She ran the numbers. Looked good. But what about… shoot! Not so good. The end is in sight; she should be able to retire soon, but the finish line keeps moving on her.
There’s also the possibility that spending could go down after retiring, particularly if you’ve currently got kids at home that will eventually be self-supporting rather than eating you out of house and home.
There are arguments all over the internet whether 25x is fine, or if 30x or 33x [your annual spending] is safer, but the principle is the same.
Prices for groceries have gone up, and so have my utilities. On the other hand, the stock market has been going up like gangbusters.
I passed over three other categories of expenses: the large lumpy costs , health insurance, taxes on the investments we are planning to live on.
In the meantime, I will take advantage of employer-sponsored insurance and keep saving more money for when I finally need to buy it on my own.
I will need to decide how I want to adjust my nest egg calculation to account for the tax burden. I suspect I will find I have lost 3-4x my spending to taxes.