以為一切都會順理成章，”她說。“生了孩子後，我在如何能把更多的時間花在孩子身上這個問題上面臨很大的壓力。因為我們的生活方式，我幾乎被我工作所奴役。”
Last year, the couple left Southern California in search of a community that would give them more financial freedom, a journey Scott Rieckens, formerly a creative director for a creative agency, is chronicling in a documentary, “Playing With FIRE.”
去年，這對夫婦離開了南加州，去尋找一個能帶給他們更多經濟自由的社區。斯科特·裡肯斯曾是一家創意公司的創意總監，他用紀錄片《玩FIRE》(Playing With FIRE)記錄了這個過程。
They ended up in Bend, Oregon, where there’s no state sales tax and they could afford to buy a house. Gas for their used Honda CRV with 186,000 miles (they got rid of the BMW and downsized to one vehicle) is a dollar-per-gallon cheaper than in San Diego, although Scott Rieckens often rides his bike around town.
他們最後選擇了俄勒岡州的本德，俄勒岡州沒有州銷售稅，他們也買得起那裡的房子。他們買了一輛已經跑過18.6萬英里的本田CRV舊車，放棄了寶馬，家裡只剩下一輛車，在當地給本田車加油，每加侖的汽油價格要比聖地亞哥便宜一美元，不過，斯科特·裡肯斯經常在城裡騎自行車。
“The whole retire-early thing is unimportant to me. It’s more about gaining control of your time,” he said. “If you dive into the definition of retirement, what you’re retiring from is mandatory labor. It’s not necessarily about piña coladas on the beach.”
“提前退休這種事對我來說並不重要。更重要的是控制你的時間。”他說。“如果你深入研究退休的定義，你會發現，你是在從強制勞動中退休。不一定要在海灘上喝菠蘿汁朗姆酒才算。”
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