Wow, tough crowd. Not news here but...
Though most, not all (folks here have missed some of them), here have accounted for those expense/issues, this is by no means a mainstream crowd. I’ll bet many non-LBYMers have failed to account for several of those considerations.
Yes. We are a tough crowd, and perhaps a bit smug about this sort of thing.
During my 40 years practicing dentistry, the lesson was brought home many times, as retired people felt they could not afford to maintain their teeth because they didn't have enough money. Of course, sometimes it was BS. They did have "enough" money, they just didn't want to spend it on teeth, but often they fell into the category of:
1. Didn't plan on life's little misadventures (broken tooth, broken furnace, etc etc)
2. Miscalculated or didn't calculate at all, the effects of inflation. (I took over a practice that was started by my grandfather in 1926. I would occasionally come across an old patient card with numbers like "cleaning $1.00" or "filling $2.00". Another good lesson on the effects of inflation).
Sometimes these would be folks who had survived 30 years or more of retirement and, face it, it was just a different world from what they might have imagined. However, more than once it was someone who FIREd, maybe even younger than I, crying the blues because they couldn't afford the dentistry they needed. I found it hard to summon much sympathy for those folks.
And their teeth are just one part of it. What if their car breaks down, or any of the other many things that can go wrong, do go wrong?
So, yeah, we scoff at these articles because we think we have it knocked, but you are correct. There are many folks out there who need this information. They probably won't heed the advice, but they need the information.