This makes me think. I have long said that I wish I had known about the actual RE part of FIRE earlier, because then I could have maybe convinced DH to be more frugal (i.e., that it's not just doing without, it's about putting your money toward this awesome vision that is so much more important).
But maybe I heard the message when I was ready to hear it, and if I'd heard it 25 years ago, I'd have dismissed it. Back then, I was highly ambitious, determined to put my stamp on the world. I was also bound and determined never to be poor again. So overall, my ethos was "work hard and save aggressively so you can be rich by the time you retire at 65." The idea of setting myself up to live on $30-40K (today's money) forever is something I would have scoffed at -- walk/bike everywhere? Clean my own house and mow my own lawn and never go out to eat and go camping for vacation and do all my own repairs and shop at thrift stores? That's the life I was running away from. I was going to do Great Things, and people were going to shower me with giant wads of cash as my reward!
And, you know, I bitch about how DH is spendier than I am. But my frustration with him back then was out of fear -- I wanted to save all I could because it would never be enough, so I could be like Scrooge McDuck and sit on piles of gold coins. I would never have retired at MMM's level of savings, because I was too afraid everything would go in the shitter. And then, to be completely honest, DH's spendy ways were probably good for me for the first decade or so; he had such a different, optimistic view of money that he taught me to let go a little, that the world wouldn't end if we bought Charmin instead of the generic version. Whereas before I took joy only in saving, he taught me that spending in the *right* ways also made me happy. I think I needed that lesson to feel like I had power over money instead of money having power over me -- to see it as a tool that I could use as I wanted. I think if I had known about MMM back then, I would have used it as a justification to double down on my stinginess, as evidence that I was "right" and he was wrong, and I don't know if I would have ever made the switch from operating out of fear to operating out of a sense of power and confidence.
Of course, I took it too far -- I got lazy, I started wanting "stuff" just as "stuff," I outsourced more and more, and our budget kept expanding. Until finally I realized that none of that was bringing me any *more* satisfaction; in fact, I had gone over the edge of hedonic adaptation and was feeling lazy and entitled and didn't understand how I could have gotten more than I had ever hoped as a kid and was still unhappy and still found more things to want. And the job seemed more of a chase; much of that early ambition faded away. And that's when, after years of reading, the message began to resonate: I didn't need more outsourced help, I needed less, because I needed to remind myself that I am a competent, capable human who can figure things out. I didn't need more stuff, I needed to pay attention to the stuff that brought me satisfaction and joy and the stuff that just cluttered my house -- and I needed to evaluate how many more hours/years I was willing to work for any of it. And that's sort of where I am now, still figuring that balance out.
It all reminds me of when I met DH: as we started dating, I realized that he reminded me of a number of NGBs* I had known in HS/college -- smart, genuinely nice, respectful, and clearly smitten with me, but none of the "broodingly handsome"/unattainable stuff I usually crushed on. So we kept dating, and I kept waiting to get bored, and I never did -- I had finally grown up enough to actually *want* someone who was good for me. IOW, even though it felt like I looked for-freaking-ever to meet the right guy, in reality, I had met several guys like him before -- I just wasn't ready to see what they had to offer back then.
*Nice guy, but. . . .
Tl;dr: I agree with John. While I might wish to rewrite history to begin saving 75% of my salary at 25, the person I was at 25 was not ready to hear the MMM message and would have either ignored it completely or used its power for evil instead of good. The message resonates now because of the experiences I had and mistakes I made over the next 25 years.