Wow, as someone who just read this entire post in 1 sitting, I feel like Sky High is ignoring everyone and maybe doesn't completely understand the MMM message even. Sky High, you are picking and choosing the MMM lessons to bring into this thread while saying you agree with the whole MMM FIRE theory. You clearly contradict MMM ideas many times. Most notably is how you keep insisting on how a family needs to spend 50k+ to 'just get by' and people have repeatedly given great counter arguments as to how that's not true at all. This is also what I mean about picking and choosing the MMM ideals you bring into this. MMM has lived on ~25k/year for his family and has many many posts about how that allows him to absolutely enjoy living life. Many others have also posted their experiences with this. The only difference I see is that your article was for a family of 4, but MMM is a family of 3 and I doubt MMM's budget would jump up 15k if he added an extra kid into the mix. Now if you want to argue that the article was for the average US family then YES! we agree they can't FIRE on that budget while earning the average american income, but that is also one of MMM's points! That's basically the entire point of this blog: don't spend like the average american and you can FIRE even if you're on an average salary. So, why are we even considering 50k+ spending for a family of 4? Obviously you could spend 50k a year and you'd need a higher income to FIRE, but MMM is all about figuring out how you can spend LESS while still being HAPPY and also becoming FIRE'd if you so choose.
I just don't get how this argument is still happening... MMM clearly is about leaving the average and doing something different to achieve non-average results!
