I wanted to give your OP and subsequent posts a bit more attention. I agree that sometimes it's hard to see the relevance between your life and someone 35 with half a million in their retirement account. Look deeper.
Distill the lesson from other people's stories even if the numbers have no relevance to you. It pretty much all comes down to some basics. High savings rate, investing, and frugal living. If your income doesn't allow you to live on 25% or 50% don't be discouraged, just save as much as you can. Advice on investing can be had in the investing thread. Frugality tips pretty much apply to everyone. If you came to Mustachianism late in life, as I did, then you'll have to accept that some opportunities have passed us by. There's no longer 40 years ahead of us for compounding to do it's magic. (But it still does it's magic if you only have 10 years, just not as much magic) For those of us nearing traditional retirement age earning significantly more money probably isn't in the cards. Focus on frugality, saving, and investing.
Track you spending. My wife and I did a budget and to our shock we found our expenses were $1,000 per month lower than our income (and our income is modest) We hadn't been tacking spending so we didn't really know how well off we were and we were not saving/investing the $1K. Now we are saving and investing most of the money. We save about 1/3 of our income which is not bad on a modest income.
For those of us who are older paying attention to our health will probably pay bigger "dividends" than any investment. Nows the time to loose weight, get fit, and stay that way for the rest of our lives.
A certain amount of "badassity" is necessary. We aren't going to achieve anything extraordinary by following convention methods.