Fifty

^ Yes. I love my diary, and some of my entrires go back to when I was 18 (27 now). What gets to me is how drastic a mental change could be from just months ago to where I am now. I'll read something I wrote months ago and think "Ha, so young and foolish!" I genuinely think diaries are crucial to personal development because it allows you to see yourself speak honestly with the lens of an "outside" observer.

It takes about ten years to get used to how old you are.

> Health insurance never provided 100% coverage

Of course not; it's designed to limit liability in the case of disaster, not pay for absolutely everything. The term "Out of pocket maximum" may prove relevant here; there's a limit to your annual liability, which is what you're paying for.

> Black swan events do happen to people and you have no real safety margin for them

Read the article I linked about safety margin, which talks about several tiers of safety margin. The very last of which, after a half-dozen other possibilities, is "you can always go back to work".

> The 4% rule has been found to be overly optimistic.

Not for over a century, including the Great Depression and the .com crash, according to various studies as well as publically available data from which anyone can make the same calculations. Evidence, please?

> Similarly, RoI greater than safe withdrawal rates are assumed.

By 1%, and that's justified elsewhere in the articles, but even if you go with 4% that doesn't wildly change the numbers.

> 1400000 [35*40k] [...] > it takes you 22 years

First of all, 22 years is a lot better than most people's retirement plans. That means you can retire in your 40s, rather than your 60s.

Second, could you please clarify what numbers you're using and assumptions you're making? I don't know where your multiplier of 35 is coming from. From the numbers in your table, it looks like you're assuming 40k/year of savings. It matters whether that's 40% of 100k or 50% of 80k; the percentage determines your years to retirement, not the absolute amount.

If we're talking about saving 40% of 100k, then yes, you get to retirement after 22 years, but the operative calculation is how soon your savings will reliably generate $60k/year in returns (since that's what you're spending). If we're talking about saving 50% of 80k, then you need to know how soon your savings will reliably generate $40k/year in returns.

Third, you've mentioned bad things that can happen over that period of time, but then you've also not allowed for good things, either. For instance, the assumptions behind the years-to-retirement calculation assume you never get a raise that allows you to save faster, and you never get a better return on investment (or if you do you spend it all), and you are incapable of adjusting your spending based on your returns.

> Not for over a century, including the Great Depression and the .com crash, according to various studies as well as publically available data from which anyone can make the same calculations. Evidence, please?

1) Even the author of the study doesn't say what MMM does in regards to the 4% rule.

http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Safe_withdrawal_rates#Limitat... http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=717195#p7171...

> "The word planning is emphasized because of the great uncertainties in the stock and bond markets. Mid-course corrections likely will be required, with the actual dollar amounts withdrawn adjusted downward or upward relative to the plan. The investor needs to keep in mind that selection of a withdrawal rate is not a matter of contract but rather a matter of planning."

> What the "4% SWR" means is not that you can treat a portfolio as if it were a guaranteed annuity.

2) https://ideas.repec.org/p/ngi/dpaper/10-12.html

> . From an international perspective, a 4 percent real withdrawal rate is surprisingly risky. Even with some overly optimistic assumptions, it would have only provided "safety" in 4 of the 17 countries. A fixed asset allocation split evenly between stocks and bonds would have failed at some point in all 17 countries.

3) http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/11/...

4) Even if you believed in the 4% rule, it was designed for 30 years. Long periods raises the failure rates.

etc.

You need to realize the 4% rule is a cute thing that journalists latched onto in the 90s and was never intended to provide 100% coverage. It also has a non-zero failure rate. Under certain market conditions it does fail. Pretending it doesn't is silly and even in the Trinity paper it is stated its not 100% reliable.

I'm really not going to get into the rest of it since you don't even know the basics of what you are talking about and I've wasted enough time arguing with you.

What you fail to grasp, and what I am pretty sure you are going to refuse to believe at this point, is the 4% rule applied as you and MMM are suggesting is the same trap of overfitting that many people who engage in backtesting do.

If you are not in the historical US, you have a success rate of ~23% with the 4% rule. Even the US? Is not the historical US. Its a new entity that is not guaranteed to perform 100% identically to the historical entity.

Best of luck to you, believe what you want, I honestly don't care.

I get that you want to believe a bunch of optimistic assumptions about reality but the reality is, they are optimistic.

Well, if I didn't also have a family to consider - I think I'd move to another country. Just pick up and go somewhere interesting where I could challenge myself to learn a new language, culture, get a job in a new environment, and just generally make some really interesting memories.

I think that the big mistake I made when I really was 30 was to retreat too quickly toward comfort.