I have to disagree with the consensus here. IMO the sooner you gain full control of your life, the better. No one who needs a paycheck is ever in full control of his/her life. I only wish I had obsessed about FIRE when I was in my 20s.
This is not the same thing as obsessing about your career, which is an illusion manufactured to convince you that you are not spending the best years of your life prostituting yourself.
It's also not the same thing as obsessing about money, which is just silly.
Obsessing about FIRE is obsessing about the freedom of your precious, fleeting human spirit. IMO more people should obsess about it, and as early as possible.
Well, I really have to disagree with you on this one, Onward...nothing personal in my response, I have read a couple of similar posts, and wanted to offer a different perspective.
Maybe you are confusing a bad career choice with the illusion of freedom?
"prostituting yourself" is a conscious choice, if you felt you had to do that to have the "illusion" of a career you probably needed to move on to somewhere or something that offered what you were looking for. You had skills, and it was a job you took, not a prison sentence you received. Understand the need for a paycheck, we all worked for one, I just don't get the blame game.
Maybe my situation was unique, but somehow I doubt it. I bounced around quite a bit in my early to mid-20's before I found a job I liked that offered a career path. It was outside my degree field. I worked hard, learned as much as possible, and stuck with it. No company is perfect, and things haven't turned out exactly like I thought, but, overall, 25 years later, I still enjoy it. No regrets. If I felt like my career was an illusion, I would take my skills and experience and move on. I'm a firm believer that attitude determines altitude, and that the harder you work the luckier you get. I can't imagine working for xx years and retiring from a company with the pent-up anger and angst some of the members on this forum have shared about their employers.
There is a program for people who want to obsess about their precious fleeting human spirit as early as possible, rather than work for the man. It's called welfare. Doesn't pay much, but the hours are good and they let you dream...