Does anyone have an opinion on this or their own definition? How do you know if you truly have enough?
Humble opinion-----
The uncertainty is age... When you will die.
It appears to me, that most of our members recognize independence as meaning we should be able to live on the interest/income from our capital assets...keeping those asset dollars intact. In other words, at age 95, that capital will still be there, providing income for whatever the needs. After death the capital becomes an inheritance.
For the most part, independence seems to ignore the national plan for security for all citizens... under the title of welfare.
Under that kind of Financial independence... (without "welfare") a person of my age, nearing 80... would have to calculate the long term cost of nursing home care... For two persons (man and wife)... a "safe" "financial independence" amount might be 2 persons times 5 years of nursing home @100K/yr would be a capital amount of $1,000,000. To insure this to age 95,,, $3,000,000.
And all of that, would require that the current capital assets... at your current age, would provide income to age 80... while maintaining the intiial capital amount.
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So assume reitrement at age 50 and excluding government support.
Assets/Worth $3 Million
Interest/income @ 3.3% = $100K/yr. for 30 years to age 80. and then 15 years in the nursing home @ $100K/yr.
Your kids inherit $3 million dollars... less taxes of course.
That's not us... we're poor, but we still trust our government. Social Security, and in the cae that we live forever, what's left of mdicaid.
Had we chosen to be "safe", instead of retiring at age 65, when we might have attained that $3M nest egg, we chose to retire early at age 53... and those twelve "extra years" have been fabulous.
Safe retirement is a matter of the your own perception of risk/reward.
This was our formula for our idea of "financial independence".
http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/sharing-23-years-of-frugal-retirement-62251.html