What the Media and Academics Don’t Understand About FIRE
Last month, Stanford University Professor John B. Shoven, and three former Stanford students, Gila Bronshtein, Jason Scott, and Sita N. Slavov, published a paper entitled “The Power Of Working Longer” through the National Bureau Of Economic Research.
One of their key findings was “that working 3 to 6 extra months has an equivalent impact on the affordable sustainable standard of living as saving one percentage point more for 30 years.”
Their “primary conclusion is that working longer is relatively powerful compared to saving more for most people.”
The media jumped upon their research, with Bloomberg View columnist Justin Fox gushing that a 49 year old “could take the drastic step of upping your retirement savings by 10 percent of your salary. Or you could achieve the same result by retiring two years and five months later than you had been planning to.”
Which left me shaking my head.