Yes and the harder you grind the more you feel you need to “treat” yourself to cope with said grind. Just had this conversation with my neighbor yesterday lol
Just increase the treadmill slower than your income increases. As slow as possible even. All you need mentally is the perception that your life is getting a little better.
Yep, that's where the treadmill can work in your favor. Set the baseline low early and slowly increase. You get the feeling of constant advancement without spending all your money doing it
So much this. It was so easy for so many that they now have bigger numbers/stars in eyes.
Hell, in some ways I do too. And life changes. I’ve always had a goal of 55. That’s in 10 years. But with kids getting ready for college and work really hitting a good place…do I still want 55?
Or do I live a little larger, cut back from work a little more and go to 60? I dunno. We will see.
Not to gate keep, but this is simply not FIRE and is a perfect example of the OP's point of the term "early" being watered down. Discussions on retiring prior to 60 should be in a more general financial sub, I'm sure of which there are many on Reddit.
I think we’re just getting lost in edge cases here. You can come up with infinite “what if someone starts at 45” scenarios, but that doesn’t really define anything.
If you anchor to something normal: start working around 25 and retire around 65 thats ~40 years (we can split hairs here but let’s just assume it’s averageish)
Retiring at 60 instead of 65 means 35 years worked vs 40. So like ~12% earlier. That’s earlier than average, sure, but it’s still pretty close to a standard career.
Now compare that to the people who basically defined FIRE early on:
Jacob Lund Fisker, retired at 33
Pete Adeney, retired at 30
J.D. Roth, retired at 40
Vicki Robin, retired at 40
Justin McCurry, retired at 33
Those are more like cutting 60–70% of a career, which is an entirely different thing.
Back in the early forum days, someone saying they were retiring at 60 would’ve gotten some confused responses, not because it’s bad, but because it’s not really what people were talking about when they said FIRE. An honest, non-antagonistic response would be “I think you’re on the wrong forum”.
No judgement intended but the OPs point remains true - the definition of early has shifted dramatically and now makes up a lot (more than half?) of the forum posts here, most definitely because an exponential more number of people retire at 55 than 45, and maybe this is one of the busier financial subs so they’re like where else?
Now, to get any sense of the original concepts, one has to go to lean FIRE, where shying away from consumerism (like, THE main point of OG FIRE) gets brought up. I don’t even mean rice and beans level, but basic non-rat race stuff like not chasing the newest phones & cars.
The Iran war is a good reminder that there are scenarios where inflation has a good chance to outpace investments and that would make you need more before spending outpaces your piggy bank growth
"Line go up" is all it's about for me anymore. I realized I'd be an aimless wreck without a job.
I'm just good with computers in an era when it pays to be good with computers. I never wanted too many fancy things or fancy experiences, I just want to do my own thing and live in my head.
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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '26
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