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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

$20M is retirement money. $1.2M isn't. But $1.2M is FU money, and that's the most important part. You can't stop working indefinitely, but it does give you the power to walk away from any job even if you don't have the next one lined up.

Or at least it should be. Many people with $1.2M cannot go a few months without a pay cheque because it's all locked in a house and a retirement fund -- make sure you're not one of them. An emergency fund is the best way, but I also recommend having an open HELOC. They're a lot easier to get when you have a job, and you don't have to draw on them until you have an emergency.

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I know it’s way more than most people have, but $1.2M is not really FU money, at least in the US. It’s probably enough to take a gamble on, but it’s still not enough that you cannot be wiped out by bad luck or a significant health event while unemployed. And unless you are very young (and very lucky to have that much capital already) that $1.2M probably represents the gain from quite some years of work, and is critical as the basis for eventually gaining enough to actually be economically safe in retirement.

There's virtually no amount of net worth that would save you from a plane crash or an auto accident either - I would say 1.2M is enough as FU money in 99% of cases. Whether it's enough for you depends on your risk tolerance.

That's a huge blanket statement. Some people live under the bridge and to them even $1000 might be FU money. For the Bay Area, $1.2mil is enough for a family to scrape by if you have a house (on the way to getting paid off), otherwise that's not enough for a basic retirement and you are definitely on the hook to continue working, especially if you have (or plan to have) a family. If you say screw Bay Area and move to rural Montana, well, that's not 99% of cases.

You seem to misunderstand FU money. FU money it's not about "basic retirement" - it's about "I do not have to worry where my next meal is coming from for next X months/years". 1.2M$ can do a lot in that department.

Yeah, FU money and FIRE are different concepts (although there are some overlap). The former is just about being able to quit a job whenever (with the expectation that you will find another one eventually)

> $20M is retirement money. $1.2M isn't.

I live in a HCOL area, so I get this sentiment. But it doesn't match at all with actual reality in the US. The median 65-69 year old has a net worth of $272k, with the average being $1.25M [0]. A lot of places are pretty cheap - especially since even modest earners could get thousands of $ in SS each month.

[0] https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-net-worth-percentiles-b...

Retirement at age seventy requires less money than retirement at age forty.

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