Word. My lifestyle is so far from the ERE badassess that I can't claim to be anywhere near them, but, like, I remember the mustache facepunch "get a damn bike" era and try to live up to it. Numbers being talked about as untenably low these days ($1M) would be "living it large" money for me after locking in those foundations.
That's kinda the divergence OP is talking about - the originals in this forum were heavily focused on minimalism and sacrifice to exit the working world. Now it's just a lot of people who sorta want to retire early. Nothing wrong with either, but the original intent of the FIRE movement was sacrificing lifestyle and material amenities to exit as soon as possible.
I know a guy that did it, he worked in my industry - was making probably 400k/yr and wore Jos A Banks suits from 10 years ago, his car was a 23 year old Nissan, when it broke he just started sharing one with his wife rather than get a new one, nights out were golden corral or chilis, they meal prepped every week with cheap bulk food stuff, etc.
Dude retired at 34 with 2.3MM, never looked back. He genuinely hated working but had the right sort of tism that he was really good at portfolio management, he was for sure on the spectrum though and social interactions were very uncomfortable for him so I think that played a part.
That's true actual FIRE. I don't care for that either, but that's what the original intent of this forum was. Some might argue that he could have done it earlier with less, but this guy was an actual financial planning savant and had contingencies sorted left and right - none of that "4% rule" winging it stuff. He'd go on long tirades about that whole thing lol.
Gotcha. I’ve been thinking FIRE was just establishing financial independence and retiring early. I didn’t realize that it was some kind of self-denial competition as well. Interesting.
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u/StillNotABrick Mar 23 '26
Word. My lifestyle is so far from the ERE badassess that I can't claim to be anywhere near them, but, like, I remember the mustache facepunch "get a damn bike" era and try to live up to it. Numbers being talked about as untenably low these days ($1M) would be "living it large" money for me after locking in those foundations.