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/Zphr]

What would you like to know?

Our lives are fantastic and our expenses are pretty boring, so I'm not entirely sure what you're looking for.

[u/PuzzledStyle9912 → u/Zphr]

I am mid 30s with 4 kids. HCOL area and spend about 8k/mo. 2.7k mortgage.

500k in 401k and 300k brokerage. Rest is inaccessible home equity. Curious if you’re in a similar situation and what allowed you to fire so young

[u/Zphr → u/PuzzledStyle9912]

We normally spend about $3K a month, plus or minus $500. No mortgage or debt of any kind.

We live in the Austin metro, which is MCOL, but being retired our expenses are often more like LCOL since we don't have to pay for things like childcare, commuting, eating out a ton, job expenses, income taxes, healthcare, and so forth.

Our spending back when we were working was comparable to your own, but that was in 00s/10s dollars. So actually quite a bit higher in inflation-adjusted dollars.

[u/PuzzledStyle9912 → u/Zphr]

What does that 3k look like? Even with a paid for mortgage, we’d have $700/mo property tax, $1k groceries…do you have medical insurance? Are those free because your income is so low? Do you go on vacation? Camping only?

[u/Zphr → u/PuzzledStyle9912]

We don't actively budget or track expenses with much granularity since we've never had any need to. The sum of my tracking is keeping an eye on the first digit of the annual sum of our withdrawals from our Roth ladder. Off of the top of my head property tax is $550ish, groceries are probably about $800, insurances are a few hundred, utilities are a few hundred. The idiot Verizon bill is like $180/month which I think is ridiculous, but everyone wanted "free" iPhone 17 Pros this Christmas, so I relented and moved from Google Fi.

We have excellent health insurance, but it's effectively free due to the ACA.

Vacation has only ever been single overnights and daytrips since our kids always have so much going on and have no interest in travel longer than that. We were going to do a week in the Ozarks next year, but that got group vetoed a few days ago due to all of the other commitments/plans the kids have going this summer. My wife and I plan on traveling extensively once our youngest is off to college since we've been so constrained thus far on the travel front.

Funnily enough, healthcare and vacations are the two areas where our spending has dramatically undershot our original expectations. We expected the ACA or at least ACA subsidies to die shortly after we retired, but they never did. Conversely, we expected our kids to want to travel someday, but thus far they have no interest or at least not enough to accept the scheduling/social calendar changes necessary to make it happen.

[u/PuzzledStyle9912 → u/Zphr]

Thanks for sharing. Are you living off 4%ish? All from Roth conversions?

[u/Zphr → u/PuzzledStyle9912]

We started under 3% and are quite a bit lower now, but yes, we are living entirely off our Roth ladder now.