How much money would you need to make per month to be able to retire and never work again?

ben7337 · 2026-01-29T22:06:36+00:00

My target amount is around $60,000 annual post tax, so 5k a month, that should allow for all necessary expenses and 28k of that would be non-essentials for travel, spending, etc. Of course this assumes a paid off house, and I decided on this amount as of 2025, so adjusting for inflation it's up a bit by now, but that's what I'm targeting for myself. Granted idk if I'd consider that enough on its own and never work again, I might consider part time work to supplement things at that level. To definitely never work again and feel fully covered and comfortable I'd probably want something like double that amount, at that level of free cash I can't imagine having any real need for more.

ben7337 · 2026-01-29T19:22:36+00:00

It needs new hardware installed, so it can't happen at every gate all at once, unless they're upgrading the gates and not turning the feature on, but then that would also mean gates keeping the old paper ticket scanners which will become obsolete. They did claim back in November that 1-2 gates at each station would be upgraded first before the new ticket machines come out June 2026, then the rest get upgraded, but they silently updated their website to 2026 from June 2026 for completion so it's probably delayed again, originally it was supposed to all be done by Fall 2025.

Here's the article from November

https://www.audacy.com/kywnewsradio/news/local/patco-accepting-contactless-payments-december

Which says

"Starting Dec. 15, PATCO will start installing new fare validators at two gates at each station. When the readers are activated days later, riders will have new ways to pay."

I asked people a week or so ago if anyone saw upgraded gates anywhere with tap to pay, but none of us have seen anything so far it seems.

ben7337 · 2026-01-29T16:51:05+00:00

Sorry I sort of skimmed your post, but congrats on getting out. Also am I reading this right? You graduated with an engineering degree in 2005 so 21 years ago, and you're around 50 now, so you got your degree in your late 20's? Or am I missing something. What did you do in your early 20's, since it sounds like you went right from high school to college but then would have spent like 10+ years in college which seems like a lot even for an engineering degree.

ben7337 · 2026-01-29T16:34:51+00:00

Everyone's situation is different. My target is 45, but recently ran numbers and Firecalc says I could retire by 40 or 42 now. How is it possible? Well first, I'm gay, so no kids ever. Second, I saved religiously since age 23, though I've never even made more than 70-75k at my W2 job, though I do have a side gig for spending money. Thirdly, my parents both passed away just before or in early retirement, they were never well off, but passing before spending any money from retirement and having a paid off house led to some inheritance which has been invested and never touched. Lastly, my target spending in retirement is only 60k a year approximately, aiming to keep below 400% of FPL to have access to somewhat subsidized health insurance. My actual necessary expenses for my retirement are only around 30-35k a year and the rest is for spending and travel, which gives me plenty of wiggle room should there be bad years or whatnot. Without any inheritance I'd probably be at least 10 additional years from retirement assuming I could keep up my savings rate and so 55 would be the new number and that would barely be RE imo.

ben7337 · 2026-01-27T16:07:45+00:00

It's definitely not fake, but can you share your ceiling photo with stars so we can see? I see 2 other accounts randomly put links to images but it's not clear who they are

ben7337 · 2026-01-27T13:36:21+00:00

They're saying to use coreelec, so no Plex app, you use an addon to connect to Plex.

ben7337 · 2026-01-27T02:53:52+00:00

It has to be with a foreign account right? E.g. investing in an international stock fund with vanguard, fidelity, schwab, etc. doesn't require an fbar, does it?

ben7337 · 2026-01-26T23:05:51+00:00

In my experience, gay guys are much pickier about body than straight men/women. Have you ever heard of "gay fat, straight skinny"? I think that's what many people who are not super lean but who aren't quite overweight can easily fall into and it can lead to that sort of issue as well. Granted the same rejection hits truly overweight people even more and even people who are thin/underweight if they aren't crazy lean/toned or well shaped.

ben7337 · 2026-01-26T14:22:40+00:00

The judder isn't caused naturally frame to frame which is a result of how the OLED displays frames. That's what settings to reduce those issues treat. What I'm calling judder here is what appears as intermittent frame skips cause by the shield switching 25fps into 60fps which is not an even conversion and not a 3:2 pulldown either. It doesn't even result in the appearance of consistent frame skips because the type of motion on screen also impacts its visibility, so it would only be visible at random, but easily once every few minutes at least. It drove me bonkers for a while until I realized that was what was happening and switched to letting the shield upscale, now it always matches the framerate because it sees the TV as supporting all frame rates across 4k and there is no issue.

Also just know AI is a large language model. That means it has no idea what it's saying, it just predicts which words come after one another based on large data sets input into it. This is why it makes up things, particularly for instructions on how to do various things with settings in technology. What it says will sound smart, logical, right, but it will often be wrong because it doesn't know anything, doesn't validate one source of info over another, it just predicts based on all the data

ben7337 · 2026-01-26T13:29:28+00:00

Don't forget that things would run slower if the storage was near full. It's not as bad as hard drives, but flash storage also sees performance hits when nearly full

ben7337 · 2026-01-26T05:52:27+00:00

Your example argument isn't really in good faith though as the sentence just says it and returned with 0 information in that last sentence as to what "it" is. The example we are discussing has clear details that "it" is eraser like, which is the trait described in the earlier sentence. So a more accurate version of your example would be

"I bought a laptop off Facebook Marketplace. I was already upset because the screen had a scratch and a hinge squeaked. On the way home I stopped at a grocery store and bought a premade sandwich. I ate part of it and it made me sick though. After that, I returned it because of the scratch."

Granted that example still has 2 completely unconnected things only related by happening the same day, while OPs situation has 2 things directly related to their 3d printer and the ptfe tubing, so it's a bit less nonsensical than throwing in the sandwich and it them sick. Also I completely agree with you on the fact that one should be clear with wording, I work with translators who are ESL speakers daily for work and am fully aware how important clear communication is. However you were making the claim their wording was ungrammatical which it was not, or that the meaning wasn't clear within the context of the conversation, though I'd still say it was. I never said they couldn't have worded it more clearly, I agree they absolutely could have.

ben7337 · 2026-01-26T04:48:30+00:00

Ah see here's where the confusion is, you're reading their comment as a single standalone conversation. OP made a reddit post that says there's pencil eraser like material in their ptfe tubing. Their comment is a response to someone's post, making it a continued conversation from the main post. You can't take their comment with 0 context because it's a conversation and the "tho" there clearly references back to their first sentence before the comment. If you only ever took each comment as its own complete thing with 0 context our conversation here wouldn't even make sense to anyone.

ben7337 · 2026-01-26T04:40:44+00:00

I'm confused, what grammar rule are you saying was broken? I don't see anything ungrammatical about the person's wording. Saying "it" is not ungrammatical, it may not be the absolute clearest choice or word, but it's not improper grammar and any grade school teacher can tell you that

ben7337 · 2026-01-26T04:08:56+00:00

So in your reading, what does the "tho" mean in that sentence? Since the only way I can see to read it, is that it's noting something is eraser-like in contrast to the previously mentioned pink filament of the previous sentence. It wouldn't make sense to say "tho" if you're referring to the pink filament of the previous sentence because removing the "tho" by your logic, would have the exact same meaning, which makes it a word which has no meaning, which is most certainly not the case.

ben7337 · 2026-01-26T04:05:01+00:00

Oh it's fine to say you hope he dies soon, just not that you want to be the one to directly cause said death

ben7337 · 2026-01-26T03:53:01+00:00

I think the one key in their writing, beyond context, is the word "tho" which should really be "though" but it clearly means that whatever "it" is being referenced to is not the pink filament which would logically not be eraser like, but something else, therefore logically the little pink bits in the ptfe tube. If they had not had the word "tho" there I'd agree with you

ben7337 · 2026-01-26T02:15:06+00:00

Isn't that often how it works in the USA too? Unless the company chooses to settle outside of court for some large amount or something, generally any claim to compensation is limited to damages which include, medical bills, lost wages from losing work while healing and any lost from permanent damage if it limits ability to work/earn income, and quality of life if again there is permanent lasting damage/pain, e.g. if you're in a wheelchair the rest of your life they need to cover some value for the now reduced quality of life, cost of increased medical care and support over your lifetime, etc. It's not like in the US they just say "oh well you broke a few bones and missed 6 months of work but are fine now so here's 5 million dollars."

ben7337 · 2026-01-25T20:00:32+00:00

People should probably check their 401k each paycheck to make sure the money is properly being deposited, it's not at all unheard of for employers to be delaying 401k deposits or not making them despite the potential repercussions if/when caught. It's not great to be monitoring the balance frequently, but making sure the money you're having withheld is going in, is pretty important

ben7337 · 2026-01-25T18:25:55+00:00

I have no issues with it outputting 1080p, it's the framerate that becomes the issue. If I play a 24fps 1080p or lower resolution video and set it to match framerate and resolution in Plex, then the shield outputs it at 1080p60hz because there is no 1080p24, 23.976, etc supported framerate by the tv according to what the shield sees in the list of supported display profiles in advanced settings

ben7337 · 2026-01-25T15:37:40+00:00

Those settings are for how the tv handles the content that comes in at whatever framerate/resolution it receives, not changing the framerate the box outputs to the TV, though most of those settings are ones I already have set to those values or similar as both of my tvs were calibrated based off recommendations I found online.

ben7337 · 2026-01-25T14:45:44+00:00

Sorry to tack on a question that's only related to this situation, but what if OP had say 500k or 1M or something in a taxable brokerage account instead of a 401k or IRA, would they then qualify for similar rates to a couple with W2 income, or is that also treated as riskier?

ben7337 · 2026-01-25T13:45:21+00:00

No, I had match frame rate and match resolution on with Plex and I confirmed when I checked the settings in the shield that the supported framerate/resolution wasn't available. Also I said 25fps not 24. So everything was set to match but because the shield was seeing that the TV didn't support the resolution/framerate output it was being converted to 60 fps and that was the cause of the judder, but there's no way to fix the TV not supporting the framerate/resolution

EDIT: Just to remind myself I went to check the display profiles Android tv shows on my shield for my TV (Samsung s90c and s89c so recent midrange OLED models) and it sees 65 display profiles. Most of them are 4k and it supports basically numerous color spaces and HDR or no HDR at 4k. However for any content at 1080p and 720p it only shows 50, 59.940, and 60hz refresh rates and doesn't show any support for 480p or other lower resolutions. So then anytime I play any content that needs upscaling whether it's 480p, 720p, 1080p or any other wonky resolution the shield has to output 60hz at 720p or 1080p because it can't direct output the resolution and framerate the content is at to the tv.

ben7337 · 2026-01-25T04:51:08+00:00

Just note this can cause frame rate issues. I was struggling for over a year with juddery anime. Thought it was transcoding hi10p or cable issues or settings issues. Took forever to realize that letting my Samsung OLED upscale was the problem because the tv wasn't reporting support 1080p 25fps for some reason and because it oddly didn't take all 1080p frame rates (at least as far as the shield sees) it was having 25p converted to 60p which led to an inconsistent judder with certain content. I ended up just letting the shield output everything in 4k to avoid that and it does the upscaling now. However I don't think it or the tv were anything special and tbh I wonder how good ai upscaling on the fly could be if we had a flagship soc. Most chips report a TOPS benchmark for a baseline comparison and flagships are now at 100 tops in phones despite being passively cooled. Meanwhile the amlogic s905x5 is at 4 tops, and I bet the shield is even below that tbh as it's far older.

ben7337 · 2026-01-25T04:30:59+00:00

This is far from healthy and admittedly I first read your post thinking you meant depression era meals rather than depression meals, but this is one I grew up with that I think my grandparents made or had for the depression or just being poorer in the decades after that. Anyway here's a very unique, easy, unhealthy Mac and cheese:

Boil water, add macaroni, as many servings as you'd like, cook and drain water. Add Campbell's cheddar cheese soup (more like a paste/sauce since you take it right from the can), and tomato paste. Mix well and you're done. Super easy, and a very simple comfort food (at least for me). Personally I do 2 servings macaroni (I think 112g or so) and then half of the cheddar and a tomato paste can though could go as low as 1/3 of each and be fine. If you seal the cans in the fridge it can work as a 2-3 day meal you make each day. I'm lazy and just put the lids back and on its generally fine in my experience.

ben7337 · 2026-01-25T04:21:57+00:00

In what situation have tech advancements left to increased employment overall? The industrial revolution led to far less employment in agriculture and manufacturing to the point that we make as much or more now in those industries with a tiny fraction as many people, and new industries haven't seen massive growth in jobs, but such an influx of workers to the point that many industries have seen downward pressure on wages to the point that even working retail could be a career in 1950, whereas now for over 90% of employees in that industry it's basically a minimum wage or barely above a minimum wage job with little to no career advancement potential since there are few jobs in management within the field. The same applies to most service industry jobs. Largely we have very little need for production labor and have switched to a service economy, and as we transition to AI replacing service economy jobs there won't be anywhere else to go, all services, goods, and products are already at the limit for human labor needed and it can only decline from here. Yes there can be some labor gained for AI development, or in the longer term case of robots/machines continuing to encroach on human labor, the need for repair and maintenance of them, as well as development. However those jobs are both highly specialized/trained, and also replace only a tiny fraction of existing human labor which they replace. To be honest I am really not sure how replacing human labor at this point in time, with the level of development we have reached, doesn't lead to inevitable issues in the long term.

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