Looks like he put some links elsewhere in this thread, but I'm in a very similar situation with the same goal -- 25, saving up, hoping to "retire" in my early-t

Looks like he put some links elsewhere in this thread, but I'm in a very similar situation with the same goal -- 25, saving up, hoping to "retire" in my early-to-mid 30s at the latest -- so here's how I look at it. The core idea and assumption is: you can get on average at least 5% annual growth by investing your savings instead of stuffing it in a bank account or under your mattress. As long as you can live on less than that per year, you don't have to work. For me I'd be fine living at $20k/yr. This makes my target goal in savings to be around $500k. So if you have $500k invested this January, by next January you should have $525k. As long as you can live on less than 5%, typically at most 4% ($20k) per year, then next January you withdraw your $20k and your total invested savings is $505k. One year later, that grows by 5% again, to $525,250. Take your $20k (which is now less than 4%), repeat until you die or we hit the Singularity. :) I think you need buffer room to handle the core assumption, though, and this is ignoring taxes and other things. For instance, Vanguard hasn't been doing that well for the past 2 years, though it will probably do better and the 10 year average yearly return from 2013 to 2023 will almost certainly be higher than 5%. You can buffer yourself against economic slumps by having more money or living more frugally -- additionally, there's the possibility of entering into the real estate business once you have some initial capital, that may also be a (somewhat risky) way of hedging since you may nominally be $1.5m in debt from your mortgaged properties, but as long as rent exceeding mortgage+repairs keeps coming in and the n-plex doesn't massively depreciate in value you have a steady stream of income that's independent of your savings that you could sell if needed to wipe away your debt.