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Comment by 2sk21 | Hacker News Reader

There is also the issue of pay and a sense of having enough. Many tech workers are very highly paid. At some point, you have enough money so you don't really have to work. I myself reached "my number" last year and retired. My guess is that there must be many more people like me who will be retiring early in the future.

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Congrats on the hard work and discipline paying off. Best of luck in your retirement, bummer that the first year of it was in a pandemic

Thank you - despite the challenges of 2020, I was so happy to be retired. My hobbies mostly involve indoor hobbies so I was not too badly affected.

that doesn't jive with reality as I see it. for most people, any number is never enough, it would seem

According to self-reported income satisfaction levels across all classes, almost everyone thinks that if they only made 10% more, then they would be set.

This creates the hilarious situation where most millionaires in the US don’t subjectively feel wealthy. Because we are taught that our subjective feelings are the truth, this creates an interesting political situation where we have a built-in assumption that no one will ever be satisfied.

Here in Australia, being a millionaire just means you finally paid off your mortgage. :/

If you are supporting a family, you probably still can't stop working.

If you've got no dependents and you're willing to go lean you could sell up, head out to the sticks and live off your capital. It would not grant you a lifestyle conventionally described as "wealthy" but you'd be doing OK.

Or am I just in the trap?

No, I think this is the same way in much of the US. Millionaires are just skilled labor around age 35-40 (depending on a lot ofc). And you're going to need about 4x that to retire, depending on the kind of lifestyle you want.

It's expensive as hell to do the whole "2.5 kids, a house, and 2.5 college tuitions" thing while still having a life of your own.

I also realize this comes from a place of privilege (many people can't even really expect to ever retire, much less retire comfortably or lavishly).

The middle class has really eroded away to basically not having any lower or middle segment. You're either working poor (whether you self-identify that way or not) or you're upper-middle-class (where you might start to externally seem "rich" but if you lose your job you still have to find another one pretty fast.)

I'm 40 years old with a masters in computer engineering, working in aerospace since grad school. Not even close to a millionaire WTF you talking about?

But there is an objective way to know when you've reached your number using the concept of "Safe Withdrawal Rate". If your savings (typically in the form of a diversified portfolio) is at about 25 times your typical annual expenditure, you can retire with relative safety (See for example https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Safe_withdrawal_rates).

Last year, my savings had reached over 60x annual expenditure so I felt more than safe even with allowances for self-insurance for long-term care and higher education for my children. How much more do you need?

What's your number in terms of net worth?

As I posted elsewhere in this thread, start by thoroughly understanding and tracking your expenditure patterns including healthcare. Then add some additional buffer for known expenses (kids education, long term care, big ticket maintenance etc). The savings you need to retire is at the minimum (25 * expected yearly expenditure) + buffer.

In my case, I way overshot my savings needs: my current net worth is about 60x my typical yearly expenditure.

I was well paid in my career and saved and invested at least about 70% of my income.

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