> There's no way out of "serfdom" other than starting your own company.

Took me 10 years of grinding to finally realize this. Now at this stage the only question is how do I do it?

You can just save your way out too. I started on the path to FIRE (check out /r/financialindependence on Reddit) about 10 years into my career, and it was a huge quality of life improver

Now I'm always sitting on an enormous pile of savings and I have short- and long-term plans to move my career and life forward. It spares me a lot of stress.

This is likely a more "reasonable" path unless you "go into business for yourself" as a plumber or a consultant, neither of which actually makes a salable business.

Especially since you only need to keep your expenses 10% lower (or so) than your after-tax income to hit a reasonable target.

Yeah, I looked into it on my own early in my career, and I thought "Damn, I'd have to save two million dollars to live in retirement off 50k a year for forty years"

Turns out the numbers are a lot more favorable, though. You can count on some level of compounding investment growth even after inflation, you can slash your living expenses after you retire, etc. Suddenly early retirement is a possibility even at a pretty modest income level, without compromising your quality of life too much in the mean time