While I don't buy into the whole FIRE, it's pretty clear that Suze is posturing and arguing for the sake of the argument. It's a publicity stunt, nothing more.
For starters, most people will never get to that number, even people that are making pretty reasonable income. For the back of the envelope calculations, let's assume that one starts working at the age of 25 and works for 35 years. At a mean return of 9% (average equity return, plus or minus), he'd have to set aside 25k a year to get to 5 million. At a more realistic 5% per year, he'd have to set aside 55k to get to that number. PNW of 5 million (not even LNW) is somewhere around the top 1 to 0.5 percentile. Yet over 50% of Americans retire between the age of 60 and 65, before the age when various safety nets kick in (not that you get much of that in the US).
Second of all, retirement is not a terminal state and not even a binary state. You can retire and do various projects on the side that go beyond investing your money. If your skillset is liquid enough, you probably are doing something with it, so you might be working part time or teaching or whatever. Lastly, you can also retire and, should there be a need, return to work.
Truth is, there are bigger questions about retiring at 30. What the fuck would you do with the rest of your life?
It's less about being good and more about not being stupid. If you avoid the usual idiot-traps like buying 5 houses on insane leverage or investing all LNW into marijuana stocks, in general you'll be OK.
