This is incredible! Though if someone wanted to live off $450,000 a year once you retire early, that comes to about $11M invested, so I also understand where the $10M goal comes from!
Great point! That math makes complete sense when the goal is full early retirement funded entirely by portfolio income. My personal number assumes traditional retirement, with a ~30% annual savings rate. Each person should surface their assumptions and do the math for their version of enough, rather than inheriting a default $10M goal without realizing why.
Another approach to this is to speak to people 10-15 years older than you and ask what their wants and needs are and then work towards that in the next 10-15 years.
thoughtfulness!!! love reading candid vulnerable honest reflections. such essays like this one move our culture forward. thanks for sharing your work.
in general i wish avg and median adults aimed for more ambition (andys.blog/ambition)
but then as you rightly point out, above-avg ambitious people have trouble toning it down and feeling satiated, oops!
i've come to $100k/yr roughly as the threshold for where i see my friends diverging significantly in work life balance, goals to have family or not, change the world, etc
i think that threshold represents a bare minimum for "abundance mindset" - a new kind of intellectual and moral "poverty line" in the modern era
these tradeoffs deserves a new term, which is why i created and am launching the zScore (https://andys.blog/zLevels) as a free open-source "product" today.
curious what folks interested in such topics think of it, and how we can best bring change to our culture
--
p.s. re: "how we drifted so far from a realistic number in the first place." - excellent question!
This is incredible! Though if someone wanted to live off $450,000 a year once you retire early, that comes to about $11M invested, so I also understand where the $10M goal comes from!
Great point! That math makes complete sense when the goal is full early retirement funded entirely by portfolio income. My personal number assumes traditional retirement, with a ~30% annual savings rate. Each person should surface their assumptions and do the math for their version of enough, rather than inheriting a default $10M goal without realizing why.
great stuff, as a 48 yr old finance bro it rings true.
Sisyphus’s paycheck? Insightful read.
As a fellow MBA student, this was a great read. Was cool to see what a lot of business students think about written on paper (or substack).
I am unreasonably annoyed at the guy who said it was Sisyphus’ paycheck because that’s a great line I wish I had thought of.
I’ve always been chasing the $10M number, with mixed success. However this analysis has one problem which is that it’s a pretax #.
Another approach to this is to speak to people 10-15 years older than you and ask what their wants and needs are and then work towards that in the next 10-15 years.
thoughtfulness!!! love reading candid vulnerable honest reflections. such essays like this one move our culture forward. thanks for sharing your work.
in general i wish avg and median adults aimed for more ambition (andys.blog/ambition)
but then as you rightly point out, above-avg ambitious people have trouble toning it down and feeling satiated, oops!
i've come to $100k/yr roughly as the threshold for where i see my friends diverging significantly in work life balance, goals to have family or not, change the world, etc
i think that threshold represents a bare minimum for "abundance mindset" - a new kind of intellectual and moral "poverty line" in the modern era
these tradeoffs deserves a new term, which is why i created and am launching the zScore (https://andys.blog/zLevels) as a free open-source "product" today.
curious what folks interested in such topics think of it, and how we can best bring change to our culture
--
p.s. re: "how we drifted so far from a realistic number in the first place." - excellent question!
we were born into this... inflation since drifting off gold standard doesn't help and everyone (including our savior Zohran plz) should revisit 1974 - http://www.givemeliberty.50megs.com/An%20Economics%20Lesson.htm
Bob Sutton, MS&E professor at Stanford, has this wonderful anecdote from Kurt Vonnegut
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/kurt-vonnegut-joe-heller-how-think-like-mensch-rather-bob-sutton?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android&utm_campaign=share_via
How happy do you think you would be on half this? I.e $5M portfolio value
genuinely loved this