[kd5bjo]

If memory serves, The largest single-day drop was around 25% and the biggest total was around 90%. That leaves 10% to live off of: if you have 10x what’s necessary for the rest of your life invested you can absorb those losses.

[oarsinsync]

To have 10x what's necessary, you need to be able to survive on 1% returns (I'm trying to be generous there). So if you can live on $30,000, you need to have "only" $3MM invested.

You should also not be investing more than 25% of your assets into a single asset class, so you need to have $6-12MM of assets (range depending on considerations) in the first place.

I think having even $3MM is a reasonably called 'rich', but others may disagree.

[kd5bjo]

Oh; you certainly have to be rich to pull this off. But the context was “a few millions in an index fund,” which is what your analysis came up with.

Also, if you’re going to posit funds in other asset classes, you should also include the worst-case returns of those funds in the analysis.