A good balance between risk and returns is often considered to be 10% annualized. Annual comfort living expense for family of 4 is at least $120K net in most ur

A good balance between risk and returns is often considered to be 10% annualized. Annual comfort living expense for family of 4 is at least $120K net in most urban areas. Adding taxes, your gross would be around $150K. So $1.5M in investment is often considered good in theory for achieving financial independence. The big issue however is that returns are averaged over long duration and so on some years you can end with as little as 2-3% or even negative. So you need to have 25-50% cushion to ride out bad turns in economy where you will be eating up principal itself. This is also important for any unforeseen circumstances such a medical issues that might rack up huge out of pocket (especially in US). Or children leaving for college needing to pay as much as $50K in tuitions. You also need at least 6 months of buffer ($50K) in case some bad event triggers losing your investment, for example, someone trying to to sue you. Given all these more practical investment asset size is $3M for financial independence.