October 3, 2026, 6:03 a.m. ET
Has inflation extinguished the FIRE movement?
Popularized in the 1990s Financial Independence movement, Retire Early encourages workers to maximize their savings, spend modestly, and stop working well before the age most Americans associate with retirement.
Massive stock gains in recent years have rewarded FIRE savers. But rising prices may have stopped them from saving.
Consumer prices have increased about 27% since the start of 2021. Persistent inflation is a key reason why Americans have only saved 4.1% of their disposable income as of August 2026, the lowest personal savings rate recorded since 2022.
In a recent survey by resume building platform MyPerfectResume, 71% of workers said FIRE is now unrealistic for most people. The survey reached 1,000 workers in May 2026.
“There is certainly a gap between the allure of financial independence and the ability of workers to pursue it,” said Toni Frana, career expert at MyPerfectResume.
Despite FIRE, US retirement age continues to rise
The FIRE movement encourages workers to retire years or decades earlier than the traditional U.S. retirement window of around age 62 to 70.
The movement is very popular, with a Reddit community claiming more than 2.5 million followers.
Yet the average retirement age in the United States continues to rise. The typical retirement age in 2024 was 64 for men and 62 for women, up from 61 and 59, respectively, in 1994, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
Several recent surveys suggest that workers are delaying, rather than moving forward, their retirement timelines.
Among workers surveyed by MyPerfectResume, 35% said they planned to retire later than they had planned three years ago. Only 13% said they planned to retire early.
In another recent survey by financial services company Thrivent, nearly half of workers said they doubt they will ever be able to fully retire.
The impact of inflation underlines both reports.
“When you look at the savings rate across the country, you can see that people are struggling,” said Robert Brokamp, senior retirement advisor at The Motley Fool. “Something is happening, and I suspect part of it is inflation.”
One of the key tenets of the FIRE movement is to save at much higher rates than the average American: 30%, 40%, or even 50% of your take-home pay. Another solution is to spend sparingly, weighing each expense.
For FIRE followers with these priorities, recent economic developments have produced a mixed result.
Rising prices have made it harder to save
On the one hand, rising prices have made it more difficult for Americans to save. Inflation could disrupt FIRE plans, said Ryan Sterling, CEO of NerdWallet Wealth Partners.
“Many FIRE plans are built one time, around a specific number,” an amount that the saver believes will fund a comfortable retirement, Sterling said. A typical goal is to save 25 times your annual expenses.
But that saver “struggles when costs go up,” he said, “because the plan isn’t designed to handle that.”
On the other hand, surging stock values have rewarded many FIRE savers with million-dollar portfolios. FIRE investors generally favor low-cost stock index funds. These funds have performed well in recent years.
“Anyone who has a lot of money invested in the market says, ‘OK, I had a little windfall, that’s good,'” said Peter Adeney, aka Mr. Money Mustache, a prominent FIRE blogger from Colorado who retired from his job as a software engineer at age 30.
“Although the market and inflation were higher than the historical average,” Adeney said, “the market was by far the winner, surprising most of us with unexpected growth in our savings, paving the way for even earlier retirement.”
FIRE Savers Take Inflation With Open Arms
Adeney said many FIRE savers take inflation in stride. They understand that “our wages tend to rise with inflation,” he said, so the net effect on affordability is effectively neutral.
And rising prices might affect FIRE savers less than most consumers, he said, simply because they spend less.
“A lot of the products that are going up in price are products that we may not be interested in anyway,” he said.
The annual home food inflation rate is 2.2% in August. The inflation rate for food consumed away from home is 3.4%. FIRE savers tend to favor eating at home.
“When you cut your spending significantly, you don’t feel inflation as much, because you’re not spending as much,” Brokamp said.
A FIRE couple “may be a household of two but only have one car,” Brokamp said. “Well, you don’t feel the inflation of car prices and gas prices.”
Recent surveys suggest that American workers are discouraged about their retirement prospects as prices continue to rise.
But the FIRE movement may have inspired workers to start saving earlier and dream of retiring earlier, especially younger Americans.
Gen Z started saving for retirement at age 22 on average, according to Northwestern Mutual’s 2026 Planning and Progress Study. On the other hand, millennials started saving at 28, generation X at 32.
And Generation Z plans to retire at age 61 on average, compared to 64 for Generation Y and 67 for Generation X.
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