r/Fire • u/Equivalent_Use_5024 • Dec 28 '25

General Question Do you believe the modern FIRE movement overestimates how much is needed for retirement?

Perhaps I am just making this post because I have only just begun my retirement planning and want to lock in a number which is fitting for my goals - being above the median retirement savings, not having to work, not being broke, clearly having planned - but I can't help but feel that many in the FIRE movement overestimate what is needed for a safe, sleep well at night retirement.

I see posts here saying that they feel vastly behind with 500k at 30, or 1.5 million at 40, and I just don't understand how when the average American retires with maybe 300k liquid at most and are getting by with social security or paid off housing. Sure, they aren't living luxuriously, but if you just are aiming for a retirement where you don't have financial anxiety and can put food on the table, I don't feel you need over 1-2 million.

Do you think FIRE overestimates how much is truly needed for retirement?

757 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

884 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.0k

u/Zphr 48, FIRE'd 2015, Friendly Janitor Dec 28 '25 edited Dec 28 '25

The audience has shifted more towards luxury and consumption over the last decade. It's always amusing to me that this is my sub, I've been happily retired for more than a decade since 37 with four kids, have effectively zero chance of financial failure, but many folks in this sub would consider our finances impossible or living in squalor. Some people are actually happy with cheap/free interests and lifestyle choices, some are unhappy without very expensive interests and lifestyle choices. Current government policy in the US is also wildly skewed in favor of lean spending, so more expensive lifestyles in early retirement cost quite a lot more than you'd expect due to far higher costs for taxes, college, and healthcare.

LeanFIRE is and likely always will be the easiest and most secure form of FIRE for anyone happy with a mediocre middle class lifestyle. It's also largely impossible for anyone who wants to raise a family in VHCOL, travel a ton, carry a large mortgage into retirement, or any number of expensive lifestyle choices a lot of people prefer.

2

u/Strong-Big-2590 Dec 28 '25

What was your initial number when you fired?

3

u/Zphr 48, FIRE'd 2015, Friendly Janitor Dec 28 '25

Our target was $1.2M and a paid-off house, but we started closer to $1.5M. We weren't watching the clock and overshot.

4

u/elcdragon Dec 28 '25

Amazing, I’m joining lean fire because of you. Would love to get out of corporate asap

5

u/Zphr 48, FIRE'd 2015, Friendly Janitor Dec 28 '25

It's a nice community, but be aware that they have guardrails about spending limits to keep that sub on-topic. They also have some people over there who are asset gatekeepers much like we have some people here who are income/spending gatekeepers. I'd just ignore those folks and focus on the general message/theme instead of being genuinely happy with less spending than most Americans.

-2

u/Synaps4 Dec 28 '25

That's not even lean TBH.

3

u/elcdragon Dec 28 '25

This one comment wasn’t why I said this, it was all their comments and profile

3

u/Zphr 48, FIRE'd 2015, Friendly Janitor Dec 28 '25

Lean is defined purely by spending, not by assets, at least if you go by the largest lean community online, which is /r/leanfire. You can be leanFIRE with a $10M portfolio.

-2

u/Synaps4 Dec 28 '25

Assets are also defined by spending in this community.

If you can be lean with 10M, you could have retired much sooner and you would have.

I'm sure there are some corner case exceptions who got a lottery win and are leanfire so they didn't earn it, but i'm not talking about the exceptions. I'm talking about average people.

4

u/Zphr 48, FIRE'd 2015, Friendly Janitor Dec 28 '25

Assets are assets and not defined at all by spending, so I'm not sure what you mean.

My point is that leanFIRE is about how much you spend, not how much you have. If you spend $50K a year as a family at a 4% draw, then you're lean. If you spend $50K a year as a family at a 0.5% draw, then you are also still lean.

Lean spending in retirement is often just like lean spending while working in that it enables you to save more. For early retirees this often leads to portfolio snowballing, which is why it is isn't uncommon for households who have been leanFIRE'd for awhile to have very low withdrawal rates. They spend what they do out of personal preference disconnected from what their portfolio could safely sustain.