&gt; Health insurance never provided 100% coverage<p>Of course not; it&#x27;s designed to limit liability in the case of disaster, not pay for absolutely everything.  The term &quot;Out of pocket maximum&quot; may prove relevant here; there&#x27;s a limit to your annual liability, which is what you&#x27;re paying for.<p>&gt; Black swan events do happen to people and you have no real safety margin for them<p>Read the article I linked about safety margin, which talks about several tiers of safety margin.  The very last of which, after a half-dozen other possibilities, is &quot;you can always go back to work&quot;.<p>&gt; The 4% rule has been found to be overly optimistic.<p>Not for over a century, <i>including the Great Depression and the .com crash</i>, according to various studies as well as publically available data from which anyone can make the same calculations.  Evidence, please?<p>&gt; Similarly, RoI greater than safe withdrawal rates are assumed.<p>By 1%, and that&#x27;s justified elsewhere in the articles, but even if you go with 4% that doesn&#x27;t wildly change the numbers.<p>&gt; 			1400000 [35*40k]
[...]
&gt; it takes you 22 years<p>First of all, 22 years is a lot better than most people&#x27;s retirement plans.  That means you can retire in your 40s, rather than your 60s.<p>Second, could you please clarify what numbers you&#x27;re using and assumptions you&#x27;re making?  I don&#x27;t know where your multiplier of 35 is coming from.  From the numbers in your table, it looks like you&#x27;re assuming 40k&#x2F;year of savings.  It matters whether that&#x27;s 40% of 100k or 50% of 80k; the percentage determines your years to retirement, not the absolute amount.<p>If we&#x27;re talking about saving 40% of 100k, then yes, you get to retirement after 22 years, but the operative calculation is how soon your savings will reliably generate $60k&#x2F;year in returns (since that&#x27;s what you&#x27;re spending).  If we&#x27;re talking about saving 50% of 80k, then you need to know how soon your savings will reliably generate $40k&#x2F;year in returns.<p>Third, you&#x27;ve mentioned bad things that can happen over that period of time, but then you&#x27;ve also not allowed for good things, either.  For instance, the assumptions behind the years-to-retirement calculation assume you never get a raise that allows you to save faster, and you never get a better return on investment (or if you do you spend it all), and you are incapable of adjusting your spending based on your returns.