Remember who's saying this - a highly paid talking head on a radio show. It's clear he neither understands nor wants to understand the FIRE community.
Now that the FIRE lifestyle makes occasional appearences in the national media, it's become vogue to tear it apart as unrealistic and unnecessary lifetime deprivation. Suze Orman went on a FIRE podcast to give an off-the-walls tirade (FIRE... I hate it , i hate it, i hate it!). Others have written click-baity articles where they misrepresent the whole premise. The common thread among these people is they want to garner attention by shitting on mostly younger-people's dreams while not bothering to properly understand the underlying premises. They are basically saying: FIRE's dumb; listen to me, because I have tons and tons of money, all because i work work work.
Look - there are decades of analysis on the relative safety of using a 4% WR, and points made about when and how it might fail and (more importantly) there are easy strategies to mitigate against these potential failures. As for this proclaimation that $40k 'isn't enough' - it's more than what the majority of curent retirees have to live on, it's more than the majority of families in the US spend each year after taxes, and it's way more than most spend when you subtract out saving for retirement and work-related costs (e.g. commuting). It's way more than 90% of families across the globe will ever have in a given year.
$40k is also no hard-and-fast rule to those wanting to FIRE; for most, if you aren't comfortable retiring on $40k/year you could retire on $60k/year just by working another 3-6 years. It's up to the individual. More than a few around here have retired early and have six-figures to spend annually.
As for 'cultish' - it's a commonly used insult to label anything with a strong following a 'cult'. But mustachians really don't fit the true definition - it's about as accurate to say this is a cult as it is to say college basketball is a cult. Whatever. I'm here because it makes my life better, not because of some charismatic leader (Pete) or because I can't safely leave, and i haven't segregated myself away from spendy-pants individuals.
