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Comment by hkmurakami | Hacker News Reader

I'm a "cautious skeptic" mustachian because MMM's net worth was fueled by the historic bull run in asset markets during the early--mid parts of his professional life.

I hesitate to be fully devout in the belief that asset markets will always produce outsized returns like it did for him.

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Agreed. The article also touches on the point that his blog alone earns 400K yearly. Though it's honorable that he makes an effort to only spend 24K a year, he has safety net that sets him as a 1 percenter.

Investment success might make some difference in how quickly you can retire, but the various planning around early retirement makes conservative assumptions about long-term returns. The fraction of your income you save makes a far larger difference than how much index funds gained or lost in any given year.

This holds true not only because the money you save goes to fund your future retirement, but also because your retirement income doesn't need to match your current income, only your current spending. So if you save 40% of your income, you need your retirement savings to produce 60% of your income; if you save 70% of your income, you only need your retirement savings to produce 30% of your income. That means you both increase your savings rate and decrease how much savings you need before retirement.

That's only if you make the heroic assumption that expenses are static. From expenses related to ageing itself (increased need for healthcare, possibly even moving to an assisted care facility) to the particular conjuncture during old age (for example, in my country many unemployed adults and their children are living with the help of the pensions of their parents), I would avoid assuming that.

I agree with you to a point but his math checks out with 'only' making 4% (the 25x your yearly costs number to retire). I just lost about 2 years of gains in one year in my betterment accounts for instance. His fundamental point of making far less than you spend and not to have consumer debt is clearly sound advice.

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