Honest question: why not leave FAANG/SV, take a relaxed remote job of maybe 30h/week and live in a low-cost, warm and cosy Mediterranean city (since you mentioned you're from Europe that shouldn't be a problem)?
In a similar boat. Out of curiosity, what's your target number? How do you make sure you're not getting stuck in an infinite "just need about 30% more" loop.
I'm thinking 3M in invested assets should do. If properly diversified (real estate + stock) that should be sufficient to generate about 90k/year of passive income.
Close to $10M for me, currently sitting on about $4M. I fully understand the 4% rule and a conservative 3% withdrawal rate wrt historical returns, but I have no confidence that those will continue to be true moving forward.
So for my calculations I am assuming my portfolio will have a 0% real growth, and that it will just keep up with inflation after volatility. In the best case I am expecting about 65 years to live (wildly optimistic), so my withdrawal rate is 1/65 ~= 1.5%.
I understand this might be overly conservative, but everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and when I pull the plug I better be damn sure I won’t go broke ever.
As mentioned earlier I should be getting there in about 5 years with some luck, so it’s not too long. If the luck won’t materialize maybe I will revisit my plan and the opportunity cost trade-off.
