A few weeks ago one of my members asked me if the ChooseFI Greater Baltimore group would like to secure a theater for the Playing with FIRE documentary. As an admin, I knew it was my responsibility to follow through. However, I was initially very hesitant out of fear that I would not be able to secure a theater.

At the same time, I reminded myself that one of the reasons I chose to be an admin was to build a local community in this increasingly hostile digital world. Due to capacity reason, I could only host one Saturday meetup per month and many members don’t have the capacity to come.

Playing with FIRE, which we ended up scheduling on a Wednesday night, was an opportunity to bring members who couldn’t come to my monthly meetups and allowed me to connect with them.

Little did I know how much I have learned and been inspired from organizing this event.

A Proud Moment for Me

Over the few past few weeks leading up to the event, I religiously posted on the ChooseFI Greater Baltimore, DC, and Frederick group.

I will not claim that I single-handedly secured the theater myself, as the ChooseFI podcast gave a shout out and other members spread the words to help secure the theater. However, I felt a sense of accomplishment when the theater was sold out.  

I also prepared a brief speech before the movie. When I stood in the middle of the theater room, with 100 pairs of eyes staring at me intently, I truly appreciated the gravity of that moment. The hard work and the stress paid off. As I engaged with a few movie-goers after the movie, I knew I would have an influx of new members through this movie and I was energized to push the local FI community forward.

The Movie Itself

As someone who is relatively well read in the FIRE movement, I quickly understood that the movie was for casual watchers who were not previously exposed to the idea. The math could be categorized as simplistic. Movie watchers don’t need a lecture of the 4% rules and different definitions of Financial Independence; they wanted to connect with the protagonists and saw why they would want to achieve FI themselves. The movie did a good job on that.

Since information becomes readily available at the click of the button, our time can easily be spent on many niche interests. FIRE is one of them. While there is a thriving online FIRE community, many people are still foreign to the ideas. Therefore, the opportunity to have more people exposed to FIRE is enormous. I don’t know what the creators of the documentary will do to further its distribution. However, if it goes on Netflix, I could see most local ChooseFI memberships explode across the board.

My Own Reflection

Initially, I expected the audience to be mostly ChooseFI group members. What was pleasantly surprising to me was the number of friends and family members they brought. In my estimation, it was an even split of FI pursuers and their friends and family.

A major reason I decided to admin the group was that I didn’t want to broach the subject of personal finance to my friends and I have already talked my family’s ears off. Perhaps due to a combination of respect of my friends’ lack of interest in personal finance and my own lack of confidence that I could capture their attention.

However in an effort to grow a separate sanctuary and felt secure in sharing my thoughts, I may potentially devoid my friends an opportunity to know a little more about the tool through which they can achieve FI.

At a dinner party a few weeks ago, a friend was talking about opening up retirement account. Understanding that personal finance was not a usually openly discussed subject, we quickly switched to another topic. A couple of weeks later, I found out that she didn’t plan on staying at her job for too long. Being in the group environment I chose silence again, instead of talking about fully funded lifestyle change and CoastFI both of them would 

Today, I ran into my neighbor of 8 years as he was mowing his lawn. As we got caught up with our lives, the subject turned to different expenses around his house, funding their kids’ college education, and retirement. Armed with the inspiration from the fellow FI pursuers who showed up Wednesday night with their friends and family, I told him, “I run a personal finance meetup and know a little about finances. If you want to openly talk about it let me know.”

Immediately after that moment, I could see his posture slumped and darkness and fear in his eyes.

Joshua Sheats of Radical Personal Finance commented over the year that many people don’t want to talk about personal finance because they either don’t have the money or they don’t have an interest in it. While in my opinion, those are the people who should be talking about personal finance, Joshua also commented that he doesn’t know how to increase others’ interest.

As much as I felt accomplished from organizing the showing and inspired to share about the FI movement, I knew in my heart that I have my work cut out for me. I can’t compel those who aren’t interested or willing to share to share, but I can make sure to serve the new members the best I can.

I started by recruiting a few more admins since I can’t do it alone.

More to come!