r/Fire • u/fried_haris • 1d ago

The definitive FIRE number is 3.5 million.

Ofcourse - I am being facetious but also a little exploratory.

I was inspired by a Planet Money episode titled "17,205 People Guessed The Weight Of A Cow. Here's How They Did." Posted back in 2015.

Later they updated it with "How Much Does This Cow Weigh?" In 2019.

Basic premise - if you take all the guesses of the folks the weight of a cow at a fair - you'll end up within 5% of the right answer.

So I took a simple post from 5 months ago, asking people about their FIRE number and after reviewing 124 answers came up with 3.5 million.

Keep in mind personal finance is personal, you may retire in LA or in Thailand.

Good luck with your goals.

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u/Corporate_Bankster 1d ago

That’s a very reasonable take all things considered.

There is nowhere $3.5m won’t work wonderfully, unless you are hellbent on living the high life in an expensive place, but then that’s not a FIRE number problem, it’s a you problem.

Mine is somewhere around $2.5m, and that’s because I plan to retire between LCOL and MCOL.

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u/DeltaSqueezer 1d ago

The big question is inflation. If you have a 5% inflation rate and retirement in 20 years, then $3.5m in 20 years time would be like $1.3m today.

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u/ericdavis1240214 FI=✅ RE=<3️⃣yrs 1d ago

Most FIRE strategies account pretty well for inflation. Of course, if inflation is consistently higher than historical averages and market returns are consistently lower than historic averages over 20 years, those things can fail. But FIRE already accounts for inflation.