Comment by sidlls
9 years ago
Depends on what you mean by "retire." Having complete financial independence is unlikely.
However a person with no debts or children can live a nice middle-class life as a single person or partner/spouse even in the Bay Area and still save $50k/year or more. With conservative investments that $250k in savings over five years can easily be used to have a few thousand a month in income. It won't replace a $200k per year salary, but it'd be enough to live very frugally in an inexpensive place. It's much riskier than having a salary, health insurance, etc. and I wouldn't advise it.
I see, I hadn't considered the "lean fi/re" approach. I guess by that definition you can retire much much earlier than you would think normally. I can't imagine living off of only 20-25k per year during my retirment.