It sounds like you don't like being misled. I can get on board with that. For me personally, I would prefer a blogger to be completely up front about the details and I wouldn't stop reading just because they have a high income. But I also accept that admitting their income would have turned a lot of readers away, many of whom ended up learning from the blog and improving their own lives using the FW's advice. If they had turned their nose up at the blog due to the writer's income, they would have missed out on something useful. Whether it was the best choice or not, we can never know, but I think it was a defensible choice. Probably a little selfish too, but I wouldn't go so far as "scummy".
Personally, I don't feel misled. Because I was never a reader to begin with and I consider myself very smart and able to see things for what they are. But I do believe that they're purposefully being misleading, and I have reason to believe others, who may not be as vigilant as I am, have been misled.
Somewhere in this very long and old thread, I made a statement about how we as a society allow rich people to engage in dishonesty with impunity. The Frugalwoods shit is a small example of a very very very big problem. That explains most of my continued engagement on the topic.
I'll also openly cop to having a lower barometer for "scummy" than a lot of people probably have.
As for whether or not saving $20 $60-$520/year* will help one get ahead on retirement savings, it will, to the tune of about $20. But more importantly, the message isn't "this is how we FIRE'd and you can to" it's "Here are some ways that you can have more options in life". (and again, I wasn't a reader from the beginning. They may have updated this message as time went on.)
I disagree with the bold. They very purposefully lead with frugality and obfuscate the role that high income plays. After all, the blog is called "Frugalwoods", not "My husband's mega-high income, work from home situation-woods". The subhead is "Financial independence and simple living". The subhead of the book is the even less ambiguous, "Achieving Financial Independence Through Simple Living". Many podcast appearances or write-ups where headlined something like, "This couple quit their jobs and moved to the country thanks to their frugal habits." Maybe they weren't 100% in control of the messaging, but they certainly didn't go out of their way to challenge it or correct the record.
To their credit, they do pay some lip service the the importance of privilege and high incomes. But the story they tell and the image they present is, in the main, dishonest.
While their more "extreme" frugality practices like home haircuts and working in exchange for yoga classes may not have been critical to their savings rate, the frugality mindset absolutely was. The norm for people who earn what they earn is to spend the majority of their income and be caught in the same trap as so many are, regardless of income. So would you acknowledge that their choice to buy used, reliable vehicles rather than a brand new car every few years contributed to their financial independence? Assuming your answer is yes, should they limit themselves to writing about the big ticket items like vehicles and housing? Are they not allowed to write about cooking with rice and beans because it represents too small of a % of their income? And if so, what is the cutoff? At what % of their income should they not give advice?
*based on the lowest and highest annual cost of haircuts for men that I personally know. At least double this for a couple.
I have to disagree here too. This is a meme and a myth pushed by personal finance gurus meant to downplay the importance of making money.
The median household has expenditures of about 101% of their after tax take-home pay. For the highest 10% of households by earnings, it's 69%. High savings rates are a natural consequence of high incomes because most people recognize that marginal happiness gained per dollar spent falls off a cliff past a certain point.
[1] I don't want to downplay the goodness of spreading a message about spending money more purposefully, or reducing consumption, or practicing great personal finance. I love that stuff. But there's now a cottage industry around anti-consumerism, completely with tons of Amazon affiliate linking and cheery looking documentaries. The PF space is in need of some consumer watch-dogging.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/cex/tables.htm