I used to read ERE from time to time and got a kick out of it, but was making really crappy money and had other priorities. Shortly before I turned 25, I started thinking how much working sucked, and how nice it would be to not have to, so I somehow paid off my $7000 student loan in 3 months(on a $12/hr warehouse worker salary, still not quite sure how that happened), then started gradually building up some savings, nothing too crazy.
The I got a temporary job at an investment firm, where part of my job was reception relief for an hour a day. It was usually pretty quiet and I wasn't expected to do anything other than answer calls, so to entertain myself I started reading money blogs for an hour a day - everything basically, GRS, MMM, ERE, and a bunch of smaller ones. By the time my contract ended, I was an unstoppable early retirement fiend.