Pro athletes, movie stars, and Fortune 500 CEO’s get paid amounts far, far above what the other 99.99% of us could ever imagine. Yet, instead of kicking back and enjoying their stash, they continue to work, demanding even more.
It would be interesting to get an idea of what ordinary people think is enough.
How big would YOUR pile have to be to cause you to say, “That’s enough! I’m going to retire right now and never work for money another day in my life.”
If I managed to get in seven whole posts to the board in a mere 19 months, I might at that point just kick back and say, “Whoo! That’s enough SDMB for me!”
For me… 1 million accumulated after taxes.
If I can’t live off the interest that generates, even just putting it all into T Bills at current interest rates I need to re-evaluate my spending habits
-Doug
1 million is also the magic number for me, though I would probably take a part time job in a book or record store just to pick up change for entertainment, which fortuitously happens to be in my case reading books and listening to music. The only thing I have to do is provide my son with the werewithal to get through college if he so chooses. Once that’s done, the amount could drop to half a million. I won’t need a big house, a fancy car, or nice clothing, so the amount doesn’t have to be a lot. Though I’m kind of amazed that 1 million dollars no longer seems like a lot of money.
Too much.
Old Danish saying, “Too much is never too little.”
They asked John D. Rockefeller how much money he wanted.
He replied, “A little more.”
about 10 years ago or so, one of the money mags (Money, Fortune, whatever) determined that the “magic” number was $14 million. This allowed living on interest, owning the large home, villa, staff for upkeep, yacht, in short, you could own and maintain just about everything that you would want to indulge yourself. 'Course, that was a while ago, and what with inflation and all…
I have an idea. Every poster sends me $20 for each post. I’ll tell you when to stop. 
“Too much of everything is just enough.”
– Robert Hunter
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For me, $10 million. In fact, I’ll do virtually anything for $10 million dollars (though nothing that endangers myself, my family, or friends, or involves me going to prison for more than 10 years).
I think one million is about right. That would allow me to buy a house, and open a pet store and a pub. With those kind of riches, I would be happy the rest of my life.
I’ve never really given it a lot of thought, but one million is WAY too little. If someone came up to you and said, “I’ll give you X amount of money, but you can’t put it in any kind of interest-bearing account, stock portfolio, etc. You have to take it as a lump sum and live off only that,” a million would lower my base appreciably. I realize that condition was not stated by the OP, but that’s how I’ve always read this particular question.
At age 31 (which I am) I can expect to live approximately 44 more years. That’s less than 23K a year if you divide it into an annual allowance. That being the case, I think I could live quite well and comfortably, without any pressing material want I couldn’t take care of on 10M.
As an aside, this is referred to as “Fuck you money.” The amount of money needed for one to live in the manner one desires without the need to compromise with outside individuals or interests. The ability to say, “Fuck you. I have enough.”
In the book “Crytonomicon” there is a character who has a spread sheet that tracks his needs, wants and desires at any given moment, as well as all his assets so that he knows exactly how much his FYM level is and what the difference is between his current worth and that level.
Brilliant.
Business Week had an article aways back on just this topic.
I believe they declared $2 million in invested assets (IE, in stocks and bonds, not in your house, cars and golf course memberships <g>) to be the minimum for what they referred to as “Beef and Beer” comfort - their theory being that $2 million in investable assets would yield you roughly $100,000 in post-inflation earnings.
They had other categories of comfort above that one, but I’ll freely confess that I don’t remember what they were.
Hell, I’d be happy with $250,000. My wants are simple.
As the thread starter I feel obliged to put in my two cents, which in this case is about $5M. That’s the amount financial columnist Andrew Tobias says it now takes to be considered a “millionaire”.
There are a number of factors to consider: current age, current lifestlye, hoped-for lifestyle, and the ever-present inflation factor. Even a 3% inflation rate can eat away at a nest egg as the years go by. And we all know that inflation doesn’t apply to everything at the same rate. Based on yearly checks as to what I would have to pay in the open market for the medical insurance that my company provides me for free, I’d say medical inflation is still running at 3 to 5 times overall inflation. And medical costs will become a much larger expense as you age.
The Motley Fool says the rule of thumb is 20 times what you spend in a year. If you actually spend 50k ( including insurance ), you can retire at 1 million.
If you are planning on spending more after you retire, use 20 times that number.
This allows you to have a nicely diversified portfolio including S&P 500 mutual funds (with an average return of around 11%) and nice safe treasury bonds. FWIW. YMMV.
I can always find something to spend it on, no matter how much I get.
But I figure I might consider retiring if I got $1.1 billion. After taxes.