[hnmonkey]

What's your definition of 'bonkers areas?' Can you show how 1 million net worth gets someone retirement? It seems to me that if you're retiring on 1 million dollars you're going to run out of money pretty easily unless you're living off rice and beans. And in many places with just $40k a year (assuming a 4% withdrawal of the 1 million) you might not be able to even cover your mortgage/rent/property taxes/bills not even factoring in food/healthcare/entertainment. These days people who retire can potentially live another 20 years or so and 1 million in the bank won't cover it at all.

[esotericn]

1 million is obviously intended to convey an order of magnitude, but I'll bite, because it works anyway, I live something like it.

I'll use GBP to begin with and convert back to USD at the end, because I'm in the UK.

10K GBP a year is more than I currently spend on life. This excludes rent. I'll get to that.

300K at a 3.33% withdrawal gets you that.

Another 300K to buy a home outright. Sod the mortgage, you have 1M net worth, do that if you think you can beat HPI with investments. This is doable in most of the UK. In many areas you'd get something really rather nice for that.

That's 600K GBP or 768K USD, in total. That actually gets you a better standard of living than my current one, forever (I don't own a home).

A bit left over. So we'll spend another 5 grand a year 'cos we can. 166K GBP required at 3.33% withdrawal, 766K in total. Still not 1M USD.

In London (I live here) you'd probably want 750K for the house (you can do cheaper but if you have this money to begin with you probably wouldn't). That would bring it to very roughly 1.5-2M total. I think it's fair to consider London a "bonkers area".

When I say retirement I mean early retirement, sorry, I'm lazy.

It's kind of odd to me to explain this over and over because it seems like most people just don't do the math. If you have annual minimum wage x 25 in the bank then you are in a position to work fairly infrequently. If you have annual minimum wage x 50 you can probably sustain a basic existence indefinitely. Above that you're looking at More Toys.

[hnmonkey]

I would have to argue that your situation is a complete outlier and extremely unusual, especially in London which is one of the most expensive places on earth. You're also saying that you've excluded rent to get to your 10K a year number in London but that's a huge part of what you pay I'd imagine so why would you exclude that?

Do you not need to pay taxes on anything, including on the house you've purchased? Do you not need to pay for utilities? What if you are talking about a couple? What if you're talking about a family with kids? Do you not have a cell phone or internet service?

I think you have to explain this over and over because your numbers don't make sense for an actual person and maybe only make sense in a very unusual situation (yours). Blaming it on people not doing the math is pretty hand-wavy. And, more than likely I would say if these numbers do work for anyone they're probably on the youngish side and haven't built up a large amount of things they have to pay for yet.

Let's say you're in the US in an average-ish city and not even one of the most expensive ones. And, let's give you the benefit of the doubt that you've paid off your $300k house. Congrats, you now have to pay homeowners insurance at let's say $600 (on the cheap side) a year. You have to pay taxes on your house as well at let's say $8,000 a year. You've retired early so you don't get medicare or medicaid yet so you need health insurance at let's say on the cheap side $400 a month for $4800 a year. You need food too but let's say you don't eat a ton and only spend $50 a week (That's $7 a day which would be impressive). That's another $2600 a year. I imagine you like having electricity in your house and running water. Probably another $200 a month for that and $30 for gas. That's another $2760 a year. Let's say you've got a cheap phone and cheap internet and combined that's only $100 a month. That's another $1200 a year. This doesn't factor in any form of entertainment/leisure, gas for your car, car insurance, car maintenance, home maintenance, or anything frivolous and I've certainly forgotten many things.

Grand total of $19,960 a year assuming you've paid off the house, which most people haven't if they haven't gotten close to retirement age. And that's just for 1 person. If you're talking a couple then the number grows a lot. If you have kids you support then the number grows massively. And if you've invested your 1 million and get interest on that you're paying tax on that as well, which would cut into your savings.

I'm not saying it's not possible of course, but your claim that 1 million net worth gets you retirement is not really super credible for most people. And at the end you say that if you have annual minimum wage x 25 in the bank you can work fairly infrequently but your original argument was that you could retire. Retiring means you don't have to work for the rest of your life, not that you have a nice buffer and cushion.