Investments in hobbies, your farm/garden growth, sunlight potential, water access, sidewalk access, family/friend visitation frequency, in other words Lifestyle and shelter location choices.

Retirement should consider your necessities first on a yearly basis, then your family’s necessities, then your desires and wants.

1) Climate temperature and weather forecasts for your locations
2) Water supply access/creation for your home shelters
3) Food supplies for your home shelters
4) Exercise and Health Emergency access/kits from your shelters.
5) All the above for your dependants
6) Where your friends and family dwell, or how easy/difficult it will be to make new friends and communicate with your relationship network.
7) etc.

You should think about it all while you free up your time

Extrapolation of any kind of economic conditions becomes increasingly inaccurate as you go into the future. The probability of radically new factors entering the picture increases. Another important number is how long you will live in retirement. That can be tough to guess accurately.

While any of the models and rules of thumb can be helpful, it is best to prepare for a range of conditions. Being able to drastically reduce expenses, do for yourself, or having multiple independent imcome streams all reduce the risk of outliving your money.

Does this firecalc website results assume that the initial amount was invested at the start of whatever 30 or 60 year period and then nothing was done to it for the rest of the period except for regular withdrawals?

Please give us more of such things.

Very great helpful site.

“(this may not be true!)”

I’d say that’s the whole problem. It’s trivial math to determine the amount you need to invest to achieve $X income at Y rate of return.

The real issue that people need to address is what they will do if their projected return turns out to be seriously wrong.

FWIW, I see the financial world entering uncharted territory right now. I’m getting about 1% interest on my CD’s when, for my entire life until 2008, I could expect 5-6% per annum. That a HUGE difference in my income.

The future may well be even worse given all the problems on the horizon.

The best hope for most folks is to become self-reliant and, as you suggest, drastically reduce their expenses.

I think it’s important to consider the implications this has for one’s margin of error as well.

Miss just $250 a month of expenses in your retirement budget (say by assuming health insurance costs rise at the same rate as inflation) and one could end up pulling the plug $100k too early.

For instance, suppose you are 10 years from your normal retirement age and you already have 25x your needs in retirement accounts. Now take a look at your non-retirement assets & expenses… if you’ve got 5x your needs, then, by directing as much as possible to your regular account, you can probably retire in two years and feel that you’ve got a reasonable safety cushion.

However, doublecheck that there aren’t strings attached to any pension plan you are a member of which would preclude your earliest exit.