The goal of saving money is the following:

A. Build Generational Wealth for your kids so that they can build upon that foundation and have a more comfortable life. They can grow that portfolio whilst living off of it and so can their kids. A house is an investment not for yourself but for your entire family and lineage. There's a reason the rich stay rich and it's because they understand that investing their money and saving up is an investment in their lineage. Failure to see it as such is why most folks live paycheque to paycheque and so do their kids.

B. Have an easier retirement. I used to work in a bank and I couldn't help but feel bad for old folks who hadn't saved anything and who lived off of their meager pensions. Whilst those who saved had 6-7-8 figure portfolios and weren't scared of the Social Security System going bust.

C. Saving simply feels good. I love seeing my bank account go up and I love getting my dividends, paycheque, and other income streams pile up in my bank account. I wanna buy properties and have something to my name. It makes me feel wealthy and I feel like a mini-King. People who've got money are usually way happier and live longer whilst those who don't are usually more stressed out and die younger.

Only degenerates don’t save for retirement. Just wait till you’re 60 and relatively healthy and then you realize that you should have saved that 5-10% when you were younger. Now you have to work literally until the day you die just to feed and shelter yourself. LOL

Hopefully you won’t die, leaving your kids with a funeral bill like my father did. He had nothing in 401k and no savings. He died unexpectedly and I was the only family member left so guess who foot the funeral bill?

My step father just died last week and his funeral was $13k. Luckily he wasn’t an idiot and had money saved.

I plan on dying broke. No, I plan on dying with mountains of debt. I will calculate my death down to the last penny under mountains of debt. I expect to make it to 80 though.

Max 401K & HSA crew:

1. If you don't at LEAST invest to your company's match, you're a legit dumbphuck. It's quite literally saying no to free money.

2. I max out because that's free tax money I'm turning down. If I don't put money in my HSA/401K, I'm giving up 25-30% of my marginal pay in taxes. Instead of guaranteeing myself a -30% return on that money, why not invest that ****?

I kind of get OP's point about FIREcels. There comes a point when you can't just keep shoving money into index funds, retire early, but have 0 hobbies or personality because you spent your best years being a shut-in. My philosophy has evolved to maxing out those accounts, for the reasons mentioned earlier, and just have enough emergency funds to cover 4-5 months of unemployment. If I spend it all because I want to take a trip or go out an extra time or two with people, so be it. Whatever's left over is gravy anyway.

I feel very behind. My wife and I combined have around 200k in retirement or company stock(publix for her). We are 36 and 32.

I don’t plan on retiring though till I’m 70 or so. I’m going to lightnen my workload when I’m 55 or so and travel the country doing nurse practitioner contracts here and there. She might pick up a pharmacist contract if pharmacies still exist then.

My parents are 71 and 65 and they have more money than they know what to do with and should have enjoyed it a little more last 20 years imo

Fuk I think i have some Publix stock that I really need to transfer from their portal.