Traditional retirement planning is obsessed with lifespan: do not run out of money before you run out of years. Fair. But a useful FIRE plan also respects healthspan: the years when your body can still use certain experiences.
A dollar at 48 and a dollar at 88 may have the same face value. They do not buy the same menu.
Classify spending by body requirement
Some experiences require strength, mobility, appetite for uncertainty, or the presence of older relatives who will not always be here. Other pleasures remain available later: reading, local meals, quiet routines, conversation, many forms of beauty.
Do not spend early on everything. Spend early on the things that actually expire.
Protect late-life dignity
This is not YOLO arithmetic. Housing, care, and medical resilience matter. The healthspan budget should sit on top of a durable floor, not replace it.
Schedule the living
If an experience belongs in the strong-body years, put it on a calendar within the next few years and assign money to it. “Someday” is not a date. It is a polite form of abandonment.
Read your retirement horizon with the remaining Tuesdays exercise. FIRE should protect old you without sacrificing every irreplaceable category of younger you.
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