You're not upper class in America until you've -2-

The urge to reclaim time aligns with the perspective touted by the financial independence, retire early movement, known as FIRE, which encourages people, typically high-income earners, to save and invest large portions of their income during their working years so that they have the financial freedom to step away from the rat race - or completely retire - well before the typical retirement age of 67.

People who reach FIRE enjoy freedom, or at least have some level of financial security. Personal-finance experts, including popular podcast hosts like Sethi, Dave Ramsey and Brian Preston and Bo Hanson of the Money Guy Show, and influencers like Tori Dunlap and Vivian Tu, all endorse some form of financial freedom to their followers, whether it is freedom from debt or the freedom to stop working for a paycheck. The tenets of traditional personal-finance advice - maintaining a sizable emergency fund, living below your means, aggressively saving and investing - are all ultimately in service of becoming financially independent.

From the archives (May 2024): Money advice needed a makeover. Inside the rise of the female 'finfluencer.'

Low economic mobility in the U.S. and what many experts say is a weak social safety net can pose systemic challenges for people trying to break free. Workers who don't earn a living wage may have few options. Yet for those who earn more, how grueling the pace of their treadmill is, to some extent, determined by their choices, experts told MarketWatch.

"This, to me, is very much a lifestyle thing," said Scott Murray, head of analytics at Pymnts and a co-author of the report about six-figure earners who say they live paycheck to paycheck. "When people start getting more money and getting bigger checks, they start buying bigger houses and nicer cars," he told MarketWatch. "A lot of people do this. It's not just poor people and it's not just rich people."

While members of the treadmill class may feel trapped, "they actually have choices" about how to spend their money, said Chistopher Wong Michaelson, a professor at the University of St. Thomas and co-author of the book "Is Your Work Worth It? How to Think About Meaningful Work." This does not excuse vast economic inequality in the U.S., Michaelson said, but on some level, "in the treadmill class, we choose our own misery by the material wants that we have."

Many Americans have been pushing back on the pressure to spend. Young consumers are trying no-spend challenges, and "underconsumption core" has become a social-media trend.

Menjivar, who still has a $3,250 monthly mortgage and tax payment and wants to have children someday, hopes careful spending and disciplined investing can one day get him and his wife off the treadmill. "We're not struggling-struggling right now," he said, but they also aren't truly free yet.

-Venessa Wong

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10-01-24 0600ET

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