[itchyouch]

Gotta keep up with inflation.

5M generating 3-5% on super safe assets is 150-250k/yr that's generated. After taxes (~40%), that is 90-150k which is 7.5-12.5k/month to spend.

A typical 2-3k sqft newish home in an upper-income neighborhood (median income around 80-90k) runs 400-600k+, which will yield a $2-3k/mo mortgage and $500-1000/mo in property taxes + 500-1000 in general utilities. So just to own a home in an upper-income neighborhood is 3-5k/month. Even if the house is paid off, one is looking at 1-2k/month in property taxes & utilities.

Decent health insurance can easily run around closer 1-2k/month for a family. Yes there are plans for $100/mo as well, but those pretty much as good as not having insurance.

Also a portion of the proceeds needs to be reinvested back to keep up with inflation. It feels that most things have doubled in cost since I was in highschool back in the late 90s/early 00s.

Sure, it's possible to live on 25k/yr (family of 4-5?) like Mr Money Mustache. It really depends on the lifestyle one would like the maintain.

The point of being financially independent is to be able to do as one pleases, but if the things that one wants to pursue cost a decent chunk of money, then the retirement income needs to accommodate said hobbies.

Travel, transportation (cars, boats), housing can be cheap, but virtually unlimited amounts of money can be spent on those categories alone and those categories tend to be the ones that people generally enjoy splurging on.

[creepydata]

Well that house/lifestyle is unreasonable to me, in my opinion. What area has $12,000 a year in property taxes? Does it come with government lap dances?

That's also not how taxes work on capital gains.

I live in a wonderful house I bought for $220,000 with 20% down. I could downgrade if I need in the future but I like the space right now. The P+I of my mortgage is $750/month, taxes $400, utilities $250, insurance $145. I live in an average neighborhood, I don't live in an upper income neighborhood because I don't like upper income neighborhoods, they are too far away from everything. I also don't live in a 'hood. I live on the coast 2 miles from the beach and waking distance to plenty of places. I doubt my town is somehow unique in that respect.

If your spending is less than your capital gains and dividends you never have to worry about money again.

I was replying to "$5-10M is probably the low bar for living a kick-ass non-tied-to-employment lifestyle in the US." I have a kick-ass lifestyle (to me) for much less than $5-10M so I disagree. I don't think living where you have to drive 20 minutes minimum to go anywhere is "kick-ass." I don't find joy in buying new gadgets to impress my neighbors. I ran the numbers and Kick-Ass is at a million and a quarter to me.

[technofiend]

>What area has $12,000 a year in property taxes?

There is no state income tax in Texas, only sales and property tax. A house valued in Houston at $400k will yield ~$7,700/yr in taxes. Search the tax rolls at hcad.org - pick a zip code like 77008 and see for yourself. Just be sure to pick 2016 tax values as 2017 aren't posted yet.

http://hcad.org/property-search/real-property-advanced-recor...

Select "A1" for the property type and/or put in a valuation to filter the dataset down below the max of 3,000 records. Any more than that will return an error.

[itchyouch]

It's all location dependent. Plenty of suburbs are 5 minutes away from just about everything necessary. I'm referring to upper-income as areas with median incomes much higher than the median US, not necessarily rich neighborhoods: Northern NJ, Bucks County PA, Northern Virginia, etc.

NJ property taxes are 2%, so a modest 1500 sqft sub 300k house like this runs 6700/year in taxes alone: https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Cherry-Hill-NJ/3822405...

PA property taxes are cheaper, so a recently (1999) built home for 500k runs around 7.3k/yr: https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Warrington-PA/9124953_...

At these rates, a house around 800-900k runs about 10-12k/yr in prop taxes. A ~600k house in NJ runs around 12k/yr. And as you get to closer commuting distance to NY, housing prices go up.

There's a reason why MMM is big on being very choosy about location. Northern NJ is crazy due to its proximity to NY and the taxes scale with the price. A 1 BR condo in SF can be 1M, or you can get a very nice, recently built 2k sqft house for 200k in Texas.

Personally, from living in newer homes and older homes (built in the 1950-60s), I prefer newer homes. They are generally more energy efficient and have less things that are a ticking time bomb that need to be fixed or attended to. Old homes need new furnaces, roofs, water heaters, leaking pipes, new appliances, leaking windows, drafts, etc.

Of course if one's spending is less than their gains & dividends, one is set for life provided that the gains are scaling with inflation or the draw down rate of the savings based on life-expectancy can last long enough.

Personally, I'd definitely agree that ~1M is more than plenty to live very comfortably as a single individual. I would want around ~2-3M if I had to support a family though.