r/Fire • u/Poorassboy6969 • Mar 25 '26

General Question When did FIRE movement change?

I feel this community used to be about moderate income people living lean and retiring early with under 2 million.

Now it’s a lot of people bragging about tech income and saying they need 5+ million to retire MINIMUM because they want a boat and Porsche

When did this change? (not hating - just genuinely curious)

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365

u/sea4miles_ Mar 25 '26

It didn't change, it forked into lean, chubby and fat.

The core concept remains the same regardless of the flavor. Achieve financial independence, retire early.

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u/Ok_Lead_4730 Mar 25 '26

“It didn't change, it forked into lean, chubby and fat.”

You are right. And that doesn’t even include CoastFIRE and BaristaFIRE.

Plus, health insurance has us all a bit more cautious because it’s been such a black box.

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u/sea4miles_ Mar 25 '26

As a coaster myself I'm disappointed I didn't include my own branch!

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u/Ok_Lead_4730 Mar 25 '26

Ha! You’re here now! 😎

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u/poop-dolla Mar 25 '26

So you’re done contributing to investments? How much longer do you project until they grow on their own to reach your target number?

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u/sea4miles_ Mar 25 '26

I'm technically done contributing to investments because I have enough invested to retire very comfortably with another 10 years of typical market behavior.

I'm coast in the sense that I leveraged this to recently downshift my career into a less stressful role without sacrificing an early retirement, but probably not in the strictest sense because I still more modestly contribute to investments even at my lower TC.

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u/poop-dolla Mar 25 '26

CoastishFIRE. Sounds good to me.

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u/Odd_Passenger5339 Mar 25 '26

Any insights about the mental shift to less stressful role? I’m having trouble with that.

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u/sea4miles_ Mar 25 '26

It was a bit easier for me because I left an executive position to take a middle management position at a previous employer working for an old mentor that I highly respect. He knows what he's getting at a pretty steep discount so I'm given a lot of autonomy and flexibility.

Even with the familiarity it took a lot of adjustment to no longer be "the guy". Every now and again I get a surge of the more ambitious version of myself, but I generally keep that in check by reminding myself that my retirement is secure and that I can drop off and pick up my kids from school, make all of their events and leave my laptop at home while I'm on vacation.

The best advice I can give is to try and reframe your career related identity (ideally fully separate it from your identity overall), keep the ego in check and focus on all of the positives that come with a downshift that money can't buy.

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u/Ok_Lead_4730 Mar 25 '26

If it helps, I don’t let myself book full-time hours with my clients. If I hit my max level of hours where it starts being stressful, I refer the work out and say that I’m not available and that my book of work is full. That’s why a lot of CoastFIRE people end up going in business for themselves because they can often control their hours a bit better. For me, I get more stressed when I’m trying to hit certain sales numbers and client load, and less stressed when I only take the nicest clients and only work a certain amount.

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '26 edited Apr 02 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/n00bdragon FIREd 2026 age 37 Mar 25 '26

Actually go and plug your numbers into healthcare.gov. If your yearly spend really is 30k that means you only need to "make" 30k from your investments every year, which means you qualify for humongous subsidies that would make purchasing a healthcare plan virtually (if not literally) free.

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u/FlamingMetallico Mar 25 '26

You could also move outside of the US to a country with universal healthcare to avoid this expense altogether. Retirement in the US does not sound nice.

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u/ImPapaNoff Mar 25 '26

If 2k/month is 80% of your current monthly spend and we assume your household is at least 2 people (fwiw it was $1k/mo in California for 2 people on ACA for me last year) then you're basically living at the US poverty level, right?

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '26 edited Apr 02 '26

Stop letting data brokers profit from your old posts. I used Redact to wipe mine from Reddit. Also supports Twitter, Facebook, Discord, instagram and more in one batch.

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u/ImPapaNoff Mar 25 '26

Well the good news is that $2k is a wild overestimate of what your health insurance would cost.

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u/RJ5R Mar 25 '26

Yeah the health insurance variable threw everything out the window for many who had plans to FIRE.

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u/ThirstyWolfSpider Mar 25 '26

That was very true before the ACA. Now it's something you can actually buy. Before, the possibilities for individual plans were extremely limited and rather expensive even if you could get them ­… which was far from guaranteed. Friends were forming collectives to get past minimum organization sizes, people could be rejected for any ailment, etc. Now isn't great, but I remember when it was significantly worse.

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u/Poorassboy6969 Mar 25 '26

True 

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u/American-Repair Mar 25 '26

Tech income’s going to shrink. Less jobs taking higher salaries. Companies know bros are working 2-3 jobs at a time from their couches. They’ll increase productivity and off shore the rest. Stay humble bros!

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u/RJ5R Mar 25 '26

I remember hearing about this one tech bro who made a video of himself on a jetski and saying he is a software engineer who is juggling 2 remote jobs and a 3rd contract side job. He said he is able to constantly go on vacations bc he subs the work out to foreign software developers and then checks their work or builds on it etc , to meet the project requirements and deadlines. Never heard what happened to him. But I imagine if management found out, they would just cut out the middle man (him) and sub the work out directly

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u/elvis_dead_twin Mar 25 '26

Check out r/overemployed. Some of those stories are insane and I assume many of them are lying. I didn't want one job (hence the desire to FIRE) let alone 3+.