While some of you fools are frittering away your hard-earned cash at movie theaters, restaurants, and sports bars—I hear there’s some sort of basketball game?—the beautiful minds of Joshua Rivera’s favorite subreddit will be spending their evening the way they always do: complaining about how trying to save millions of dollars in an attempt to retire in their 30s has ruined their life. They’re part of a movement called FatFIRE, a more extreme subset of FIRE: Financial Independence, Retire Early. And Rivera, like a lot of online rubberneckers, can’t help but get drawn into their web, even if he doesn’t subscribe to the gospel of FIRE itself. “Those who commit to FatFIRE try to compress all the anxieties of modern life into one grueling sprint, in the belief that they can get to the good part sooner—and that there is a good part to get to, despite evidence to the contrary,” he writes today in Vanity Fair. “It’s a maximalist retirement plan for an era that only knows extremes, from wellness culture to predictive markets to the creator hustle.”
Elsewhere, Savannah Walsh looks back at the Heaven’s Gate cult; we chart all the looks (and jazz hands) at Sunday’s Tony Awards; and Rosemary Counter brings us the true story of Rebekah Harkness, the hard-partying heiress whose estate would eventually be purchased by Taylor Swift. More tomorrow! |
HILLARY BUSIS,
SENIOR EDITOR |
It’s all too easy to get drawn into this seductive financial subculture, where seemingly normal people are risking everything to retire early—once they save a measly few million dollars. |
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A closer look at the fabulous Rhode Island heiress’s unforgettable midcentury soirees—which might meet their match if Swift and Travis Kelce hold their own wedding at her old estate. |
Catch up on all the show-stopping arrivals from Megan Thee Stallion, Rose Byrne, Daniel Radcliffe, first-time Tonys host Pink, and more stars of the stage. |
In 1997, a group that believed they were headed to heaven in a spaceship carried out the largest mass suicide on American soil—providing the real backstory behind new film The Leader, starring Vera Farmiga and Tim Blake Nelson. |
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