Current Events > What's the lowest amount of money you would need to be set for life?

(+) Yeah! (+)

(But theres a catch: you cannot reinvest this money in stock or real estate. You simply are living off this dollar amount for the rest of your life.)

I think I could realistically not work a day in my life again on $6 million. With that, I could buy a $500k house, and assuming yearly expenses would be about $60k for food, gas, utilities, property taxes, etc, Id still have $3.5 million after 50 years, which is money that could be used for non-necessity goods.

I have heard 500k bandied about before.

5 million

Probably a million, maybe 2 mill. While I have fairly frugal day to day needs and no desire to own a large house (really, if I had the cash I'd probably get a really cushy rv and live in that). But I'd like enough money tonot worry about any medical expenses that crop up as I get older.

Don't forget to add at least ~$1M per kid for private school (PK-College).

Youre not factoring in having kids or any medical emergencies.

500k will do, i live in a 3rd world country anyway.

You also need to factor inflation.

Depending on if my wife is allowed to continue working in this scenario changes the answer.

I think I could make ~4 million work, 7 if my wife cannot work anymore either.

To live as I live now? Or just to get by?

Without the ability to earn further money off investments, I'd say probably around 8 mil? Hard to predict what inflation will do, if I knew (or if the remaining money adjusted for inflation over time) I could likely go a fair bit lower, maybe even as low as $2mil in the "adjusts for inflation" case.

at a "healthy" inflation rate by fed standards, $3.5m today would be worth $1.27m (today dollars) in 50 years. at the 2022 inflation rate, $3.5m today would be worth $54k (today dollars) in 50 years. the reality is somewhere in between, assuming all hell doesn't break loose due to government failure to pay off debt obligations and not accounting for the general trend of dedollarization in the global arena.

if i wanted to be set for the rest of my life, i would not want to hold any more dollars at any given point in time than i need to pay bills and make day to day purchases, ideally obtained by liquidating assets that are less blatantly prone to inflation as needed.

but to answer your question, if the worst case scenario for long-term devaluation of the dollar is full weimarization, the lowest dollar amount i'd need to feel comfortable living off of for the next 50 years is 5-10 quintillion dollars.

in a perfect world with zero inflation from where we are now, i'd do fine with 5-10m.

2 million would give me 50k a year for the next 40 years. That would be fine.

Tree fiddy

$8 million, but that depends on whether or not my husband is able to work or if we're both making do for ourselves.

Taking into account my employer's subsidy on health insurance that I would need to cover the full cost of, we'd need something like $70,000 a year to have an emergency buffer. If inflation is 2 percent a year, that's $225,000 annually by the end of 60 years, so $8 million.

That's already owning a house, living in DC, assuming 2 percent inflation, and not having much of an emergency fund. In this scenario, we'd probably try to move to Portugal where money stretches further.

100 billion dollars

10 Million sounds about right for me, the wife, and the kids