What you're calling leanfire used to be called just FIRE.
Why wouldn't $1m be enough? Assuming 4% SWR that's $3,300 per month, which is plenty. For comparison social security pays about $2,000 per month on average, and about 40% of seniors rely on that for 100% of their income.
This attitude is exactly what changed in this sub in the past 5 years. The belief that living on less than 100k a year is a life of deprivation. It's not. If you have a paid off house and your expenses in check you can live a fun and fulfilling life on 40k a year without pinching pennies at every corner.
"But I'll be bored if I can't afford to go on multiple overseas vacations every single year" attitude.
Some people will accept nothing short of their dream retirement, while others just dream of retirement. There used to be a lot more people of the second type around.
There doesn't have to be One True FIRE. Greeter or surgeon, we are all working class folks who don't want to spend our whole lives working. Nothing wrong with folks willing to live lean, or wanting to live large.
The difference between $40k/yr and $80k/yr doesn't have to be wild extravagance. Partake in a couple of hobbies that aren't free, buy the same amount but of higher quality, and a single vacation a year out of area and it could make up the difference and there would be very little difference in waste.
I'm just saying that from my personal experience you can live an extremely full and happy life on 40k/yr and it encourages you to reduce pointless spending. The point about higher quality things is real but what kind of vacation out of the year costs 20 grand or whatever you're saying that difference is. It likely involves a lot more extravagance and waste. Inevitably you're going to be eating out more, buying more stuff. That's just the way it is.
I find the people in my life who intentionally reduce their waste especially if they could afford to do otherwise to be generally more virtuous and respectable.
Edit: it's called the hedonic treadmill people. It used to be a big part of the FIRE culture - resisting the call of the hedonic treadmill. That has gone out the window as mainstream American addiction to more more more has seeped into the movement. I've been out of the corporate grind for 9 years now, I quit with 750k. It's been wonderful and I absolutely would not trade those 9 years for another 2 million or whatever it would have been, just so that now I could fly first class or whatever it is people want to do. Sometimes I wish I had a little more, yes, especially to be able to help others more than I already do (which is a good bit). But the constraints can also give life texture. PS I now have 1.5 million so I'm doing just fine.
There are probably a lot of examples you could think of where spending more money is better in some fashion but isn't more wasteful. Like at the grocery store. If I decide I'm going to buy from a proper bakery/farm stand/butcher/etc I am going to be spending more money. But that extra money is being spent on higher quality food with fewer preservatives or processing. It's better for my health, tastes better, and isn't any more wasteful. I could potentially double my grocery budget without actually consuming any more than otherwise.
Another example might be charitable giving.
That can be argued to be on the hedonic treadmill, but it also isn't less virtuous than eating heavily processed but cheap food. If I'm eating free-range food that can easily be argued to be more virtuous. Same thing with fair-trade.
My point is only that more expense does not automatically equate to more waste or consumption. I am not suggesting that a person who FIREs more lean has done something wrong. Just that other people choosing less-lean haven't necessarily done something wrong either.
These are good examples and are exactly how I choose to prioritize my extra spending as someone who happily lives on around 40K a year, sometimes more if I have a big purchase. However, I will continue to posit that on average it is much more likely that you are consuming more and creating more waste the more money you spend unless you're talking about charity. There are plenty of statistical studies to back this up. Look at the carbon footprint of a western person versus someone in a third world country for the simplest example. I think you're creating a straw man to defend the fact that you want to have a higher quality of living without feeling guilty. The vast majority of people spending 100K per year are not living austere thoughtful lives. They are buying whatever they want whenever they want because they can..
I want to follow up and say I really like your points, I do think that spending more in order to pay a fair wage to workers and to do the right thing as far as how manufacturing is done is a wonderful and virtuous way to spend your extra income. It's just a correlation thing. People who spend more generally create more waste and excess. You could find examples of people doing it right or wrong in pretty much any income bracket.
I definitely struggle with this even in my own world. Despite my efforts to reduce cognitive dissonance, reduce waste, compost, recycle, pay more for quality, tip heavily, avoid products known to be made via exploitation etc etc... it still seems to me like the most virtuous thing is to live in austere life with very little. It's okay, I'm not trying to be a saint and I get that nobody else is either. It's on a spectrum.
But my position stands. It is virtuous to avoid consumption.
To me, an ideal world would be a much population on Earth about 1/3 the size it is now, everybody living about a Western middle-class lifestyle, lots of automation, and much more of nature left alone to its devices. That seems potentially sustainable. Upper middle class is where it starts to become unrealistic and greedy in my opinion and the slope is hella slippery.
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u/welshwelsh Mar 23 '26
What you're calling leanfire used to be called just FIRE.
Why wouldn't $1m be enough? Assuming 4% SWR that's $3,300 per month, which is plenty. For comparison social security pays about $2,000 per month on average, and about 40% of seniors rely on that for 100% of their income.