$100/mo for food shocked me too, but I suppose it can be done.

I think the most important reason to shoot for 1 million though is to account for inflation. Costs will rise and you want to be able to offset that with increased savings. So even if you have $40k per year being thrown off by that $1 million you can’t expect to spend it all and maintain the same lifestyle. Over time your spending power will erode and you will need more income.

That cuts the amount I need to save in half, to $500K. We can live ‘high on the hog’ on 20K SS plus 20K IRA distributions, since we can get by on 20K.

I saw an online calculator which told me that my HI expense in 2014 will be capped by the HI reform bill passed earlier this year. That will be badly needed because in my long-term ER plan I did not budget for a 50% increase in HI premiums every two years.

I am currently living off the dividends of my $1M portfolio although $300k of it is in an IRA, so that $700k is actually generating the dividends to cover my everyday bills with 8% of it left over as a surplus and reinvested.

I know a woman who was hit by a car. Uninsured motorist. The lady’s bare-bones insurance paid for the hospital care, but the accident paralyzed her from the neck down. There was no coverage for the round-the-clock care she needed after she left the hospital. No coverage for the catheters, trips to the hospital to treat the odd sepsis infection etc. (until of course she hits her deductible. But that’s thousands of dollars every year.) No money to pay her daughter, who gave up her job and moved in to take care of her.

On the plus side, it means doing a Medicaid spenddown is easy.

I think if you’re going to take the chance, then keeping a DNR order on your person is the only answer.

Also, the 4% withdrawal rate is often recommended as a rule of thumb for a portfolio, but that is typically based on studies which used a 30 year survival period (i.e., did the portfolio have value > $0 at the end of 30 years). So with a 4% SWR there is still a significant possibility of running out of cash in say year 31. (I’m probably going to plan for a 50 year retirement period.) Most of the studies I believe do not take into account expense ratios either so that will eat into the 4% as well.

@Lisa, while I think medical tourism is a great idea, it doesn’t the address situations where you need emergency care.

An early retired, non-insured friend of mine here in the US travels to Thailand for his medical care, too, and says it’s so much less expensive, they really spend a lot of time with you, and the Thai nurses are very sweet.

Thank you.

Down with rules of thumb….and let us just live and save the best we can.

Progress in technology has been exponential, so only God knows what will be made available to us in terms of healthcare in 10 – 15 years.

Having said that, living frugally and not having excesses never hurt anyone. So this is what I am doing.

Thanks for breaking the traditional expectation.

But two things worry me. One is medical expenses. (By the way, I didn’t see any savings for health care costs besides insurance in your discussion above.) Part of me thinks that because I have good genes and I exercise, I will do better than average here. And I like to think I can just say no to crazy expensive treatments that have a poor history of actually working and just gracefully accept death (or at least pretend convincingly). But then what if something goes wrong that requires expensive stuff with a good history of working (like AIDS drugs)?

The other thing that worries me is change. I can live more cheaply than the average person now partly because I live more like someone from olden times than someone from modern times in many ways. I have a 50-year-old house, 20-year-old car, and no TV or cable or cell phone. I also don’t wear make-up or dye my hair (even though some of it’s grey) and I cut my own hair.

On the other hand, I love computers (well, when they work and do my bidding) and ibuprofen and digital cameras and DVDs and CDs. Who knows what new inventions I will want in the future and how much they will cost by the time I am tired of waiting for my turn?

LOL

Now take the trend where healthcare costs are CONTINUALLY going up (unless we get socialized medicine in the U.S. and I’m not holding my breath for that) and there’s a good possibility that in 20-30 years, nearly half your outgoing money will be for healthcare alone.