I started real work in 2000 making about 80k and saving and investing around 40%. 10 years later I was making about $160k and saving about half of take home and had paid off my modestly priced (compared to my peers) house. I felt pretty wealthy at that point with a paid off house and 10x my annual spend in investments, so finally had the guts to start a business i thought would do well and ensure I could work from home. Because I kept expenses low (never rented space, all my employees always worked from home) I did ok the first few years, then things took off. I basically had 4 extremely profitable years then pulled the plug and switched to consulting to reduce risk and hours. Over the course of those rocketing years I blew thru any earlier planned FIRE numbers (which was around $2M, but today I'm at $5M NW, $4M LNW), so we increased our spending & gifting and filled 529s for the kids. Looking back on it, if I had just kept the job and not started the business, I'd probably be FIREing around the same time with half the stache I have now (which would have been just fine too).
My investments have always been aggressive but boring (was basicall 100% s&p500 for those first 10 years, then what probably equated to a normal 90/10 portfolio, and then recently more like 70/15/15 (The last 15 being cash which I plan to mostly spend down for the first few years of FIRE).