Now this thread is getting good. Who else y'all know about.
This is a brief history of the modern FIRE movement based on my own leaky memory, things I heard over the fence, and some help from Google. Corrections, comments, and additions welcome. For entertainment purposes only. No warranty is expressed or implied.
The OGs of FIRE are Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin who FIRE'd sometime in the 1980s, and published the classic "Your Money or Your Life" in 1992. Prior to that time, they were doing workshops promoting what we call FIRE today.
The Terhorsts came out with their book in 1988. Despite being the first, the Terhorst's book never seemed to have the impact as YMOYL did. I confess I've read neither, but many cite YMOYL has being hugely influential in their thinking. However, Dominguez, Robin, and the Terhorsts all made a key planning error, in that they relied 100% on bonds for income. At that time, the 4% rule had not been discovered and the data and tools to evalulate SWR did not even exist for the vast majority of people. Peter Lynch, who probably had as many tools available to him as anyone, advocated a 7% WR.
This changed in 1994 when Bill Bengen discovered the 4% rule and published it an a industry journal. Now, there was good answer to the central question of retirement planning, namely how much do I need? But back then the Internet didn't really exist as we know it today and I don't believe the 4% rule made a lot of penetration into the mainstream.
In about 1998 John Greaney (aka intercst), mentioned above, replicated Bengen's work, using Schiller's longer data set. Greeney did a couple notable things, he founded the
Retire Early Home Page which is still being updated in all of its HTML 1.0 glory (kids, if you want to know what the Internet used to look like, this is it) and he worked through a surprising number of topics related to early retirement, taxes, investment strategies, etc. He also allowed people to download his Excel spreadsheet and data so you could see for yourself and make modifications. And he set up a Retire Early Home Page discussion page at The Motley Fool. Out of that board (I believe) our own
@Nords and a poster named Dory36 (Bill Sholar) emerged, along with a few other notable posters.
Dory36 set up a early retirement discussion board:
Early Retirement.org and he also created FireCalc. So for the first time there was an online SWR calculator where you can enter your own inputs and assumptions. About this time, Johnathan Clements at the Wall Street Journal and noted syndicated personal finance author Scott Burns picked up on the 4% rule and introduced the concept of FIRE to a mainstream audience. I believe CFIREsim also came out of Early Retirement.org as well, but I'm not sure of that.
After that, as far as I know there wasn't a lot of real movement in the FIRE community until MMM arrived. MMM did several notable things. For one, he did the nuts and bolts kind of calculations like intercst and Dory36, but he also introduced a lot of philosophy and lifestyle discussion like YMOYL and the Terhorsts. It really caught on and we all know the rest.
Joe Dominguez died in 1996. I heard but cannot confirm that his bond ladder was starting to fail and he was living a much diminished lifestyle. Vicki Robin lives on an island in Washington State and makes occasional media appearances. Robin switched to index funds years ago. The Terhorsts also switched to index funds and apparently are still having a blast. John Greaney is still around, and says "If I knew then what I know now, I would have retired at 30." Nords appears to be doing well. Bill Sholar decided running a message board was a lot like work and sailed off into the sunset.