[cko]

As someone who FIREd, his assumptions of 5% real returns and 4% SWR may not hold in the future.

He himself also retired with a free and clear home and a free and clear rental home, which meant he didn't have to tap into his capital, not to mention $400k annual blog revenue shortly after.

But generally I enjoyed his articles over the years and a high savings rate combined with investing is always a wise choice.

[jprete]

I never thought about FIRE in those terms. Your comment (unintentionally?) makes FIRE sound like a self-help trend that primarily makes money for self-help gurus.

[cko]

The theory sounds good but there's a difference between having to sell parts of your portfolio (which is volatile) and never touching the capital because you have blog/YouTube revenue.

A big part of "retirement" is feeling financially secure. I'm sure Pete (MMM) practices what he preaches for the savings rate part of FIRE, but when I quit my job, the lumpiness of my investment returns made me very uneasy.

Having a steady stream of income outside of your investments makes the "safe withdrawal rate" part of the theory kinda moot. (By the way, here's some nuance to Bengen's 4% SWR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7rH7h7ljHg)

Nowadays my FIRE stance has softened to "it's nice to have this pile of capital in case things go wrong" and frugality has always been my nature anyway.