Playing with FIRE: A review and where to watch
Beautifully produced, feature length documentary "Playing With FIRE" chronicles a family as they embrace their journey to financial independence
By Shelly Strom, for Think Save Retire
Playing With FIRE: A Documentary tells the story of a young family bucking cultural norms by changing their habits with money to alter the course of their lives.
At the center of this 75-minute, elegantly produced movie we follow 35-year-old Scott Rieckens, his wife, Taylor, and their two-year-old daughter, Jovie. Scott narrated the film and is also credited as the executive producer.
The movie opens with jarring but familiar statistics on the state of American family finances: 78% of us live paycheck to paycheck, 69% of households have less than $1,000 in savings and 34% have no savings at all.
With a slew of frightening data points, Playing with FIRE establishes our apparent inability to understand or fully come to terms with the basics of personal finance right off the bat. Couple that with traditional advice on how much to save for retirement -- according to the movie it ranges from 10% to 20% of annual income -- and you have a recipe for a long uphill expedition. Read more.
