Absolutely. I think there's a lot more we're yet to understand about the connection between wealth and happiness. Here is one research which was cited in the NY

Absolutely. I think there's a lot more we're yet to understand about the connection between wealth and happiness. Here is one research which was cited in the NYTimes article: http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/aknin%20norton%20dunn%202009.pdf http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/aknin%20norton%20dunn%2020... However, this point is not central to my post. My analysis is only concerned with how much savings we need to live a particular lifestyle for a given number of years - including the effect of inflation. I had seen many people using heuristics like this: If you can beat inflation by 3%, 100/3 = 33x times your annual expenditure is your FU money. That turned out to be incorrect because of not considering the life expectancy, and cash flow. Also the critical variable turned out to be (1 + interest rate) / (1 + inflation rate) instead of (interest rate - inflation rate) which can be significant. As I commented elsewhere, 21x may be sufficient instead of 33x. That's what the post is about.