If I look at my own situation, I could easily start a thread like this because I'm not going to retire any time soon, but it would be utterly pointless because I already know what the solutions are:
1. Stop trying to start a family.
2. Sell my house which is large enough for a family and go and live somewhere smaller, just me and my wife.
3. Learn new skills in order to get a higher paying job.
4. Travel back in time so that I can stumble across the concept of FIRE when I was age 16 rather age 31 (I'm 37 now).
Our discretionary spending is as low as it can be. Seriously, we are full on frugal weirdos. We don't do birthday presents or Christmas presents. We eat out about 5 times a year at most. Don't have any expensive hobbies, walk to and from work etc.
Laura33 nails it here:
Last year, you were living in a $265K house and frustrated that it was going to take you so long to FIRE. A year later, you're living in a $415K house and frustrated that it's going to take you so long to FIRE. There's an elephant in the room here. All the ALDI in the world won't compensate for having to pay off almost a half-million dollars in debt just for the roof over your head.
Anybody's 3 biggest expenses are are: 1. Housing, 2. Transportation, 3. Food.
This covers the size and location of the house (mortgage/rent), property taxes, cost of property maintenance, type of vehicle, number of vehicles, length of commute, how much you drive overall, cost of fuel, cost of vehicle maintenance, how often you eat out, how often you order in, whether or not you can cook, whether or not you plan your menu for the week before you go food shopping, how much alcohol you drink, how often you have other people round for dinner.
But out of all of that, and this definitely holds true for me, the mortgage payment, each month, is greater than the rest of it put together. Sure, you can mess about with the smaller stuff like how much you spend on shower gel or some crap, but it's not going to alter the big 3, which are the things that keep most people working until they are old.