Before discovering MMM and posting my case study I would of agreed with your cousin, and this coming from someone who has always lived a pretty frugal lifestyle, but I've read that you needed at least a million if you retired at 65, so figured you must need a lot more if you wanted to FIRE.
Side note, during my first visit to the forum and reading all these posts about FIRE, I was thinking, A) I hope everyone has insurance and B) ummm did I wonder into an arsonist site?
Thanks to everyone on this forum, I've discovered my family is doing pretty good and my goal is lot closer then I thought. Guess the trick is to not let your spending grow with your increasing income, if you can do that (I've found I've become even more spend conscious as I've grown older), then you're pretty set, but like gimp said, it's harder for some people to do that, especially in a place like NYC, glad I've moved out to the country.