My personal opinion is that once people start down the path of, "make $80K, save $50K, retire in 11 years.", they decide that this exact path isn't worth it for a variety of reasons.
1.) With a little bit of imagination, they see that living on $30K at 30 is different from living on (an inflation adjusted) $30K at 50.
2.) For Americans, this is a lot of faith to place in the ever-in-peril Affordable Care Act.
3.) For all the talk of compound growth, accumulating only for an 11 year time horizon means that you're retiring 2/3rds on principal. Working just six more years inverts that number. 2/3rds on gains and 1/3rd on principal.
4.) Celebrity bloggers who convinced them to get on the FIRE path aren't living meagerly on the 4% rule, so why should I?
5.) Their job is better/more tolerable than it was when the FIRE journey started.
6.) Circumstances changed. Divorce. Kids. Expensive health event. Took an awesome, expensive vacation and decided this should be factored into the FIRE number.
When I joined this forum, I was in my mid 20s and dating. I was one promotion above entry-level at my job, but still doing a lot of grunt technical work and a little bit of analysis. It was exciting when I was 22, as was the paycheck that was 3x what I was making in restaurants. When I found this community, the money was a little better but the work was getting a bit stale.
Six years later though, I'm in management. More of my time is spent on big picture analytical problem solving. I'm married. There's a baby on the way. I work from home, and there's a reasonable expectation that arrangements will be pretty flexible going forward. Circumstances are totally different. When I built my FIRE spreadsheet in the early 2010s, I factored in 3% raises and expenses going up by 2%. I didn't factor in any of the big changes I just described because they're impossible to predict with much certainty.
MMM's kid successfully convinced him that dropping out and unschooling was the way to go. If my kid is anything like me or my wife, they'll cobble together a debt free degree using AP credit, some scholarships, some part time jobs, and a cheap state school. That'd be awesome. But maybe they'll love performing arts and get into Julliard. Am I willing to work a few extra years to foot the bill for that? Yeah, probably.