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Comment by sschueller | Hacker News Reader

> Based on the available data, the percentage of the U.S. population that can realistically achieve FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) is very small, likely less than 1% to 3%. This figure represents those who can both meet the strict financial criteria and successfully execute the plan to retire decades before the traditional age.

According to Gallup polling, only 1% of Americans in their early 40s are retired, and just 6% of those in their early 50s have left the workforce. [1]

Nice if you can do it. Most of us will never be able to.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/what-percentage-of-people-achie...

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"Only"? I think that's quite a lot.

in the US, local governments (counties, cities, school districts) rely heavily on property taxes because they have limited other revenue-raising powers. In the EU, the picture is almost the opposite: property taxes are a minor funding source, and national governments raise most of the money through labour, consumption, and income taxes. This makes quite difficult to grow old in USA in a sense that you cant just reduce your consumption and live of the savings. You need to move to cheaper area leaving all your life behind. Most important thing that you have at the end of your life. Your memories your friends and places that you are used to. So you need to keep working to be able to stay where you are.

You can look to Canada for high income taxes, high property taxes, and high sales tax. We also have high usage fees and parking fees.

Also, heath care costs if you don’t have insurance through an employer are a huge drag on FIRE, especially since you’ll likely need more medical care going into your 40s and 50s before you can get Medicare.

I honestly don't even understand why someone would want to retire early. You're just leaving money on the table and setting yourself up for mental health problems.

If you think working is worse for your mental health than not working, you need to pick something else to do.

Because the thing you may want to do doesn't pay the bills. Anything from playing music, making art or even building cool electronic things doesn't pay bills most of the time.

I have built many exciting things, many open source, none have brought in enough to cover my day to day.

> You're just leaving money on the table

LOL. Of course you're leaving money on the table: that is the whole point! Many people have hobbies they'd rather be doing than working. It's ok to leave money on the table. Especially so if you don't see anything meaningful to buy with the extra money.

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