Hello and welcome back to the second instalment of Reel
Freedom, where I take films I’ve watched far too many times and try to
extract something useful about money, freedom, work/life balance and meaning
from them.
With Christmas approaching, it felt wrong not to
tackle A Christmas Carol. Obviously it’s based on a book - as was Fight Club in my previous blog post - but hey ho (ho ho), there are some absolutely fantastic
film versions of it, my personal favourites are either the Albert Finney version
(who played Scrooge when he was 33 years old!), as well as of course The Muppets
Christmas Carol version.
It’s one of those stories that gets retold so often we
forget how brutally honest it actually is, especially when viewed through a
FIRE lens.
Because at its heart, A Christmas Carol isn’t really
about Christmas. It’s about money, fear, time, and what happens when you get
your priorities wrong, a cautionary tale that has the same sort of andedote to extreme FIRE mindsets as the book "Die With Zero" has had with people in recent times.
Scrooge: The Original FIRE Done Wrong
“I wear the chain I
forged in life.”
/ Jacob Marley
Ebenezer Scrooge is often portrayed as the villain of
Christmas, but I’ve always thought he’s more of a warning label.
He’s frugal.
He saves relentlessly.
He avoids unnecessary spending.
He hates waste.
On paper, he’d probably have a phenomenal savings rate, and yet
he’s utterly miserable.
Scrooge’s problem isn’t that he saved too much money. It’s
that he used money as a replacement for life, rather than a tool to
improve it.
If Scrooge were around today, he’d have:
- the
heating permanently set to 14°C,
- no
streaming subscriptions,
- a
paid-off house,
- and
a net worth spreadsheet he checks five times a day -while ignoring
everyone around him.
That’s FIRE without purpose. And it’s exactly what A
Christmas Carol warns us against.
The Ghost of Christmas Past: The Cost of What We Gave Up
“The price of
anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
// Henry David Thoreau
The first ghost forces Scrooge to confront something
FIRE-minded people don’t always like to talk about: what we sacrificed along
the way.
Lost relationships.
Missed moments.
Friendships that quietly faded because work came first, then money, then
security.
This isn’t an argument against saving or investing -far
from it.
It’s a reminder that the journey matters.
If you delay everything in the name of “later”, you
might wake up one day and realise later never came.
FIRE lesson:
Optimising finances is good, but only when it doesn’t come
at the cost of optimising life.
The Ghost of Christmas Present: The power of 'enough'
“Wealth consists not
in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
// Epictetus
This is my favourite part of the story.
Scrooge is shown families with very little money who are frankly,
smashing it.
They have warmth, laughter, food on the table, and each other.
They’re not wealthy.
They’re not financially independent.
But they understand enough, and as we all know, knowing when you have ‘enough’
is an absolute superpower.
As a parent, this hits hard. I’ve learned that my kids don’t
care about:
- how
expensive their presents were,
- how
perfectly decorated the house is,
- or
whether we had the “best” version of Christmas.
They care about:
- being
together,
- feeling
relaxed,
- and
having parents who aren’t stressed out of their minds.
I’ve learned that their most treasured memories are more
likely to have resulted in my sacrificed time, rather than sacrificed finances.
FIRE lesson:
Happiness doesn’t wait at the FIRE finish line. It exists
wherever “enough” lives.
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: Dying with a full ISA and a deserted funeral
This is the part of the story that stops being cosy, even the Muppets version!
Scrooge is shown a future where:
- he’s
wealthy,
- he’s
secure,
- and
absolutely nobody cares that he’s gone.
No friends.
No family.
No meaningful legacy.
Just a large estate and an empty funeral.
It’s grim -but it’s also incredibly relevant.
Because FIRE, done badly, can turn into exactly this. A
relentless pursuit of “the number” without ever asking why. And which a meaning
or purpose to it all, then it’s literally a pointless exercise.
FIRE lesson:
Financial independence is not the goal.
A life worth being independent for is.
Scrooge’s Redemption: Money in Service of Life
“I will live in the
Past, the Present, and the Future.”
// Scrooge
The magic of A Christmas Carol is that Scrooge
doesn’t reject money - he redefines its role.
He still earns.
He still saves.
He just stops worshipping it.
Money becomes a tool for:
- generosity,
- joy,
- connection,
- and
freedom.
That’s FIRE done right.
Not hoarding.
Not deprivation.
Not winning the spreadsheet Olympics.
But using financial security to show up better, as a person,
a parent, a friend.
A Dad on FIRE Christmas Reflection
I don’t want to be Scrooge before the ghosts.
But I also don’t want to be reckless, stressed, and financially fragile.
The FIRE path sits somewhere in the middle:
- intentional
spending,
- conscious
saving,
- and
a constant check-in on why we’re doing any of this in the first
place.
That’s what this blog is all about (“Intentional saving,
spending and parenting”) and hopefully is what comes across in my updates.
Final Thoughts
A Christmas Carol isn’t anti-money.
It’s anti-fear, anti-hoarding, and anti-forgetting what matters.
The real lesson isn’t “spend more”.
It’s “live more, and use money to support that, not replace it.”
If Scrooge had a FIRE number, he’d already hit it. What he
lacked was a reason to stop counting.
And that, I think, is the real ghost we should all be
watching out for.
Wishing all of my readers and their families a very Merry
Christmas and I’ll see you in the new year
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