But is penny-pinching and amassing material wealth really all that commendable?
Yeah, it is.
Or, at least, it can be.
I won't say how much I have, but I'm well into the multimillionaire category. It's been, I would guess, 20 years or so since my salary as an engineer (and my wife's as a chemist) has been our primary source of income.
We still live VERY middle class lives (our big purchase over the holidays was a Keurig coffee maker). I drive a truck that is probably older than a lot of the posters on this forum.
But we also give a ton of money to charity. Roughly my entire "work" salary gets donated (mostly to charity, but some to political organizations).
Could I have donated $5,000 to a no kill shelter if I was living on the financial edge? Probably not.
Could I have donated hundreds of dollars to JJ Watt's fund to help Houston or Tim Duncan's project to help the US Virgin Islands if I was spending everything I make? Probably not.
And yes, I spend way too much time watching sports. :)
Could I have given money to lower income kids to go to college if I lived like most of our well paid, but financially stressed, peers? Probably not.
When you save money and invest, it's not just about FIRE. Sure, FIRE is the first objective, but at some point, you realize you have more than enough to retire on.
I know it's probably somewhat of a bubble, but my wife and I sit back and laugh at how much our net worth on paper has increased under the "Trump Rally." Our net worth is going up so fast, our salaries as a chemist and engineer are trivial in comparison to the growth.
So what do you do in that case? I guess you can go "Scrooge McDuck" and just watch the money pile up in your account, but that seems kind of pointless. We choose to use the money to support causes we believe in.
You can't give 10's of thousands to charity if you are living paycheck to paycheck, even if you have a good income. Our well paid, but generally broke-ass (because, like most Americans, they spend as fast as they earn) friends have little or no money to donate to charity.
So yeah, amassing wealth IS commendable. It's commendable even if you only use it to FIRE, but it's far more so when you realize that you can do a lot of good with your money.
Wealth gives you opportunities far beyond just living a comfortable life and FIRE.
And it all starts with penny pinching, investing, and amassing wealth. Neither myself (born working class, at best) nor my immigrant wife came from wealth. We got there doing the things MMM, Dave Ramsey, and so many others recommend. We worked hard, got a good education, got good jobs, lived well below our means, saved and invested. So now we are financially independent and can afford to give as we see fit.
And there are millions of American millionaires doing the same thing we are doing.