@B42 - I'll gladly admit, I could be totally wrong. The market could keep going up for 30 more years for all I know, but that's not a difficult thing to plan for IMHO. The best part about a forum is that differences of opinions are shared in a respectful manner. What happened in the past was very real for me, so I speak to that in what I hope is a helpful way, mostly to be a little 'counter-cultural' since I've had both good and bad experiences with employment, retirement (at least, having an on-again-off-again retired spouse), and investing. I feel that most Mustachian's have had bad employment experiences, good investment experiences, and little to no retirement experience. But that's why I like to be here as opposed to Bogleheads (lots of up and down market experience, which was helpful until I had my own), Early-Reirement.org (way too much positive retirement experience and poor employment experiences). Mustachians seem to have a good mix (although I do miss some FI / non-ER, and non-FI / non-ER folks that seem to have dropped out).