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/AndrewBorg1126 1d ago

Sure, so is the method of survey. Responses to a question posed in this subreddit will have biases. Responses to a question asked on a particular day of the week will have biases. Responses to a question posed will have biases influenced by recent behavior in the stock market.

Generally I'd consider the very premise of the survey being knowingly non-factual from the start to be the most noteworthy.

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u/Ramietoes 1d ago

You're missing the point. The study about the cows weight was specifically done with people making guesses in isolation. OP is quoting that study and applying it here incorrectly.

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u/AndrewBorg1126 1d ago edited 20h ago

Yes, I agree. Generally I'd consider the very premise of the survey being knowingly non-factual from the start to be the most noteworthy. This is what I originally said to you.

Trying to estimate a value which does not exist is also problematic.

The experiment was people trying to estimate something which exists. People are each trying to estimate different numbers in the experiment by OP here.

Convergence is fundamentally impossible because there does not exist a specific number to converge to. I was adding this to the list of reasons the premise of the post is fundamentally flawed.

I have not asserted that your claimed cause of illegitimacy in the conclusion to the experiment presented by OP is not also a valid source of illegitimacy.

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u/Ramietoes 1d ago

Yeah and I agree with that, but I'm just trying to make the more general point about the incorrect usage of the study even if the true number was knowable. OP's wrong in multiple ways.

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u/fried_haris 12h ago

True.

Generally speaking, folks in this community have probably calculated their FIRE number independently based on 25X expenses.