Cyp0111 said:
I think you're being a rather binary in your approach to this. I think you can do both without falling to the excess of one side.
You almost make the corporate side as some form of albatross but discount that doing well on that front can accelerate financial freedom. Why not take the increase in comp and invest in stocks or real estate vs. lifestyle creep ?
Chase the corporate money and invest in the cash flowing assets as your hedge.
Doing well in the corporate world can of course accelerate the path. But if your threshold for happiness is being content with smaller things in life rather than frivolous luxuries or material possessions, it won't matter much in a practical sense.
Somebody can become FIRE on 60k/year income or 250k/yr. It may take the former 15-20 years to get there while the latter could possibly make it in 10 or less.
But generally the person earning the higher income also had to sacrifice in terms of additional schooling, debt, or many years of striving at lower incomes to get where they are, so the time to FIRE may not differ all that much.
The higher earner has capacity for much higher consumption, but if that higher consumption is not an end goal then it's not going to be meaningful and you're just adding more unnecessary padding to an already sufficient stack. Essentially over solving a problem that does not exist any longer.