[clarky07]

I'm personally not planning on retiring at 30 and never doing any productive work ever again. The point would be, that with 30-50k coming in passively and no mortgage to pay, I could live comfortably and work on whatever I wanted to whenever I wanted to.

As for kids college, I had parents that helped some, and I paid for a significant portion myself (i also paid a significant portion of my wife's). I plan to save for my kids college, but it will be on the order of 1k a year or so. With 18 years of stock returns, it should be a decent amount for them. If it isn't enough for their desired school choice, they will have to pay the rest. That seems more than fair to me, but it won't be a huge sacrifice to put away 1k a year.

Also note, that the above linked article was doing math based on 4.2 mil. I think 1 mil would be enough to consider myself totally free, I'm certain 4.2 would be way more than enough.

Edit: Also, by only taking dividends and not principle, any inflation should also be reflected in the stocks. This means the purchasing power should stay constant assuming competent investment decisions.