TL:DR: I see a shift here from a more ERE crowd who were lower earners but saved a ton in order to reachbFI and possibly RE asap to a younger higher earning crowd that saves a lot but also spends a lot.
I feel like the forum has gotten blasted with super high earners in the last year or so. I don't see a pattern with age as much, but I definitely used to feel motivated by and interested in more threads. Now so many conversations are either consumery-y and about buying things (usually things way too expensive for me to ever consider) or just wildly unrelatable (i.e. lots of people saving 60% of income but still spending double or triple what I spend, doing $20k of lawn work, etc).
Of course I think high earners should be welcome here, but it just feels like there's almost not a place for average or lower earning MMM people. There also seems to be a real lack of perspective regarding wealth and income, which makes a lot of conversations unproductive. I always loved how MMM was about being positive and making yourself better and stronger no matter the circumstances, but some of these posts have people saying things like "we're not even that high earning, we only make about $150k a year combined!" It's like, newsflash: you are in the top 3% of the United States. And no, living in a HCOL area doesn't completely erase that, because low income people also live in HCOL areas.
I think this also skews people's ideas of spending because most people here just use savings percentages in casual conversations. It's like, yeah 50% sounds great, but if you're making a huge salary it's really not that impressive or even frugal. So there's this idea floating around here now that being frugal can totally include new cars, remodeling projects, tons of travel, expensive appliances, fancy gyms, spas, and basically a bunch of other trappings of wealth. Just because you can technically afford those things and still save money doesn't make them prudent choices, and it doesn't make the saver someone who really buys into (pardon the pun) a lot of what first attracted me to MMM, which is the philosophy.
And, scene.