A recurring expense is not just a bill. It is a claim on your retirement number. That $800/month line item looks like $800 because you see it one month at a time. FIRE math sees it differently. $800/month is $9,600/year. At a 4% withdrawal rate, that means you need $240,000 more saved before work becomes optional. So cutting the expense does two things at once. First, it shrinks the target. Your FIRE number falls immediately by 25x the annual expense. No market return required. Second, it frees up cash that can go to work. Redirect that same $800/month into productive assets for 20 years and the gap between spending it and stacking it becomes enormous. This is why expense cuts are not just frugality. They're portfolio engineering. Bitcoin makes the second lever more interesting because the compounding side has a steeper slope. But the core move works either way: reduce the target, increase the engine, buy back time. Small recurring expenses are only small when you ignore the multiplier. I wrote through the $800/month example and the two-lever math here:

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FIRE BTC Issue 57 - Why cutting $800/month saves you $240,000 instantly