I think it's silly to look at a fixed dollar amount. If you have a steady, reliable and secure income stream that can keep up with inflation while meeting the standard of living you are content with, great. Could be $100,000, could be $35,000, could be a million -- all depending on what you owe and what you value in your standard of living..
+1 Exactly!
So far, I haven't managed to spend even half that much when buying whatever I want. But this is meaningless because:
(1) I'm single and I am sure that a married couple would need more money. Also,
(2) my house is paid off. I would need more if I had to make mortgage payments.
And
(3) I live in an area with moderate cost of living.
If I was married, had a $500K mortgage, and lived in Hawaii, NYC, or SF, I guarantee you that my expenditures would need to be higher to attain my present level of bliss.
I do agree with him that once you have a certain level of income, more income really doesn't make any difference in happiness level (unless it is enough that managing it becomes a headache). What that level of income may be, depends on the individual and also depends on the cost of living at their location.
Let's see - - at an SWR of 3% (for a nice long retirement), $60K/year means a nestegg of about $2,000,000.