I was well into my 40s before I learned anything about the concept of FIRE (or, as it is much more commonly called now, just FI). While I am now aiming for FI (and moving very, very slowly in that direction), I am not nearly as far along as my millennial counterparts who dominate the financial Twittersphere. FI simply wasn’t a concept that was discussed much when I was younger…and Twitter didn’t even exist back then. Nevertheless, I can see several points in my life in which it would have been nice to hear about financial independence. Let’s explore them together.