You already FIREd with a buffer.
What is this fixation on figuring out how much less you could have retired on? What is motivating this?
I discovered this month (5yrs after I Fired at age 47) that I could have Fired sooner.
So I wanted to know what the bare minimum was to Fire.
I thought I'd share my findings
There is no "bare minimum" to FIRE, there are only risk tolerances and risk hedges.
As we already discussed, market risks are just one retirement risk, the much larger risk is actually personal risks where circumstances change and require you to spend differently.
The lower and tighter your budget, the more vulnerable it is to even minor lifestyle risks. So say you lose your ability to walk properly all of a sudden like I did and biking and even public transportation become unrealistic. If you have a super tight 25K budget, adding even a used car is going to be a massive increase in your spending. Hell, even adding s free car will still significantly up your withdrawal rate. However, if you have a lot of fat in your budget, you can more easily reallocate money to the cost of the car.
Is losing your ability to walk probable? No, but it literally happened to me recently, so it's an easy example for me to come up with. There are plenty of lifestyle changes that can push you to spend a few thousand each year.
If you can easily and happily pick up part time work, that's also is a very powerful hedge, especially if it's well paid.
The more flexibility and hedges you have, the less you really need to retire on. The more rigid, the more you need extra money as a hedge because it's the only one you have.
So what the "bare minimum" to FIRE on is the bare minimum that hedges your various risks to a point where you are comfortable with the risk profile.
Based on your previous threads, you indicated that your budget was extremely inflexible. To me this tells me that unless you have the ability to easily pick up work, then having the buffer you did was a very good idea.
