A FIRE movement pioneer who retired early with $3 million at age 34 says he must return to work to afford his kids’ college education

 Alicia Adamczyk Sun, April 9, 2023 at 5:00 PM GMT+4 min read Sam Dogen was one of the pioneers of the FIRE—financial independence, retire early—movement when he retired in 2012 at the age of 34 with a net worth of $3 million. Ten years later, he is once more making headlines for declaring that it is time to return to work.

Since 2009, Dogen, now 45, has been writing the well-known personal finance blog Financial Samurai. Readers have been able to follow his family's journey through it, from saving for an earlier retirement to quitting the financial industry to writing a book and more.

One of the most well-liked members of the online early retirement community is now unretired for a variety of reasons. First, just like everyone else's, his investment portfolio suffered last year. Two, he also misses working with other people. He asserts that while early retirement is wonderful, it can also be lonely. In the middle of the day, you can only play so many pickleball games.

However, his inability to calculate how to pay for the college education of his young children with his current financial situation is perhaps the most pressing issue. Dogen and his wife weren't sure if they would ever have children when he retired. They now have two children and raise them in San Francisco. Even though you're earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in passive income, it's expensive.

"There are many unknowns and ups and downs in life. Dogen, who has increased his passive income from $80,000 to approximately $200,000 per year, tells Fortune, "You're trying to predict the future, you don't know what's going to happen."

What's more, you could likewise contend that Dogen never truly resigned. However he left the corporate labor force and lived generally off of recurring, automated revenue, he likewise counseled new businesses, created his blog, and thought of one customary book and a digital book throughout the course of recent years. He did it from the safety of his own home, which is becoming increasingly common as COVID-19 remote work policies persist.