u can retire on $100k, actually.

[RagJohn]

That's real 10%, after taxes, SS, and inflation. I've lived in a van, had a ball, on 5k a year, and not long ago, either. It costs nearly nothing to post/read on a laptop, for instance. A solar charger can deal with the battery drain, or you can run a small, quiet, Honda generator, and recharge that way, or just find an outlet someplace, like at a library, and recharge there. If you will negotiate with insurance companies, you can put together some "custom" packages for medical care that are quite inexpensive. You just "self insure" for the first 1-2k per year, and have that big a deductible, up to say, 20k max. That will cost you maybe a grand per year. Then you get another policy, with a 20k deductible, max of 100k. It will cost you about 1k per year. Then you get another one, for up to 100k, overseas. If they can't get you stabilized enough, for 100k, to make a trip overseas, you are almost certainly ruined, healthwise, anyway, and might as well kill yourself. the 3rd world med insurance will run another grand or so. Overseas, (especially in Thailand), they have a BETTER rate of success than US hospitials, for about 10% of what the same care costs you here. So your 100k policy, used overseas, is like a million $ spent on US medical expenses. If that can't save you, you might as well kill yourself, because you are ruined, healthwise, no matter what amount you spend. So you CAN provide for your own health care, quite cheaply indeed, or no amount of $ or insurance, can do you any real good, and you need to just get out of the way of the ones Nature has selected to replace you.

Edited December 24, 2010 by RagJohn

[RagJohn]

What you can do, see, is live in a van or trailer, parked on BlM property, a mining claim is 20 acres, for $100 per year. During that year, you have all the rights of an owner. You can run people off or make a citizen's arrest if they fail to leave after being told to do so. you can hunt and fish, and nobody is going to care if you have to haul in black dirt to garden with, either. You can have small, penned livestock, like goats, rabbits, chickens, protected from predators, too. So, instead of spending 4-6k on food per year, you just do some chores. With hay-mulch on your garden plants, there is a lot less need for irrigation, almost no need of tillage or weeding, either.

If you dont commute, and don't have rent/utilities to pay, live in a 1k pull trailer, and ride a mountain bicycle back and forth to town, where you have left your 1k, 10 year old mini-van and 10 year old, 1k 450cc motorcycle, in a public storage shed,and dont have to buy food, what is left to spend money on, hmm? Med care and entertainment, that's it. If you live in the little trailer, parked in a friend's pasture, on 1k a year rent, you have money to buy and prepare food, do you not? Probably, the friend will let you garden and have the animals for another 1k a year, too, and now you needn't live 10-20 miles from everything.