'I have beef with them': Mrs. Dow Jones explains why she thinks the FIRE movement is a 'sham'

Mrs. Dow Jones has a bone to pick with the legion of Americans looking to retire early.

The financial influencer, real name Haley Sacks, pushed back against the FIRE movement when speaking to Business Insider in a recent interview.

The acronym is short for Financial Independence Retire Early, a lifestyle defined by aggressive saving and investing, usually with the goal of leaving the workforce well before the typical retirement age.

Sacks, whose online persona revolves around building generational wealth, said followers of FIRE often go to unnecessarily difficult lengths to achieve their goals. She also thinks the hardcore lifestyle deters a lot of people from even trying.

“You know, I beef with them,” the personal finance CEO told BI. “My beef with FIRE is that I do not believe that in order to grow wealth, it has to be so extreme, and I think that that mindset is actually what keeps so many people out of the game. And so, I basically look at FIRE as like financial anorexia, where it’s like you’re being so extreme, it’s so much deprivation.”

Sacks also noted that many people promoting FIRE online haven’t actually left the workforce, since their current job involves making money being influencers and — in some cases — selling online courses.

“People telling you to do FIRE are not actually retiring early. They’re FIRE bloggers. They’re FIRE influencers. They’re making millions of dollars still, you know? So the whole thing is a sham,” she said.

Sacks also said she disagreed with some of the standards those in the FIRE movement accepted in order to save enough to retire early.

“The quality of life that I want is not to live in a van. That couldn’t be me, you know?” she said. “If that’s your life, that’s amazing, but like, I don’t want that, and I also don’t think you need to, like, go for that, you know?

Online chatter about the extreme nature of FIRE has grown in recent years as the movement has become more popular. More relaxed offshoots of the movement, such as Coast FIRE, have also started to gain in popularity as a result.