You can FIRE with any salary range with thoughtful spending (save before you spend) and common-sense investing (buy-and-hold, cash generating assets). Though the recent stock market opens up many opportunities for FIRE, it is an age-old proven way to retire or do-your-own-thing rather living paycheck-to-paycheck
I do not see how this is possible for the bottom few income deciles considering healthcare costs. Definitely not possible for many more income deciles if you have children and still want to protect against healthcare costs.
Good point, let's all FIRE tomorrow and see what happens. That age-old "work to collectively add value to the economy" thing really gets old after awhile.
The funny thing is most working people will look at the spending levels required to achieve FIRE and decide they don't want to make the sacrifice. They are in a prison of their own making.
Of course it's easy to see how they arrived in this situation. There is a constant stream of propaganda telling us we need to spend in order to become successful. Without that SUV you aren't a good parent, without the big house you can't be a good partner, without the expensive holidays you must be a loser. Thank Bernays[1] for all of this.
Not many people can resist that and take a different path which is why we don't need to worry about "what if everybody does it".
