Gen Z wants to retire early. They're off to a good start (opens in new tab)

Someone retiring "normally" around 60-70 has traded their labor for money, usually in ways that can benefit other people in some fashion. When they retire, there are multiple benefits -- their previous position opens up, hopefully allowing the next generation to be promoted. Their years of experience help shape the way the next generation runs the business, hopefully because they know why things are the way they are (Chesterton's Fence) and can pass that information along. This is pending the retiree not being a serial job changer of course, institutional knowledge requires people staying to learn it.

Compare that with someone who worked as little as they had to, achieved FIRE and retired early at 30. They didn't "pay into" an organization, they just extracted value and retired. They didn't help lead anything. They didn't shape the culture for the next generation. And at the risk of stereotyping, I imagine "succeeding" in FIRE would inflate one's ego in very unhealthy ways.

I don't want to say "FIRE is evil" but SOMEONE has to create the value they are extracting, and if it reaches a tipping point where more are extracting than creating, it will make for a novel problem. Replacing workers with AI is an obvious stopgap, but that just perpetuates the current, weird monetary system we have and that profit would have to be redistributed as UBI or something for it to replace workers in a way that they don't just starve.

Society is changing and it's gonna change even more so it will be interesting to see where we end up.

All of my "Gen Z" family and colleagues invest, certainly, but many "invest" in the same way a millennial invests when they visit Las Vegas.

Low end of bell curve: Invest in index funds

Hump of bell curve (midwits): STONKS!!!

High end of bell curve: Invest in index funds

I retired early years ago. It isn't the annual budget that one has to plan for, but the unforeseen expenses. I took care of my mom and dad for a while. He had top notch medical insurance, but no one covers mental health problems. The total for 4 years of that was just into 7 figures.

Also how about that medical insurance for yourself and your family? Unless people plan on dying young, medical insurance is a huge expense. And that's just insurance, which doesn't cover all eventualities. Ambulance ride? Not covered. A quick whistle to the ER can leave you $50k lighter without trying hard. And then there's the piles of medications, many of which aren't covered.

My friend's grandmother got upper and lower dentures. $40k. Dentures, mind you, not implants.

Also, there's the every increasing cost of everything. Houses, cars, food, all types of insurance are seeing vast annual increases.

$3 million total for a retirement is a bit of a laugh, unless that person plans on keeling over at 65.

They'll need the equivalent of today's $3 million in inflation-adjusted dollars for the time they retire.

What you're saying amounts to a Zimbabwean being able to retire with his lunch money AFTER the country got 1000x inflation and everybody had trillions in their pockets just to get some food for the day - based on the purchasing power of that amount before the inflation.

Note the catch "for a 20-year retirement". So if you think you might live to be 85, you get to retire at 65.

If you want to retire early, you need more decades of runway thus a lot more cash saved.

Still a useful stat in the relative sense to compare inter-generationally, or to previous surveys.