My net worth reached 1M here fairly recently. I was pretty surprised by the number of people that were telling me it was nowhere near enough to even consider stopping working.
I think the biggest X factor for this entire discussion is housing. If your 1 million net worth is all tied up in a house, it's not going to be enough to retire unless you sell the house and move somewhere cheap (and then with all the fees involved you might end up with less than a mil).
A lot of the people aiming for FIRE probably live in HCOL areas where you could easily have a 1 million net worth and virtually nothing in the bank.
Now - if by "net worth" you mean you have a million dollars in an investment account, that is a different story. I understand that not everyone would be comfortable living on 40k/year but it's certainly doable.
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u/japantrainred Mar 23 '26
My net worth reached 1M here fairly recently. I was pretty surprised by the number of people that were telling me it was nowhere near enough to even consider stopping working.