# Let's talk about the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) lifestyle **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 11, 2024, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-the-fire-financial-independence-retire-early-lifestyle/995946 "2024-01-11T11:52:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 106
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2024, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-the-fire-financial-independence-retire-early-lifestyle/995946/106 "2024-03-05T11:13:18Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > If you’re earning $168,000 a year (from whatever source(s)) then you are wealthier than 90% of the US. I’d call that “rich” (and that’s totally OK - nothing inherently wrong with having wealth). Yet I have met multiple people earning that (or even more) who are _convinced_ they are merely middle class, or even just getting by. Not sure if that’s “keeping up with the Jones’” run amok or some other societal quirk that convinces rich people they aren’t rich. That’s because most people live in Bumblefuck, America where you probably can buy a house and live a decent middle class life on $65k a year. If you work out of someplace like Manhattan or San Francisco metro where housing costs are astronomical, $168k isn’t buying you a “wealthy” lifestyle. “Rich” people don’t shlep themselves over an hour each way to some office to write those TPS reports for some middle-manager boss, no matter what they get paid. In actual banking circles, for marketing purposes those people are not considered “rich”, they are “mass affluent”. > [@Broomstick](#): > > If someone wants to work like crazy in their 20’s to achieve financial independence by 30, or 35, or whatever more power to them (although women should understand that deferring kids to their mid-30’s has significant ods of being a problem). If someone wants to raise their kids in their 20’s and then launch a career in their 40’s great - although I wish society would make it easier for such people because there is a LOT of bias against people “waiting” to “work” (raising kids is a crap-load of work!) First of all, yes, odds of complications do increase as a woman gets older. But plenty of women have children up to their 30s and even 40s. That said, you can’t do much about biology so the only variable you can control is related to work. The “bias” of people waiting to work is that people who work tend to not want to pay for able-bodied people who don’t. The economics and biology are such that the man tends to have the luxury to focus on their career and get financially established before deciding to have children. Women are forced to choose between career and family early on. So the incentives are for women to get married to a successful man as soon as possible. That creates all sorts of societal problems for both men and women. Moreso for women as it tends to put them in a more financially dependent position. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-the-fire-financial-independence-retire-early-lifestyle/995946)._