Thanks, Aleena!

Being an employee (even with a 50% savings rate) is a guaranteed losing proposition compared to being born with $10,000,000 in capital and earning $1,000,000 a year of compounding annual stock market returns.

It's also a losing employee compared to any digital business that has zero unit cost and infinite potential sales.

Stardew Valley has sold 30,000,000 copies (or roughly $300,000,000 in gross revenue), but that same developer would have just been another disillusioned employee for 15 years if they had pursued FIRE, let alone if they had never found out how the world works and tried to work a miserable, 40-year-long career.

So since I've already had a 20-year career across 2 professions after hating every minute of it (and every minute of school before that), I'd much rather take the shot at the upside of selling my own intellectual property (indie games) than experiencing any more verbal abuse at work.