In 2015 we started with Cheesy Finance, a year or two after we started our FIRE journey. We primarily did stuff online at the time. In 2016 we (a collective effort between us and Amber Tree Leaves) setup the (for us) first of quite a few meetups. With as a culmination a FIRE weekend in a castle in Landgraaf, Limburg, the Netherlands. I just discovered we already did 12 meetups (and one Castle event), with the upcoming one this weekend as nr 13. We hope to see you there of course! Having said that, we definitely do not have the sole right to organize FIRE meetups. Nor do we want to! We would love to visit meetups organized by you! So, how to organize a FIRE meetup? Here are some of our experiences from the past 8 years.
How it all started
The first meetup we did was in a cafe in Breda, almost exactly 8 years ago. We had posted some invites on our blogs and collected names of who was interested, so we had a rough idea who was coming and how many people were interested. It worked rather well and we met, amongst others, with Geldnerd (now Mr Elders) for the first time.
The next meetup in Antwerp, Belgium we did roughly the same way (in a Cafe, without asking for an entrance fee). During these two meetups we had about 15-20 people show up. Not bad for a meeting with random internet strangers talking about money!
Scaling up
We noticed that there was a demand for these meetups and that people were willing to pay a bit to attend. It became obvious that lot’s of people were interested in presentations too. We therefore started to look at cheap venues we could rent for an afternoon, with the option to do presentations. Resulting in meetups in Eindhoven, Leuven, Haarlem and Utrecht. These were fun to organize, but took quite a bit of effort to find venues & speakers, interesting discussion topics and get all the catering sorted.
We did all the work ourselves (occasionally with help from other volunteers) to keep the costs down. While at the same time try to make it enjoyable and fun. We never made any money of these meetups, we always aimed to break even on costs. Generally we could keep the attendance fees low at around €10-20/meetup (including all snacks and drinks); with about 30-50 people showing up. But considering inflation, this might be a stretch if you try it today. I looked at venues the other day, but they are considerably more expensive than in 2017-2019, when most of our meetups were organized.
It’s probably also good to know that we did screen people at the beginning. We called everyone that was interested to join. Just to see if they were a fit for the meetups. But after a few meetups, we dropped doing this as we quickly discovered that people interested in FIRE were always fun to hang out with. We never had any negative experiences during the various meetups.
Castle on FIRE
As noted, the culmination of the FIRE meetups was a weekend long event in a castle in Landgraaf in 2019. We had an awesome time there with really cool discussions, board games, movie night, walks, drinks and chats. This was one the most fun things we had done to date in terms of FIRE meetups. We had about 20 people join us, and costs were only about €175 for the weekend, all-inclusive! Also, people came from all over the place, we had visitors from Germany, Belgium, USA, Romania and the Netherlands.
A second attempt, to do another castle FIRE weekend but now in France, was ultimately not successful. We got really close, but with costs creeping up to around €600-700pp, the interest was not enough to make it work.
As the intention was to do it cost neutral for all participants, the financial risks also ended up on our plate. Which we were not willing to have at that time. Furthermore, and hindsight is 20-20, it was a good thing as in 2020 Covid hit, and we would have had to cancel anyways. That being said, I would love to do it again in the future.
FIN-X
Albeit involved at the beginning with FIN-X, I needed a break from organizing meetups in 2019. Fortunately, the team behind FIN-X was still able to keep the momentum going and organized a meetup with over 100 participants that same year! Impressive to say the least. Again, Covid screwed things up in 2020 and the meetups moved online at that point, but also died out a bit as far as I can tell.
Fast Forward to 2024
After cancelling the blog in 2021 and restarted the blog in 2023, I also wanted to pickup going to meetups again. But could not find anyone that was organizing / willing to organize these. So I started them up again. But considering the organized meetups are quite time intensive (probably took 20-40 hours per event, including the day itself and all preparations), I was looking for other (easier) options.
So I went back to what we did at the beginning, but without the need to register or the screening. Just plan a time and date, select a place that is accessible and show up! The last 2 meetups (in Leiderdorp and de Meern) were pretty successful and entertaining with about 20-30 people showing up. We are now looking forward to coming Sunday!
But we like meet interesting (FIRE) people, we hope that more people will want to organize these FIRE events. Or, if you want to organize something bigger and have a venue in mind, please get in touch! If we can make a bigger network of volunteers that help organize regular FIRE meetups, more people can benefit form our collective money knowledge and life experience. Plus, we can all have great fun while doing so.
Hope to see you Sunday October 20th in the La Place in Leiderdorp from 13:00 onwards!
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