FIRE / Early retirement
FIRE — Financial Independence, Retire Early — is a personal-finance subculture, popularised in the 2010s through blogs like Mr. Money Mustache and forums like r/financialindependence, built around saving an unusually high fraction of one's income (often 50–70%) in order to retire decades ahead of the conventional age. The basic arithmetic relies on the so-called 4% rule: once your invested assets are roughly 25× your annual spending, withdrawals can in principle sustain you indefinitely. Adherents range from "lean FIRE" minimalists who slash expenses to the bone to "fat FIRE" higher earners targeting a more comfortable post-work life. Critics — including some former enthusiasts — argue the movement can shade into deferred-gratification gone wild: years of austere living for the sake of a future that, once arrived, often fails to deliver the promised meaning.