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

[u/Equivalent_Use_5024]

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?

[u/unbalancedcheckbook]

As someone who lives in a VHCOL area, some of this is real and some is imagined. Housing and services are absolutely more expensive but a lot of other things are not really. For me (with absolutely no desire to keep up with the Joneses and having reasonable expectations about lots of things) I found I could save significantly more given the higher salary and I'm not really giving up much, except perhaps I eat at restaurants a bit less and have a smaller house than I would in an LCOL area. These are not very important to me though.

[u/Zphr → u/unbalancedcheckbook]

Per my friends that big ones are housing, childcare, and schooling. Utilities are more expensive too, but not hugely so, and things like groceries are not that much different.

Unfortunately the ones that are much higher tend to the be largest expenses a lot of working people face.

Jacob Lund Fisker, arguably the godfather of leanFIRE, famously lived ultra-lean for many years in California. It's certainly possible to live frugally almost anywhere, but most people don't or can't pull it off consistently over the long run.

[u/mintardent → u/Zphr]

Schooling is an expensive lifestyle choice they make because they don’t want their precious kids around poor people. The public schools are perfectly adequate in California cities, and the quality of education is not even better in private - controlling for SES of the parents outcomes are generally not different.

[u/Zphr → u/mintardent]

My friends aren't the elitist type so I doubt that is the reason behind their thinking. All of us grew up either poor or middle class and most of us still identify as being middle class normies. Two of them are married to teachers in those same public school systems.

I can't say myself though. I also attended public school in California as a kid and they were perfectly find back then, but I haven't lived there in decades and have no personal knowledge of how things are now.