rayvt writes,

You retired rich, rich, rich very, very early. Probably less than 1/10th of 1% of Americans are in that category.

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You're still not understanding the arithmetic Ray.

I retired in 1994 on a $20,000/yr draw from a $500,000 portfolio (about $40,000/yr from $1 MM in today's money). Sure, few 38-yr-olds had that kind of money, but it was hardly "rich", certainly no where near 1/10 of 1%.

The big benefit I had was that I worked in a high paying industry (oil & gas) and spent most of my career in cities with low housing costs (Houston, TX, Baton Rouge, LA.) I also recognized early that home ownership tends to be a poor investment versus the stock market, and used a rent vs. buy analysis to inform my housing decisions -- a very controversial view at the time. Most Americans are taught from birth that renting just gives you a stack of receipts, and owning a home is the bedrock of family wealth -- not if you're investing the savings from renting an equivalent property and putting it in the stock market. The difference between 4% (or less in some areas) and the 10.7% in the S&P 500, compounded over 2 or 3 decades is a fortune.

It's just arithmetic. Your investment portfolio doesn't know if you're single or married, have kids, a boat, vacation home, or an airplane. It's a matter of matching annual expenses to portfolio withdrawals, and then looking where you can reasonably trim expenses, and improve the investment returns. American business thrives on skim, scam and fraud. There's lots of places you can cut without compromising your lifestyle as long as you're not getting your arithmetic lessons from Fox News.

For example, I was ready to buy a new car back in 2021. Didn't really need one. My 16 year old Nissan worked just fine. But when I started shopping for a new car and the pandemic had dealers charging $5,000 to $10,000 above MSRP, I said, "Screw that. I can wait." Now I'm looking at a 2021 Tesla Model Y that cost $71,000 new, currently priced at $24,990. (It's always preferable to find someone with a limited understanding of the arithmetic to pay the first few years of depreciation on a new car.) Since I'm waiting another 15 months to start Social Security and manage my investment portfolio to limit dividend income (BRK is your friend), I should be able to limit my 2025 income to $75,000 and get a $4,000 tax credit, bringing the price down to $21,000. And what of that $50,000 savings? It's been invested in the stock market and more than doubled since 2021. Now that's arithmetic.

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