my personal philosophy of early childhood education essay

ChatGPT for Teachers

Trauma-informed practices in schools, teacher well-being, cultivating diversity, equity, & inclusion, integrating technology in the classroom, social-emotional development, covid-19 resources, invest in resilience: summer toolkit, civics & resilience, all toolkits, degree programs, trauma-informed professional development, teacher licensure & certification, how to become - career information, classroom management, instructional design, lifestyle & self-care, online higher ed teaching, current events, how to develop a philosophy of teaching for early childhood education.

Today, many educational institutions require a philosophy of teaching from early childhood education instructors. In addition to needing one when applying for a job, articulating their approach to education is an excellent idea for teachers for many other reasons.

First and foremost, a philosophy of teaching can help an educator clearly define what sort of teacher they want to be and this will help them move forward more easily in their career path. In essence, a philosophy of teaching is a one- or two-page document that expresses an educator’s preferred teaching style, strengths and overall teaching orientation.

The document should be clearly written and should showcase the teacher’s knowledge about the NAEYC requirements (National Association for the Education of Young Children). It should also present the underlying philosophy that will guide the teacher’s curriculum choices and classroom management style.

6 steps to create a personal philosophy of early childhood education

Creating and composing a personal philosophy of early childhood education document does not need to be daunting. In fact, it can be accomplished in these basic steps:

1. Define a preschool teacher’s role

Take some time to clearly explain your ideas about a preschool teacher’s role in the classroom. Include your beliefs about child-led activities vs. teacher-led activities, your philosophy on the teacher’s role in playtime, and the presentation of brand new ideas vs. discoveries the child makes on their own. Consider also including a statement describing your sincere hopes and expectations for the children in your classroom.

2. Discuss the child’s role as a learner

What is your philosophy regarding how children learn best? What types of activities and opportunities do you believe should be included in the classroom setting in order to facilitate the highest levels of learning for all students, regardless of preferred learning style? How might the child’s role as the recipient of knowledge vary depending upon their preferred learning style? Be sure to include both structured learning activities and open-ended ideas, discussing what you believe is the ideal ratio of both types in the classroom.

3. Address special needs, different learning styles and diversity in the classroom

Discuss how specifically you will handle different personalities, learning styles, special needs and cultural diversity as you teach different children all in one classroom. Include a statement about how children with special learning needs will be welcomed in your classroom, and your specific strategies for meeting both those needs and the needs of the other students. Embracing diversity is pivotal to creating a warm and welcoming learning environment in today’s classroom. When composing your philosophy of teaching document, you’ll want to be sure you clearly define how you’ll meet a variety of needs.

4. Define your curricular orientation

Map out your curricular orientation, including information about what has led you to form your specific beliefs. However, when you address this step, be careful to not criticize other approaches. Instead, consider connecting the information you provide about your curricular orientation with your previous statements about the role of the teacher in the early childhood education setting (in step 1).

5. Describe classroom and conflict management

In this section, describe how you approach any behavioral issues that may occur, and why you believe your chosen approach will work. Be very specific; for instance, will you use time-outs or withdrawal of playtime privileges?

6. Address family inclusion in the classroom

Finally, define how you plan to incorporate parents and other primary caregivers into your classroom. Outline your strategy for keeping parents involved and establishing and maintaining open lines of communication with family members.

Creating a personal philosophy of early childhood education should not be intimidating; in fact, it is an excellent opportunity to clarify your teaching philosophies and commit them to paper. Putting these philosophies in writing can serve as an impetus to clarify the type of educator you’d like to be, and this will benefit both your teaching career and your students.

You may also like to read

• Teaching Strategies in Early Childhood Education and Pre-K
• Benefits of Early Childhood Education
• Diverse Learning Styles in Early Childhood Education
• Five Reasons to Study Early Childhood Education
• What Every Early Childhood Education Major Should Know
• Early Childhood Education: Striving to Balance Play with Academics

Categorized as: Tips for Teachers and Classroom Resources

Tagged as: Early Childhood and Elementary (Grades: PreK-5) ,  Leadership and Administration ,  Professional Development

• Master's in Social Studies Education & Teachi...
• Online & Campus Bachelor's in Elementary Educ...
• How to Teach Reading Comprehension: Resources...

Writing A Personal Philosophy For Childcare

• Written by  Lorina
• January 5, 2024

Writing a personal philosophy is a great way for others to read what your values and beliefs are in regard to early childhood education. The following article provides information on how to write a personal philosophy including details of what can be included, questions to think about and examples of personal philosophies.

As an educator, your own philosophical concept of early childhood education distinguishes you as an Educator. It's a declaration of your values, which in turn guides your actions. 

What Is A Personal Philosophy

A personal philosophy clearly defines you as an Educator. It is a statement of reflection about your beliefs that influence your actions. It's the process of continuously examining, testifying and verifying your personal beliefs.  It is a tool that not only guides your own teaching and beliefs but also helps other Educators and Parents understand your individual approach to early learning.

How To Write A Personal Philosophy

The personal philosophy of early childhood education should be used as a tool that not only guides your own teaching but also helps your staff and parents understand your individual approach to early learning.

If someone asked you to explain your personal philosophy in early childhood education, what would you say? How would you begin to formulate a statement that captures the essence of your beliefs about teaching and learning? It can include -

• How children learn,
• Your role as the educator,
• the Role of the community,
• Your understanding of early childhood education,
• Your commitment to further professional development,
• Role of families

The following are some of the most important areas you may want to address in your personal philosophy. 

• Take some time to express your thoughts about the job of an educator. Include your thoughts on child-led vs. teacher-led activities, the educator's involvement in playtime and the presenting of brand new ideas vs. discoveries made by the children on their own. Include a statement that expresses your true hopes and expectations for the children.
• What are your thoughts on how youngsters learn best? What kinds of activities and opportunities do you think should be included in the environment to help all children learn to their full potential, regardless of their preferred learning style? What impact might the child's preferred learning style have on the child's position as a knowledge receiver? Include both planned and open-ended learning activities, and discuss what you believe is the appropriate ratio of each in the room.
• As you educate diverse children, talk about how you'll handle varied personalities, learning styles, special needs, and cultural diversity. Include a statement on how children with unique learning needs will be welcomed in your classroom, as well as your specific tactics for fulfilling their needs as well as the requirements of others children. Embracing diversity is critical to creating a warm and welcoming learning environment. You'll want to make sure you clearly outline how you'll address a variety of demands when writing your philosophy.
• Plan out your curricular orientation, including details on how you came to hold the values you do. However, be careful not to disparage alternative ways when discussing this stage. Instead, consider tying your curricular orientation information to your prior assertions regarding the educator's role in early childhood education.
• Describe how you handle any behavioural difficulties that arise in this part, as well as why you think your method will succeed. Provide examples. 
• Finally, decide how parents and other primary caregivers will be included. Outline your plan for involving parents and keeping lines of communication open with family members.
• Clear statements about what you believe and how you intend to implement and support your beliefs.
• Explain the values that guide your teaching beliefs.
• Including specific examples of teaching theories and approaches
• Include child development theorists that you like and provide examples
• Relate your philosophy to current trends and theories, as this philosophy should guide your actions as an early childhood educator.
• Links to the EYLF (or approved learning framework), Code of Ethics

It is truly up to you to create a philosophy that accurately expresses your unique teaching style, values and beliefs when it comes to early childhood education. A good way to think of it is by writing down some of your beliefs regarding children's development and learning.

Questions To Think About

Use the following questions to help you think about your beliefs regarding teaching young children. It is not necessary to respond to each of these questions in your written philosophy. You may also decide to comment on additional issues as well. Take some time to think about each one in some depth.

• How do you view young children?
• What is the child’s role in their development and learning?
• What do you believe about how young children learn?
• How do you view your role as an Educator?
• How will your views influence your teaching?
• What kind of environment do you hope to create? How does this relate to your basic beliefs about young children and learning?
• What do you hope young children will become?
• What do you want them to achieve, accomplish, learn, feel, etc.?
• What kind of assessment in childcare  will you use to be sure that children have met objectives?
• Looking back at the history of early childhood education, who or what approaches have the greatest impression on you, and why?

Examples Of Personal Philosophies

Here are some examples of personal philosophies:

• I believe that each child is an individual and as an educator, I will value and develop each child's strengths, interests, skills, abilities and knowledge to extend their learning.
• I believe that children learn through play. I will provide opportunities for children to explore, discover, create and imagine.
• I believe in cultural diversity. I will celebrate the benefits of diversity with each individual child and enable them to understand and acknowledge differences.
• I believe young children are very concerned about themselves and the small world they live in: family and home. However, each child is unique with different interests, backgrounds, and developmental stages.
• I believe the environment plays a major role in the success of an early childhood program. It should enhance the children’s interests in all developmental domains. I believe learning in an early childhood environment is done most successfully through stations that can be visited, explored, and revisited again and again. The environment should take into consideration the social skills, communication skills, physical abilities or challenges, and learning styles of the children being served.
• I consider families a vital aspect of my program. Parents who are able to spend time in the classroom occasionally are more aware of the details of their child’s day. Observing what goes on first-hand helps a parent know what to ask the child at the end of the school day.”
• The early years of a child’s life are busy. I believe learning is happening all the time and is interwoven through all developmental domains. These include: physical, social/emotional, cognitive and communication. Therefore, the goal of my program is to make this ongoing learning experience safe, positive, and fun, nurturing the whole child as I strive to guide them into the next stage of development with confidence in themselves and an excitement for continued learning.
• Children need the assurance of being loved and cared for while they are enjoying an educational environment. Teaching children is my passion. Security and trust are very important components as well, of my relationship with each child.
• In planning my program I would strive for a developmentally appropriate, child-centred atmosphere where children have the opportunity to master new challenges through activities and topics that are meaningful to them, thus building their self-esteem as they develop and learn.
• Children should be given choices, responsibilities, and opportunities to initiate their own learning. I believe observations and assessments are excellent tools to use when planning a curriculum. Observations, not only aid in creating the curriculum but also give insight into the development, knowledge and skill levels of each individual child.

I believe that as an early childhood educator I am responsible for providing infants, toddlers and young children with positive learning experiences. I strive to model respect, patience, and care for children and adults I come in contact with. Children have the right to have their needs met and receive the proper education while in the care of their caregivers.

My philosophy is based on theorists, Jean Piaget, and Lev Vygotsky, and the early childhood movement from Reggio Emilia, Italy. I believe that children benefit from practices that are grounded in research.

Children are motivated to learn when they have opportunities to make choices in an environment that is enriching and stimulating. Children are curious from infancy and have a desire to learn from their environment and those around them. When children are encouraged to interact with their peers and adults in positive ways, they feel safe to explore their surroundings.

As a teacher, I seek to guide children from needing assistance with a task to accomplishing a task independently by providing experiences that are challenging yet attainable for every child. I facilitate learning through the in-depth study of a subject that is of interest to children. Children can be highly motivated, feel actively involved in their own learning and produce work of high quality when they have the time to engage in short and long term projects.

My role as a teacher is to be a facilitator and provide enriching activities so that children are supported as they learn about their strengths and work on their weaknesses. As a facilitator, I support children as they embark on a journey to make discoveries about themselves and learn to recognize and name their feelings.

My goal as a teacher is to provide children with a rich environment where they feel safe to explore, initiate learning, and feel free to express themselves.

As a teacher, I seek to form a close relationship with each child under my care, and their families. I make use of our communities' resources and incorporate the child’s community into the program. I see each child as a unique individual with a great capacity to learn and able to make positive contributions to those around him or her. I strive to provide an environment where children and families from different cultural backgrounds feel welcomed and accepted. 

As a teacher, I seek to form close relationships with each child under my care, and their families. I make use of our communities' resources and incorporate the child’s community into the program. I see each child as a unique individual with a great capacity to learn and able to make positive contributions to those around him or her. I strive to provide an environment where children and families from different cultural backgrounds feel welcomed and accepted.

Personal Philosophy Template

The Personal Philosophy template enables Educators to write and display their personal philosophy within their centre.  To download:  Personal Philosophy Template

When writing your personal philosophy remember:

• Use present tense, in most cases. Write the paper in first-person (which is the most common and easiest for your audience to read).
• Write in language and concepts that can be broadly appreciated. A general rule is that the statement should be written with the audience in mind. It may help to consider a school administrator (e.g., school principal) as your audience.
• Write a paper that will let your audience know where you stand in regard to important educational theories and practices. By including specific examples of teaching theories and approaches, you are able to let your reader take a mental “peek” of your classroom.
• Make the paper memorable and unique. Think of this teaching philosophy as part of a job application where your readers are seeing many of these statements. What is going to set you apart from others? What about you are they going to remember? Create a vivid portrait of yourself as someone who is intentional about teaching and committed to his/her career.

Once you've finished, make sure your personal philosophy statement is accessible to Educators and families within the service. Explaining the principles that influence your teaching and the overall teachings of service will assist other Educators in ensuring that their own teaching techniques are in keeping with the type of environment you wish to create.

Families will also benefit from hearing about your personal philosophy on early childhood education. During orientation, consider giving them a copy of your statement. This may assist parents in determining whether your approach to education aligns with their own values and whether the service is a good fit for their child.

Creating a personal philosophy should not be intimidating, in fact, it is an excellent opportunity to clarify your teaching philosophies and beliefs and commit them to paper. Reference: Foundations Of Early Childhood Developing A Personal Philosophy Of Teaching Developing A Personal Philosophy Of Early Childhood Education How to Develop a Personal Philosophy of Early Childhood Education, Early Childhood Education Blog Jones, M., Shelton, M. (2011). Developing Your Portfolio--Enhancing Your Learning and Showing Your Stuff: A Guide for the Early Childhood Student or Professional, Second Edition. Routledge. 

• childcare career
• childcare articles

Related Articles

Childcare Wages In Australia +

Writing A Personal Philosophy For Childcare +

Interview Questions For A Job In Childcare +

Resigning From A Job In Early Childhood +

School Readiness Program +

Progressive Mealtimes In Early Childhood Settings +

Celebrating Birthdays In Childcare +

Sustainability Ideas For Early Childhood Services +

Encouraging Parents To Pack Healthy Foods For Childcare +

Growing An Edible Garden For Children +

Suggestions

Bush Tucker Gardens In Early Childhood Services

Raising awareness about Aboriginal culture is an important aspect of children’s learning and growing a...

Managing Paperwork

Part of being a childcare professional is to maintain and complete paperwork. However at times...

How To Achieve Quality Area 3

Quality Area 3 of the National Quality Standard focuses on the physical environment.

• Childcare Articles
• Childcare Programming
• Student Articles
• Teaching Children
• Child Development
• Child Behaviour
• Parenting Articles
• Pregnancy Articles
• Child Health & Safety
• Games and Activities
• Art and Craft
• Rhymes and Songs
• Cooking Activities
• Cutting Worksheets
• Pre Writing Worksheets
• Alphabet Worksheets
• Number Worksheets
• Colours Worksheets
• Shapes Worksheets
• Vocabulary Worksheets
• Phonics Worksheets
• Reading Worksheets
• Writing Worksheets
• Math Worksheets
• English Worksheets
• Classroom Displays
• Colouring Pages
• All EYLF Templates
• Learning Stories
• Reflections
• Child Observations
• Child Portfolios
• Curriculum Plans
• Forms and Checklists
• FAQs and Troubleshoot
• Childcare News
• Childcare Events
• Forum Index
• Active Topics
• Childcare Forums
• Student Forums
• Parent Forums
• General Discussions
• General News
• Articles News
• Activities News
• Printables News
• EYLF Templates News

Subscription

• Subscription Plans
• Edit Profile
• Newsletter Settings
• Forum Settings

Appsessment

• Terms & Conditions
• Copyright & Disclaimer
• Privacy Policy

© 2009-2024 Aussie Childcare Network Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved .

Teaching Philosophy in Early Childhood Essay

In this paper I plan to provide a context of assessing the significance of teaching factor in pre-school learning. I realize that young children have disposition to develop in a wide array of areas. But it is unfortunate that teachers may not be able to set them up to successfully develop their potential.

In this connection I wish to stress that for me teaching philosophy my teaching techniques, communication skills and motivational skill are very crucial in teaching and learning of the pre-school children. With the above variables I believe there is need to incorporate the use of technology in instructions to be able to bring out the best out of the pre-school children.

To be able to make classes interesting for children and to capture their attention during lessons, I will employ instructional techniques. Some of these techniques include the use of discovery learning, use of inquiries, incorporating dramatic play in some lessons, incorporating music and moving activities during lessons among others.

I will always carry out an extensive research to make sure that they are educationally sound and that they correspond to the multiple dimensions of learning. This will make learners have the voice I desire as well as making them able to use it in a respectful manner.

It is not an easy task to bring out success in a child if as a teacher I do not like my work. This therefore demands that I should make my careers interesting by experimenting and exploring how technology can fit in instructional approach in supporting learning.

Previous researches indicate that very young children are capable of excess of cognitive, emotional, social and physical activities. Therefore must be able to expose children to all the modalities of learning so that they can discover what they are good at and where their interests fall. However I strongly believe that children should be exposed to areas they like most as well as those they find very challenging.

While dealing with children, I have come to appreciate the fact that to be able to direct them to attain desired goals, I must first of all be aware of their proximal development and how it relates to their zone of advanced development.

With this knowledge, I will be capable of directing the child’s efforts to assess his or her current understanding and the potential for extended learning. I will also be able to make quality and informed decisions about the children. This will me to pair them for projects and play according to their areas of interest and be sure to have realistic expectation for every child.

As a teacher I strongly believe that there is need to have a teaching philosophy. This will provide me with the necessary knowledge to provide the children with desired activities that incorporate innovations that children can relate with. With this knowledge I will also be in a position of helping children understand the relevance between the activities and the world’s reality.

These experiences by pre-school child should challenge him or her to think independently in solving problems, making decision and thinking critically. This ultimately makes students to have a sense of pride in themselves and their community. There is no doubt that my role in the growth and development of a pre-school child is paramount. I am entitled to prepare and organize the child’s environment to allow the child to actively engage and relate with each other.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2018, November 7). Teaching Philosophy in Early Childhood. https://ivypanda.com/essays/teaching-philosophy-in-early-childhood/

"Teaching Philosophy in Early Childhood." IvyPanda , 7 Nov. 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/teaching-philosophy-in-early-childhood/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'Teaching Philosophy in Early Childhood'. 7 November.

IvyPanda . 2018. "Teaching Philosophy in Early Childhood." November 7, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/teaching-philosophy-in-early-childhood/.

1. IvyPanda . "Teaching Philosophy in Early Childhood." November 7, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/teaching-philosophy-in-early-childhood/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Teaching Philosophy in Early Childhood." November 7, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/teaching-philosophy-in-early-childhood/.

• Teaching Preschool Children
• Preschool Teacher Burnout Prevention
• History of Pre-School Lives in the USA, China and Japan Society
• Plan of Assessing Learner Performances
• Changing the Structure of the Class Grading System
• Influence of Cultural Identity the Way Middle School Students Learn
• Ownership and Operation of the Global Village English Language School
• How to Prepare the Students to Travel to a Foreign Country?

My Teaching Philosophy Statement

This essay about a teaching philosophy emphasizes innovation, empathy, and empowerment as foundational elements for a dynamic learning environment. It advocates for active student participation, diversity, and the practical application of knowledge. The approach promotes critical thinking, a growth mindset, and meaningful feedback, aiming to develop lifelong learners and compassionate leaders. The philosophy embodies collaboration, inclusivity, and engagement with the wider world as key components.

How it works

In my educational approach, I blend the art of teaching with the science of inspiration, weaving together elements of innovation, empathy, and empowerment to create a dynamic tapestry of learning experiences where each student can truly flourish. Rather than simply delivering information, I see myself as a catalyst for intellectual and personal growth, igniting the flames of curiosity within each learner.

At the heart of my pedagogy lies a deep commitment to fostering student agency. I recognize that every student brings a rich diversity of backgrounds and perspectives to the classroom, and I strive to create an environment where they are active participants in their own educational journey.

Through collaborative projects, spirited discussions, and immersive activities, I aim to cultivate a culture of inquiry and exploration, where questions are celebrated and curiosity is nurtured.

Equally essential to my philosophy is the promotion of inclusivity and belonging. I firmly believe that diversity is not only a strength but a fundamental aspect of our humanity, and I work tirelessly to create a space where every voice is heard and every identity is respected. By fostering empathy, understanding, and open dialogue, I seek to build a community where students feel empowered to express themselves authentically and engage with one another in meaningful ways.

Moreover, I am deeply passionate about bridging the gap between theory and practice. I firmly believe that education should extend beyond the walls of the classroom, and I strive to integrate real-world relevance into my teachings. Whether through hands-on experiences, real-life case studies, or project-based learning, I aim to inspire students to see the connections between their studies and the world around them, motivating them to become proactive agents of change in their communities.

Furthermore, I am committed to nurturing critical thinking skills and fostering a growth mindset. In an age inundated with information, the ability to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate is more important than ever. Through thought-provoking discussions, challenging assignments, and opportunities for reflection, I aim to instill in my students a deep sense of intellectual curiosity and a willingness to explore new ideas, equipping them with the skills they need to thrive in an ever-changing world.

Finally, I believe in the transformative power of feedback and assessment as tools for growth and development. Rather than viewing assessment as a mere judgment, I see it as an opportunity for learning and improvement. By providing timely and constructive feedback, I empower my students to reflect on their progress, identify areas for growth, and set meaningful goals for their continued development.

In essence, my teaching philosophy is a mosaic of collaboration, inclusivity, relevance, critical thinking, and growth. By creating an environment where students are encouraged to take ownership of their learning, embrace diversity, and engage with the world around them, I hope to inspire a lifelong love of learning, compassionate leadership, and global citizenship.

Cite this page

My Teaching Philosophy Statement. (2024, Apr 29). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/my-teaching-philosophy-statement/

"My Teaching Philosophy Statement." PapersOwl.com , 29 Apr 2024, https://papersowl.com/examples/my-teaching-philosophy-statement/

PapersOwl.com. (2024). My Teaching Philosophy Statement . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/my-teaching-philosophy-statement/ [Accessed: 11 May. 2024]

"My Teaching Philosophy Statement." PapersOwl.com, Apr 29, 2024. Accessed May 11, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/my-teaching-philosophy-statement/

"My Teaching Philosophy Statement," PapersOwl.com , 29-Apr-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/my-teaching-philosophy-statement/. [Accessed: 11-May-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). My Teaching Philosophy Statement . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/my-teaching-philosophy-statement/ [Accessed: 11-May-2024]

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

Hire a writer to get a unique paper crafted to your needs.

Our writers will help you fix any mistakes and get an A+!

Please check your inbox.

You can order an original essay written according to your instructions.

Trusted by over 1 million students worldwide

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Personal Philosophy — My Personal Philosophy of Education

My Personal Philosophy of Education

• Categories: Personal Philosophy Philosophy of Education

About this sample

Words: 1412 |

Updated: 13 November, 2023

Words: 1412 | Pages: 4 | 8 min read

The essay analyzes the author's personal philosophy of education as a student and an aspiring teacher. The author emphasizes the importance of gaining knowledge from education, even when faced with the challenges of a heavy workload and academic stress. They believe that completing the work and gaining knowledge is a privilege and that building a strong connection with professors is crucial for successful learning.

The author's philosophy of education revolves around the idea that every child should have the right to high-quality education. They reflect on their experiences with various teachers and teaching styles, recognizing the impact that exceptional educators can have on students' lives. The author values teachers who can establish personal connections with students and make learning enjoyable.

The influence of scholars such as John Dewey and Jean Piaget is evident in the author's philosophy. They appreciate Dewey's emphasis on learning through experience and Piaget's contributions to child development theory. The author believes in creating a learning environment where students actively participate in their education and where motivation is nurtured.

Table of contents

Introduction, my philosophy of education, influence of scholars, video version.

• Berk, L.E. (2012). Infants and Children; Prenatal through Middle Childhood. Pearson; New York, New York.
• Talebi, K. (2015). John Dewey--Philosopher and Educational Reformer. Online Submission, 1(1), 1-13.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Karlyna PhD

Verified writer

• Expert in: Philosophy

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

3 pages / 1273 words

2 pages / 844 words

3 pages / 1186 words

1 pages / 468 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Personal Philosophy

Developing a personal teaching philosophy is essential to defining the way an educator shapes the minds of their students. My teaching philosophy essay reflects my belief that the role of education extends far beyond the [...]

Philosophy in nursing stems from providing competent and optimal care to patients and communities. These values are the stepping stones to be a successful nurse. For as long as I can remember I have been overwhelmed with a [...]

Life is a complex journey filled with ups and downs, challenges and opportunities. As individuals, we often find ourselves searching for meaning and purpose in this vast and mysterious existence. In this essay, I will share my [...]

Education is a powerful force that shapes the future of individuals and societies. As an educator, my personal philosophy of education serves as the guiding compass for my teaching practices and the principles that underpin my [...]

The wind whipped around the corner, moaning and warning me that torrential rain awaited me. Without hesitating, I shut all the windows in my room. I fumbled down the stairs to the living room and sat on a couch. The sound of the [...]

Dante believed that justice was capital and proportionate to the injustice. He believed that the nature of the crime also affected the nature of the punishment. Along with this he alluded to crimes against God being more severe [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Your Neighbors Are Retiring in Their 30s. Why Can’t You?

Meet the schemers and savers obsessed with ending their careers as early as possible.

Allen Wong in his primary residence in Celebration, Fla. Credit... Maggie Shannon for The New York Times

Supported by

• Share full article

By Amy X. Wang

Amy X. Wang is the assistant managing editor of the magazine. She often writes about how tantalizing objects of desire change our everyday behavior.

• May 7, 2024

Even before he really knew what it meant, Allen Wong wanted to be rich. As a kid, he didn’t yet equate the word with “luxury” or “status” or “expensive things.” He didn’t think wealth would bring him 85-inch televisions and Jacuzzis, a one-of-a-kind rose-gold Lamborghini in the garage, a wearable Iron Man suit that shoots lasers — though he does, actually, have all of that now. What “rich” seemed to dangle was something simpler, more elementary, more a feeling than anything else: freedom from pain.

Listen to this article, read by Emily Woo Zeller

Wong’s parents had fled poverty — at one point, his father used tennis balls as flotation devices to illicitly cross waters from Guangzhou into Hong Kong — in order to raise a family in a more opportune land. But growing up in New York City, Wong watched one parent peddle medicinal herbs all day long while the other toiled away in a Chinatown sweatshop. They barely had time to slough off one workday before trudging into the next.

“I didn’t want my life to end up like that,” he told me. “I didn’t want to be absent from my family and only show up a few hours each day after work. I didn’t want my life to be monotonous and stuck in a repeating loop until I die.”

Then, in 2008, right as he was graduating from college, the family convulsed. Wong’s father was ousted from his business, sank into a depression and committed suicide; his mother tripped down a spiral of mental illness. Suddenly, Wong’s entry-level computer programming job was the household’s only source of income, and there was a world financial crisis going on. He had always dreamed about digging out of the middle-class quagmire — striking gold, pulling in enough money from a one-off idea that he would never have to work the way his parents did. But it was now, as anxiety and medical bills piled up, that those idle daydreams began to feel urgent and necessary. So he turbocharged his ambitions. He started coding around the clock, tinkering on D.I.Y. software ideas whenever he wasn’t at work, barely sleeping. He doggedly pushed one project after another to the App Store, praying for something to take off.

Eventually, one did: an app that let users tune in to police scanners around the world. Then another. Their runaway success took even him by surprise. By the time his peers were splurging on their first West Elm sofas, he was a self-made multimillionaire.

Wong found his day job interesting enough, and he liked his colleagues. But submitting himself to a boss’s whims, spending his days trapped like a houseplant under corporate fluorescence, grated at him; it reminded him too much of his parents’ suffering. What, he wondered, could a so-called career really offer him if he had already secured enough money for a good life? The whole point of working was to get what he had just gotten. So, at 25, he bought a $250,000 sports car painted a shimmery lime green — it wasn’t so crazy a purchase, he reasoned, because his police-scanner app was by then generating that amount of revenue in a single month — and announced that he was retiring forever.

It was only after he bought a second exotic car, a five-bedroom house in Celebration, Fla., a dog and a Disney World annual pass for his mother that Wong learned that there was an entire online community of people seeking to do what he had just done. Wong had heard of the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) movement before, but he didn’t think it really applied to him because of its focus on frugality. FIRE got its start in the early 2000s with a mantra of extreme saving — you may remember hearing about stoic ultraminimalists living off beans and friends’ couches — but it has since come to include all the people who would like to exit the work force on their own terms, at an age of their own choosing, rather than hustling for a paycheck all the way into their 60s. After Wong made a Reddit post sharing his story, it attracted such a flurry from FIRE adherents that he quickly became the quasi president of one of the group’s biggest online enclaves.

Some FIRE aspirants still get to early retirement by the traditional route of simply saving madly. Others, though, truffle-hunt for high-paying W-2s, tax loopholes, bold and risky market bets or big entrepreneurial ploys like Wong’s. The overarching credo of FIRE is that in today’s unpredictable financial landscape, 9-to-5s and decades-long careers have become bad investments: Old-school benefits like pensions and job security are a thing of the past, and wages aren’t even keeping up with the galloping pace of inflation. According to a 2023 survey, one-quarter of Americans would like to retire before age 50. After decades of tolerating workaholic culture as the norm, employees are tired, unafraid to show it and yearning to yank back control of their lives. To fed-up workers willing to do a little bit of math, FIRE offers a straightforward antidote: You can just leave it all behind.

Like Wong, and like so many other people who chase financial independence, I didn’t grow up with a lot of money — which might be why I became obsessed with it.

Long before “side hustle” became Merriam-Webster lingo, I was working Costco snack arbitrage on the elementary-school playground and hawking homemade bookmarks to my teachers. In adulthood, I moved on to online surveys, research studies, plasma donation, vintage resale, parts modeling and dog-sitting in other people’s homes in lieu of paying rent. I have left no income source unturned. I’ve trawled every page of NerdWallet and The Points Guy. I have made questionable margin calls. I have woken up at the crack of dawn to day-trade $NVDA, $TSLA, $TSM. I have “ flipped ”; I have “ churned .” When I feel sad, I open my phone to check on the interest rates in the five-pronged CD ladder I’ve lovingly assembled in my Marcus account, like a tic, to feel better.

Is this all embarrassing to confess? Incredibly so. Would I characterize my relationship to money as “unhealthy”? Also yes. But I often wonder if anybody in this economy, in this country — where more than 60 percent of the work force lives paycheck to paycheck, where the average American is in five- to six-figure debt and often has only cursory knowledge of how he or she got there — has a healthy relationship to money. Simply learning to understand your own finances can feel, several FIRErs said to me, like acquiring a “secret weapon.”

The original FIRE doctrine revolves around delay of gratification. Save your money — ideally as much as 50 to 75 percent of each paycheck — instead of spending it immediately, and when you’ve amassed enough of a nest egg, quit your job and take the rest of your life for yourself. “It’s simple, because the main principles fit on a Post-it note,” Jacob Lund Fisker, a Danish former astrophysicist who is often thought of as the father of the FIRE movement, told me. “However, it is not easy, because everything the typical middle-class consumer has been raised and trained to believe goes against these principles. People have grown up associating success with money and spending money with happiness. They’ve been trained to sit still and perform repetitive work, first by a teacher, then by a manager. They’ve been educated to be specialists in a narrow field and never think outside that box.”

Fisker’s 2010 book, “Early Retirement Extreme” — written mostly while he lived out of an R.V. on $7,000 a year — is one seminal text for early retirees. Two others are “Your Money or Your Life,” a 1992 personal-finance bible written by Joseph R. Dominguez and Vicki Robin, and the blog Mr. Money Mustache, started in 2011 by Peter Adeney, who retired from his software-engineering job in 2005 at age 30 and figured out how to shrink his family’s expenses down to just $24,000 a year. The tao of all three tomes is that minimalist spending and anti-consumption can offer the keys to better living. (Adeney has professed to be “really just trying to get rich people to stop destroying the planet,” but his tens of thousands of monthly visitors tend to be more fixated on his other mantra: “Make you rich so you can retire early.”)

Conventional FIRE adherents are not necessarily big earners or genius mathematicians with incredible impulse control. Their superpower is their expert planning; it’s the ability to see the finish line from miles away that has allowed even some minimum-wage workers to achieve early retirement. One simple FIRE rule of thumb is to first calculate your target “FI number” by multiplying anticipated annual retirement expenses by at least 25, and then squirrel away as much as possible into interest-accruing or tax-advantaged buckets like 401(k)s, low-fee index funds, certificates of deposit, HSAs and Roth IRAs until you hit that number. As an example, if you bring home $150,000 a year, can save half of that and plan to spend $50,000 per year in retirement, then it will take only 16.5 years before you can kiss your job goodbye. For those who earn less or spend more, it will take longer — but for still others who can endure greater sacrifices, FIRE can be possible as early as their 30s.

From these plain origins, many offshoots of FIRE have sprouted up — some much more brazen than others. It’s rare to find anyone these days who actually wants to get to early retirement by living off beans; those people, with their stringent penny-pinching, are largely known in the community as LeanFIRE. A lot more people aim for CoastFIRE (a more measured approach that involves front-loading your retirement savings and “coasting” on compound interest and working lightly until you’re ready to quit) or BaristaFIRE (quitting your job but buttressing your retirement with a side gig, such as that of a part-time barista, to receive health-insurance benefits) or FatFIRE (a luxurious, no-sacrifice approach to retirement, the polar opposite of LeanFIRE — and the subset to which Wong belongs).

You might be tempted to regard early retirees as layabouts, soaking up sunshine while everyone else toils. But why not see them as brave maniacs, daring to build an entirely new vision of the world? Retirement has long been framed as a reward for a job well done — social reformers started pushing for mandatory post-work benefits in the early 20th century, and policies like Social Security later codified the tipping point between labor and leisure — but if FIRE’s incredible popularity of late (the r/Fire subreddit alone boasts nearly half a million members) is a defiant reaction to economic hardship, then it’s also a plea to re-evaluate the centrality of work to modern living. Maybe, the movement suggests, we should have always been in it for ourselves, and nobody else, from the start.

To my left was a woman who runs a phone-sex hotline; to my right, a cruise operator, a disaster-response volunteer, a kitchen-appliance entrepreneur, a public-school teacher and a former Off Broadway actor who now lives out of the back of an 18-wheeler and puts 70 percent of her weekly paycheck into index funds. It was a chilly spring weekend, and we had all flown to Cincinnati for EconoMe, an annual all-flavors-of-FIRE conference in which hundreds of people of all ages, from all over, bandy about tips on financial independence from dawn to dusk. The point of FIRE meetups — EconoMe is the largest, but others take place all over the world, some of them at a monthly clip — is only partly to give fiscal advice. Every person’s retirement plan is a highly individualized choreography, after all, so the manifold workshops and breakout groups are meant to offer only high-level ideas. The broader purpose of these get-togethers is more a sort of group therapy, geared to help people achieve their common goals and forge through their common struggles.

Much of the crowd was timid but curious — like Laura Rojo-Eddy, who decided on a whim to fly out from Texas. “My family doesn’t know anything about FIRE,” she told me. “I’ve been really shy talking about it. It’s hard to talk about finances with strangers, but in a way it’s even harder with people you love.” She chanced upon the movement in 2021 via a former colleague’s LinkedIn post, which made her consider for the first time that she may not have to work until the standard age of 65. The friend “posted she was retiring thanks to FIRE, and I was like: That’s really cool! But what the hell is she talking about? And, holy crap, this person’s my age — 40 — and what if I could do that? Should I do that?”

At EconoMe, bank-account totals were traded more freely than phone numbers. The conference’s organizer, Diania Merriam (retired at 33), introduced speakers like Jeremy Schneider (retired at 36), who spoke about how to pick a good financial adviser; the retired divorce lawyer Aaron Thomas, who evangelized the importance of prenups; the real estate tax strategist Natalie Kolodij, who discussed real estate investing and recommended employing your children starting from the age they are able to do household chores, which offers a double benefit of reducing a parent’s taxable income while building an investment-accruing tax shelter for the 7-year-old. Stephanie Zito’s two-hour seminar on the nitty-gritty of “travel hacking,” a.k.a. traversing the world through strategic deployment of credit-card points, had the crowd on the edge of their seats.

In one morning session, a brave volunteer named Krista put her life’s “balance sheet” up on a big screen so that 500 strangers could critique it for blind spots. She is 35, with four kids ages 16, 15, 9 and 7, and makes $32,000 working in a library in Wisconsin. Over the last seven years, since discovering FIRE, she and her husband had slowly paid off $200,000 in credit-card and home- and auto-loan debt. But she knew, she said, humbly dipping her head a bit, that she still had a long way to go, especially when compared with all the younger, already-retired millionaires in the room.

“Wait a second,” Frank Vasquez, one of the conference’s speakers, interrupted. “No. Do you all see this? Krista was a teenage mom who grew up in poverty. We are looking, right now, at a map of a hero’s journey.”

During a break, Jackie Cummings Koski, an Ohio local, shared her story with me: She grew up on food stamps and had a “wake-up call” with money after an acrimonious divorce left her a single mother. She learned about FIRE in her early 40s. Newly enlightened, she started saving 40 percent of the salary from her five-figure job, reached financial independence at 47 and pulled the trigger on retirement at 49, with $1.3 million in savings. “My corporate job had nothing to do with what I want to do,” Koski told me. “I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it.” She added: “While most FIRE people brag about having an old car with 200,000 miles or whatever, I drive a luxury car. But nobody’s going to chastise me, because I still retired early, even with that car, even with having made some mistakes!” Koski spends her time nowadays creating financial content and advocating for personal-finance classes to be added to high schools, and she recently wrote a “FIRE for Dummies” manual.

To my surprise, a sizable portion of the FIRE crowd at EconoMe was older. This wasn’t so surprising to Bill Yount, a 58-year-old retired physician who recently started up a podcast with Koski and another friend, Becky Heptig, that speaks to older demographics. “The average American is a late starter,” Yount told me. “That’s just who we are, living in this consumption society and not having the mentality of saving often or early.” And things are no longer “9-to-5, 40 years and a gold watch” the way they were for his parents’ generation: “I’m not in the gold-watch generation. Gen X got lost, got forgotten.”

Heptig, who is 68, found herself in dire financial straits in her 50s, when her husband’s small business faltered. “I got really scared, thinking we will never get out of this debt and we will never retire,” she says. They took a course from the financial-advice radio host Dave Ramsey, and her husband signed up for a W-2 job. After that, they started saving madly. “We were net-worth zero at 50 years old, and he retired at 63 — so for us, where we started from, we consider ourselves retiring early,” Heptig says. She had made the same wild discovery that everyone in FIRE does: that it can really take as little as a decade to hit early retirement, from the moment you learn about it and start planning. But as Yount put it to me: “You don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t even know to go looking for it.”

Maybe it’s because I know too much about looking for money that I found myself, while reporting this article, especially drawn to the subculture of FatFIRE — and to the lavish, unapologetic, in-your-face money philosophy that Allen Wong and others of his ilk prefer. FatFIRE flies in the face of all the other variants of FIRE. It is anti -anticonsumption. Its typical benchmark is to accumulate enough wealth that you can comfortably spend at least $100,000 a year in retirement, but some highfliers aim for much, much bigger sums. It espouses an unbridled maximalism, a have-it-all abundance.

While most other FIRE communities steer toward the friendly and pragmatic, FatFIRE’s adherents tend to be jaded, brusque, laser-focused. They hunt for the “exit,” in the tech-world manner of speaking: a fast, lucrative way out. On the r/FatFIRE subreddit, aspirants ogle severance packages, geo-arbitrage, REIT, tax loopholes, high-risk options straddles and potential business moonshots. Successful FatFIRErs applaud one another for hitting double-digit-millions net worth, debate the merits of private jets versus second homes and agonize over how large a trust fund is ethical to set up for their kids. And just as Fisker and Adeney were beacons to early-era FIRE devotees, Allen Wong is FatFIRE’s mythic hero.

Wong is quiet and unassuming in person. When I finally met him this spring — three years after we first began chatting online — near his childhood home in Queens, he wore jeans, Asics and a wary self-consciousness. Now in his mid-30s, he has comfortably enjoyed nearly a decade of leisure; he spends the bulk of his days playing pickleball and counseling strangers online on how to follow in his footsteps. He’s not particularly interested in fame, so he posts, as the senior moderator of r/FatFIRE, under his app company’s name. For someone who is a living talisman against the tenets of conventional living, he speaks with a surprising calm — though his eyes flashed with a certain pride whenever we talked about his childhood or his father. Even though it sprouted up only seven years ago, r/FatFIRE is on the verge of overtaking r/FIRE in size, Wong told me. Membership doubled during the pandemic despite moderators’ intentionally hiding the forum from Reddit’s homepage, he said, showing me a graph, and he added that most of its members seem to be “early-career American men.”

This makes sense. Millennials may have been ushered into the work force with the encouragement to hustle, but we soon found ourselves jerked around by utterly unaffordable housing, pandemic layoffs, salaries that flopped flat while costs went stratosphere-high. Nearly half of young adults have “money dysphoria,” according to a recent survey from the personal-finance company Credit Karma. Online, trends like “quiet luxury” and “dupe culture” glorify totems of wealth while making it clear how depressingly inaccessible that echelon is for the average Joe. If the recent “antiwork” movement laid bare the disillusionment of the young work force, then FatFIRE represents those feelings put into action.

Some FatFIRE success stories are like Wong’s: a result of obsessive entrepreneurism. Just as many are a byproduct of grinding away at a regular, albeit high-earning, job for enough years. (Fisker, for one, argues that FatFIRE is just an aesthetic rebranding of the work-smart-not-hard ethos that has been woven throughout American history.) In San Francisco, Sam Dogen faithfully saved his finance-job paychecks for 13 years before retiring in 2012 to live off passive investment income. He initially budgeted $100,000 for him and his wife to spend per year, but they upped the target to $200,000 after having their first child, then to $300,000 after a second child — and recently again to $350,000 to account for the recent bout of unchecked inflation. “We choose to live in an expensive coastal city and choose to have two children,” Dogen told me. “But you look at the $300,000 budget I made for a family of four, and you’re like, This is a pretty middle-class lifestyle. FatFIRE is almost a necessity if you want to live in San Francisco.”

“I think more people should aim for FatFIRE, because even if you don’t hit it, you’ll be at regular FIRE,” Jeff Underwood, a San Diego-based FatFIRE aspirant who started chasing financial independence after he lost his house and sank $10,000 into debt, told me. “The idea of LeanFIRE makes me super nervous. Health care costs are going up. There are all these unknowns. You could really find yourself in trouble.” Through smart tips he picked up on financial-planning forums, Underwood’s net worth steadily climbed from $0 in 2011 to $1 million in 2023. He is drawn to FatFIRE’s cheeky energy and its emphasis on securing a big safety net: “I had spent so long in the survival mind-set,” he says. “My default position is to plan for the worst, because I’ve already been through the worst.”

Wong now splits most of his time between houses in Celebration, Fla., and in New York City. He wakes up early to play pickleball and can keep at it for hours if the weather is nice. Because he has so much free time to practice, he has gotten good enough to compete against elite players and coach novices. (He offered to teach me how to play, but it was a wind-whipped 35 degrees when we met up in early April, so we went to have soup dumplings instead.) Otherwise, he reads up on tech and cybersecurity news, plays video games and undertakes home-renovation projects. His houses have been burglarized three times, although he managed to halt the latest attempt with a self-programmed alarm system. He used to make videos about his exotic car collection on YouTube, a few of which went viral, but he grew tired of being a “content creator” because it felt too much like having a job. Plus, he had already done the whole rack-up-a-huge-number thing before — with money.

“It was as if I fast-forwarded through an entire movie, and the end credits are slowly rolling,” Wong told me recently, recalling his first, restless years in retirement. “There was nothing more to watch, and all my peers were still busy watching the movie that I already finished. After I traveled the world and had done just about every possible fun thing I could possibly do, I often found myself wondering, What now?”

Life after early retirement: the elephant in the room. What to do after the cruises, the skydiving, the teetering stack of books on the night stand? The main danger of FIRE is that you might be running hard away from something rather than toward it — that you’re propelled only by the too-nebulous idea of escape. And then, even for those who lay out a clear road map for decades of nirvana, the loneliness can eat at you.

That’s why some, like Merriam, EconoMe’s organizer, host regular social events in their local cities. The online community ChooseFI maintains a sprawling network of hundreds of local FIRE groups in cities around the world. Amy Minkley, who retired by working in Asia as a teacher and saving up to $90,000 of her salary each year, organizes an annual FIRE meetup in Bali as a way of keeping up the community that saved her from depression: “It just felt like someone had thrown me a life raft, and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel,” she told me.

A lot of other people go the Mr. Money Mustache route: They blog. Their posts about income spreadsheets and VTSAX returns then attract the like-minded, as potential friends or even lovers. Koski has heard of romances blossoming among fellow FIRErs — though many of them prefer the company of a FIRE Luddite. “A good chunk of my friends are on my phone,” Gwen Merz, who began saving up for FIRE when she discovered the Mustache blog at age 22 and reached CoastFIRE at age 32 with $400,000 in savings, told me.

A common worry is when to stop. How much is enough? Why not make more? Since there is an upper limit to money’s effect on joy — studies have shown that global happiness tops out at income levels of about $75,000 a year — chasing infinite wealth may be psychologically futile.

“I think people can accumulate money to the detriment of their health and happiness,” says Alan Donegan, who with his wife, Katie, lives a nomadic lifestyle and coaches FIRE newbies toward their resignation letters by “trying to show money is a tool to create your version of an extraordinary life.” There are also those like Oliver Truong, a 27-year-old who cares less about the dollars and cents of it all than about fulfilling a self-imposed challenge: “I think FIRE people are some of the most creative people I’ve ever met,” he told me at EconoMe. “At least for me, it was never about the money, honestly. It was more about just doing something I wanted on my own.”

For those who succeed at early retirement, especially at the FatFIRE level, a surprise depression can set in. “It’s quite alarming and sad to see how many people are lost after they do this,” Wong’s r/FatFIRE co-moderator, Mike Doehla, told me. Doehla himself thought he was prepared for the social segregation when he FatFIREd at 40 in 2022 through his nutrition-coaching business. He wasn’t. “It has been pretty isolating, and almost awkward at times,” he confessed. Based in a small town in upstate New York, Doehla doesn’t know anyone in real life who has retired early, and all his friends are still working. But, he told me, “I think I’m psychologically broken from ever working someone else’s schedule again,” and he is keen to discover who he is, as a person, outside of work. If the quest for happiness were a tangible metric, Doehla reckons he is about 60 percent of the way there: “I have this FOMO, this empty cup, regarding what is going around me that so many people have experienced, that I just want to taste a bit.”

At EconoMe, I met a 52-year-old architect who considers himself “FattishFIRE”; he and his wife spend about $8,000 a month in Boston and would like to keep up that lifestyle in retirement. But, he told me, “I pretend I have a lot less than I do.” He lives in a building where many of his neighbors “have very little money, live off government assistance and are critical of wealthy people. They don’t know we’re like ‘stealth wealth.’ Would they not like me anymore?” (For this reason, he asked not to be identified.) He has saved enough money to retire within two or three years if he wants to, but he worries about how he’ll be perceived within a field that takes pride in its workhorse culture: “I’d always thought ‘architect’ was my personality and was going to be until I died,” he said. “Am I being too nervous? Am I crazy? I’m still a little ashamed.”

After a decade in retirement, Dogen, the San Francisco FatFIREr, recently did the unimaginable: He decided to go back to work. He doesn’t really need the money, but the endless leisure has begun to wear on him. “I can’t do pickleball all day,” Dogen told me. “So what’s the responsible thing to do? And the responsible thing to do is to find a job that has good purpose, good meaning, where you can work with some smart people and have a lot of camaraderie.” He added: “It just feels good to be part of something. I think it’s really important that we all feel like we’re part of something, contributing.” He took one gig but quit because it ate up too much time, and he is now looking for a less demanding part-time position.

Wong, these days, loves to volunteer. He donates to charities, serves on neighborhood boards and of course plays both chairman and soothsayer to the fraternity (for it is largely male) of r/FatFIRE. Wong doesn’t so much mind being solitary in real life — he considers himself a lone wolf and is often wary of making new friends for fear they will try to take financial advantage of him. He has been duped in the past by family members or acquaintances, including a friend who falsely claimed to need support for lifesaving heart surgeries. It’s not uncommon for him to get Venmo requests from strangers. (Many of his pickleball acquaintances learned about his wealth when a photographer showed up on the court to shoot him for this article.)

I asked him what he plans to do in his second decade of retirement — or his third or fourth or beyond. He doesn’t know yet. He told me he has been intrigued by the rise of A.I. and has flirted with the idea of a D.I.Y. project in that space. Ultimately, though, he hasn’t pursued it. He fears even self-employment would bring back the manic stresses he fought so hard to leave behind. “When I FatFIREd, I freed myself,” Wong told me. Inner peace, then, is the precious goal. He treasures all the time he has been able to spend with his mother and may one day share his wealth with children of his own. “Should I have worked more and made even more money? I’ve definitely left many millions of dollars on the table by stepping away from it all,” he told me. “But I always end up coming to the same conclusion: There’s no point in making so much money if you’re not going to be happy. I’d rather be free.”

Maggie Shannon is a photographer based in Los Angeles. She specializes in documentary portraiture and focuses on stories of smaller communities and social rituals.

Read by Emily Woo Zeller

Narration produced by Emma Kehlbeck

Engineered by Jeremy McLennan

Amy X. Wang is the assistant managing editor of The New York Times Magazine. More about Amy X. Wang

Advertisement