I agree we are all operating on "best guesses". For example, the US had an epic stock market during most of the 20th century, but who can say this century will necessarily resemble the past? If inflation hits 5-10% mid-retirement, all portfolio bets are off. Yet, a decision must be made or else one ends up in perpetual OMY syndrome, or afraid to spend money on travel in retirement, or wasting one's life away in an office building a too-massive stache in a futile effort to protect against the feeling of insecurity, or retiring with too small a stache and facing real insecurity in the future.
Although life is a best guess, I'm not a fan of a do-whatever-your-feelings-tell-you retirement decision-making. In terms of personal finance, feelings = error. That's true for stock trading, car buying, timeshares, expensive broker relationships, and every other way to spend or invest. Why would it not be true for setting a WR?
Also, I'm skeptical about the possibilities to "personalize" one's WR by making assumptions about options that might not exist in the future, such as employability. Consider the 60 year old who retired at 40 but has experienced portfolio depletion and must return to work. Sounds doable in the US with our 3.5% unemployment rate right now, but suppose s/he is in Greece (or a possible future US) where the unemployment rate is over 17% and they have no experience for the past 20 years? Consider the downsizing or moving options for a retiree who owns their home outright, but would have to pay more in rent than the proceeds from the sale of their home could earn them. Consider the retired construction worker with a bad back, who might face disability if they aggravate the injury. Consider the retired tech or healthcare worker whose skills are obsolete/dangerous after 10 years of missed continuing education and lapsed certifications.
Yes, there are alternative ways to avoid wage slavery that don't involve FIRE. We need new terminology to describe strategies that are only partially dependent upon investments/pensions and still require the constant input of work or else the finances break down. Flextired? Semi-FIRE? PT-FIRE? Semi-retired? Part FI? The important part is to understand that quitting one's job to pursue one of these strategies is not the same as achieving FIRE. And I adamantly think if one's "FIRE plan" involves probably being forced to go back to work, it is something other than a "FIRE plan".
Example: A 30y/o quits to live off of investments at a 7% WR. Are they FIRE?
Cfiresim says their historical chance of success is about 39%. So there's about a 61% chance they'll be going back to work in their 40s, 50s, or 60s for many many years. They might have made the right decision for themselves personally, but to call them FIRE is a stretch. This person is not in the same game as the 4% or 3.5% retiree who has 90%+ historical odds of never having to work again. They are Semi-FI with a portfolio lotto ticket that might make them FIRE someday all on its own.
Ooooh...
My opinions are quite the contrary of what you seem to think they are.
I don't think people should be all willy nilly with their finances, nor do I think people should choose ultra high withdrawal rates and use magical thinking to hope their way to financial security.
I think anyone with common sense who is open to working in the future needs to also assess the very real risk of knowing they might not be able to.
Saying that someone can't just depend on continuing to work part time doesn't disprove my point at all, it just shows how much thought needs to go into trying to quantify a person's risk.
My whole entire point is that people need to account for their feelings and not abdicating that responsibility to an inaccurate mathematical simulation as some kind of proxy.
Just because a simulator tells you a certain WR is safe doesn't mean anything, and personal fears and feelings need to be examined in order to determine what best actions should be taken.
I've never once argued that people should be saving less than 25X their projected annual spend. I've never once argued that undersaving is somehow okay because of feelings.
I gave you the example of myself where DH and I have incredible flexibility to cut expenses and work in our retirement with very little effort. Well guess what? I've also already indicated that my projected WR is likely to be incredibly low. There are deep, personal reasons for that, that required A LOT of extremely profound reflection in terms of hopes, fears, and risks.
So no, none of my posts in this thread have argued for less conservative savings, I've argued against arbitrary nonsense math being the basis for savings targets.
As for your example guy who has saved to a 7% WR and whether or not he can be considered FIRE, well I truly don't care who can and cannot be considered FIRE and I don't think it matters one damn bit.
What does matter is that your guy knows his risks, knows his options, and makes the best decisions for himself. If he quits at 7% with an aim to never work again and calls himself FIRE, so be it, he's a moron, plain and simple. Chances are bad things will happen to him just because he's stupid and irresponsible.
However, if he's a burnt out professional who just beat cancer and had FU money, so he decides to leave his profession with what amounts to a 7% WR today but plans to geo-arbitrage to lower his expenses for the next decade while exploring projects that may or may not be profitable...he might just be perfectly fine financially, and end up very happy.
Should he walk around calling himself FIREd??
Nope, not on the fucking internet, not unless he wants a fight.
Do I think he should call himself FIREd?
If he's happy, he can call himself a magical unicorn for all I care.
Is his plan a failure if it requires a significant reduction in spending, a significant change in lifestyle, and possibly a lot of work for years to come???
Well...not if that was the plan in the first place.
My entire damn point is that feelings aren't the antithesis of numbers, quite the opposite, in finance, the numbers are a measurable manifestation of feelings. The feelings that define the numbers are critical to understand.
The simulations done with those numbers??? Virtually meaningless beyond the broadest of strokes.