I contrast to the couple earning over 1.1M, here’s a FIRE story from a couple starting in debt, crawling out of it with a with household of $140k and FIREing in 13 years - oh. and they had 4 kids.
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I’m assuming not in Switzerland?
(Raising even half the number of kids would make it hardly feasible here 
)
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That said it’s still a nice demonstration that the only thing that matters is savings rate. If you can reach something like 50% saving rate, you should be able to FIRE in a decent amount of time.
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Thats a fantastic read and inspiring. Very much in the vein of the classic Mustachian FIRE approach!
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Yes, “bean by bean the bag fills”, it’s the sustained grind that’s hard to do, especially if couples are not aligned in their life goals…
One key thing we did to make that increased savings rate feel effortless, was to make our weekly discretionary spending a fixed dollar amount. Both of our employers allowed us to direct our paycheck to more than one bank account, so we had a fixed amount sent to a ‘Bill Paying’ account, another fixed amount sent to our ‘Spending’ and ‘Groceries/Gas’ accounts, and then whatever was left was all directed to our investment account. So as we got promotions and pay raises over the years, they automatically bypassed our spending account and went straight into our investment account. We never even saw the pay bumps. This was absolutely key to not letting our lifestyle creep up as we made more money.
This is ultra critical, the “pay yourself first” thing that most people not on some sort of FIRE path don’t seem to ever understand. I have lost count of the times I tell friends “set aside an amount, any amount, the day your salary gets paid, in an account disconnected from any sort of debit card”, they say “oh, I don’t see what difference it makes”, I tell them “do it and you’ll see the difference”. But they don’t 
The article doesn’t say who’s paying for kids’ education, though. I expect there’ve been a few stern convos on the background, of the type “get a scholarship or it’s shovelling shit for you”.
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They did mention it. 2 kids didn’t go to college. one did in state, and one went out of state. the deal was to contribute 10k if they went out of state and pay it if it was in-state.
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Not just bean by bean but also taking action: they sold their home, downsized and then sold both their leased cars to buy cheaper cars for cash.
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