Sounds about right to me. One reasonable definition of financial _success_, an acceptable endgame state, is "you have enough that you can live a baseline lifes

Sounds about right to me. One reasonable definition of financial _success_, an acceptable endgame state, is "you have enough that you can live a baseline lifestyle that doesn't feel impoverished through passive income / interest". In the UK as a single person 1-2M GBP is probably enough and for a family depending on expectations maybe 3-4ish. 3% a year withdrawal gives you 30/60/90K/120K pa, then you pay taxes. Nice, but not footballer private jet crazy life money, depending on the banding there you'll rent a house, have a nice car, the odd restaurant, and not worry about the price tags at the supermarket. If you look at it another way it ends up being about as much as the median person earns throughout their working life. Basically, if you manage to front load that same amount of earnings then you're "successful". Those numbers work out around the 1-5% mark in the UK, I imagine the same is true in the US.