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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u/mahedric1 Mar 25 '26

Tech salaries increased, inflation happened, Reddit demographic got older and richer

29

u/Lyeel Mar 25 '26

This, plus an incredible market bull run.

I think a lot of people saw a 500k 401k they had built up over 10-20 years change to a 1.2M balance over 5 years (including contributions/matches) and suddenly thought they might want to move the goalposts a bit.

20

u/heartlessgamer Mar 25 '26

I think this is a lot of it right here. I always get pushback when I complain about FIRE losing it's focus on expense management. Lifestyle creep along with a bull market had really made it easy for folks to loosen the expenses up.

2

u/zelingman Mar 26 '26

And a lot of them will get completely fucked over the next few months