Well, I'm also FIREd, and obviously I'd disagree with your disagreement :)
I do agree you don't need to do anything extreme, personally I basically stumbled upon financial independence, I was just doing what I thought was fun, turned out it was profitable as well, and here we are with 24/7 freetime for ~50 more years or whatever.
But when I talk with peers who are all into aiming for "FIRE", then that's very different from the experience I had actually achieving it, I haven't though about retirement a single time, and obviously don't relate at all to these people who think about "reduce expenses and maximize savings", but I'd still relate to "lived humbly", fwiw.
I do agree you don't need to do anything extreme, personally I basically stumbled upon financial independence, I was just doing what I thought was fun, turned out it was profitable as well, and here we are with 24/7 freetime for ~50 more years or whatever.
But when I talk with peers who are all into aiming for "FIRE", then that's very different from the experience I had actually achieving it, I haven't though about retirement a single time, and obviously don't relate at all to these people who think about "reduce expenses and maximize savings", but I'd still relate to "lived humbly", fwiw.