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by tasuki4 hours ago |
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upvoteby Xirdus3 hours ago|
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I'd say it's missing the FI part and the RE part of the FIRE strategy. Even if they did retire early with financial independence, it's never been their goal and they never actively worked toward it. The reason regular saving and regular humble living look a lot like FIRE saving and FIRE humble living is that an average person can only do so much to increase their net worth, so the possible variance between any two people is very limited.
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upvoteby jimbokun2 hours ago|
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> Even if they did retire early with financial independence, it's never been their goal and they never actively worked toward it.

He did work toward it by saving and living frugally.

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upvoteby embedding-shape3 hours ago|
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"Lived humbly" is vastly different from "reduce expenses and maximize savings" which FIRE is all about. I've basically always earned more than I could spend, although I thought nothing about saving money, does that mean I'm doing FIRE too, or just happened to be "living humbly"?
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upvoteby magneticnorth2 hours ago|
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> "Lived humbly" is vastly different from "reduce expenses and maximize savings" which FIRE is all about.

As someone who has successfully FIREd, I would disagree. If you are fortunate to be in a successful tech career and have a like-minded spouse, you don't need to do anything extreme to be able to FIRE. We only own one home that is comfortable but not impressive; we take care of our cars and drive them 10+ years; we leaned into hobbies that are cheap or money-saving (cooking, gardening, hiking, biking) and didn't get into owning boats or taking trips with first-class airfare and all-inclusive resorts.

I would say we "live humbly" and therefore had savings that covered expenses well before the age of 65. Part of our motivation was early retirement, but you can be doing the same thing without intent to retire early.

If it gets you to the point that you could retire early, then you were following a FIRE strategy, even if you weren't doing it with that goal in mind.

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upvoteby sph3 hours ago|
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"reduce expenses and maximize savings" simply means spend less than you earn. Live below your means. We call that 'living humbly' in the modern world, when you're not buying the latest phone and watching the latest movie at $50 a pop.
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