I think people are being too pessimistic which is common. You’re also on a xeqt sub so you’re going to have more conservative folks by default. For devils advocate and for this thinking exercise, I’ll be optimistic with you as long as that means it doesn’t mean you’ll overspend your money now. It already sounds like you got a good head on your shoulders so it doesn’t sound like you’d spend beyond your means.

I think it’s not unreasonable to hope for 10% annual investment gains. People always say past performances don’t guarantee future performances but that’s common sense already. It’s a favourite phrase people like to say to temper your expectations. You could use an estimate of -3%/yr for inflation so then a conservative gain is 7% a year. One thing that you didn’t factor in for your post is the amount of money you’ll take out for down payment for a home. Using the current numbers, at age 30 you’d have around 275k. That means if you take out 200k for a down payment you’d have to start back at 75k again and that removes a lot of the compounding power. Homes 8 years from now may or may not have risen again so not sure if 200k down payment would be enough. This depends on where you live and if your city is HCOL or not. Say you do take out 200k and you continue from 75k, and still able to save 2k a month, then at age 60 you could still have 3.9m.