There are numerous blogs and stories out there about people who are RE and living various lifestyles. One young couple (20's) was living in a used RV living on a ridiculously small amount of money. Others are retired in their late 40's with a 200K/yr budget. This got me thinking about levels of FI as related to ER. Basically there is a bare bones FI where you can RE living in a small foreclosure (or tent, run down class C, etc...) all the way up to the 5000sq ft mansion but you have 10mil invested and a cola pension (and healthcare). For example, I could easily be RE in my course side townhouse in Arkansas. COL there is very low and I own the unit. 20-30K per year there which would include unlimited golf and a new (used) vehicle every 5 -8 years. The issue is that I (and DW) do not want to scale back for retirement. We actually are looking to increase in some areas. DW wants to trade her 6 yr old SUV for a 2 yr old vette. As of this moment we can support a 110K/yr budget in retirement. (0% SWR) My rough estimate with her wish list is more like 120-130K/yr. With that being said DW will work 6 more years to get 2nd pension (still only 50yrs old then) and I will pad the 401K for 2-3 more years. We could do 130K/yr now with a 4-5% SWR. Basically we are shooting for 120-130K/yr with 0 -1% SWR.
Has anyone on here found themselves wanting more after FIRE? Basically the numbers worked for an X K/yr RE but then you wanted more so those numbers no longer worked? I would like so much of a cushion that I could support a wide range or RE options.
Living in a van and Boondocking in Walmart parking lots and relying on my YouTube channel to produce income to live just does not sound like a great lifestyle.
I could retire now with a small pension and enough of a withdrawal rate from my portfolio to produce about $40,000 per year in income.
But I have expensive hobbies. So $40,000 per year for me definitely would not work .
I have a home recording studio with lots of instruments and computer gear and interfaces need to be updated about every five years.
Snowboarding is also a big passion and it's not cheap to snowboard for a month at a time.
I also like to take my jeep Wrangler Rubicon off road and when I break it money is required to fix it .
Did I mention I like Harley Davidson motorcycles.
So I already know that it will be worth it to keep working to produce a lifestyle that I want when I do you actually retire.
There might even be a Corvette in my future.
If I were forced to retire now for some reason I would make it work and be happy but at this point I would rather just keep working and keep my eye on the lifestyle carrot of about $120,000 per year in retirement.
I have to say also I do you enjoy investing and I am a MaxSaver.
So the accumulation phase is enjoyable for me.