early retirement is pretty much entirely about spending. Given this forum's topic, about 100% could retire early if they're happy with their current lifestyle.
> At least in the US, health care costs in old age are unpredictable and nonlinear.
We have a few people in my family that retired early and many simply use free medicaid since they have no income (well no reportable income). Like it or hate it, the United States is quite generous if you correctly categorize yourself. In my experience, people usually don't seek out the social safety net because they're convinced it doesn't exist.
At 65, you get medicare pretty universally. Yes I know it doesn't cover some things.
It’s the biggest complication in trying to make early-retirement numbers work. The solution I’ve read for some FIRE bloggers (especially the “just barely spend anything, it’s so easy to FIRE!” sort who usually turn out to be making it work by having three part-time jobs, including blogging about FIRE for affiliate income) is they just plan to get a corporate job again if anyone in their family gets seriously ill, which… is making some risky assumptions, I think.