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Millennials dreaming of retiring at thirty have a math problem
Millennials Dreaming of Retiring at 30 Have a Math Problem
This opinion piece is a response to another piece posted here earlier this week: How to Retire in Your 30s With $1 Million in the Bank
I feel like this response misses the mark because the thesis is wrong:
As far as I know, FIRE people do not say anyone can achieve FIRE. It is often predicated on having the luck of wealth. For example, in the source article, it notes that "Followers of FIRE tend to [...] work in the tech industry" - which, incidentally, means generous salaries.
When this article talks about how hard it is to save $1MM, then my response is "duh." FIRE people are not saying "if frugal, then retire early." They are saying "if you have a lot of money, then retire early." How one gets a lot of money is, of course, difficult!
Only one paragraph in the article notes that people may not be saving enough, but knowing how math-heavy FIRE calculations are (e.g. https://firecalc.com/), I don't know that this article properly addresses whether people are saving enough.
A little disappointed. I was hoping that the article would more cover how $1 Millon is not a lot of money for retirement, especially at 30, and maybe more on the risks of retiring early.
Depends if you can live off a 40K/y salary for the rest of your life... I'd expect most 30yo retirees would only be semi-retired.
Working part time for the majority of your career sounds cool to me.
True. And I'm definitely an bit if an over planner, but I feel the number assumes a lot, such as your health stays good (or there's good health care), markets remain somewhat predictable (for your entire life time) assuming you're not just parking the mil in a chequing account, and such. And rejoining the workforce (if things change) is a lot harder than not leaving it.
Still definitely a good goal. It's a lot of freedom in the end, and being semiretired makes more sense.
Are there any millennials planning to retire at 30 who aren't already wealthy? Like half of us are already over 30.
The stuff this is commenting on are generally "Retiring in their 30s" so it's already moving the goal posts a bunch in the title.