Everyone has their own beliefs and thus this is a very subjective question. The simple answer is:
Your passive income needs to match or exceed your expenses. The less your monthly expenses, the less monthly passive income you need.
People use a variety of rules for calculating needed retirement income but they are often argued. Not looking to get into a long winded debate on this but this is the one I go by:
If you multiply your annual expenses by a number between 25-30, whatever number you arrive at is your needed number (higher for those more conservative, lower for those who are less).
Ex:
My annual expenses are around 25k a year due to paid off residence and no car payment (and would be drastically lower in a foreign country with a lower cost of living).
25k x 25 = 625k (less conservative)
25k x 30 = 750k (more conservative)
If I'm confident in the calculations, once I have 625k parked in an income generating vehicle, be it a REIT, stock market allocation that pays dividends, or a 100 door unit, work becomes optional.
All of this goes back to what people refer to as the Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR). This also varies depending on who you talk to, but most people who aren't alarmist are fine with 4%. All this means is that as long as you don't pull out more than 4% a year, you probably won't ever dip into your nest egg.
4% of 625k = 25k
4% of 750k = 30k
So, if the stock market (or your chosen combination of income generating assets) makes a return of 4% or better, you should be fine to pull that amount out to live on without ever having to cut into that chunk.
As most people I've seen post here are very resourceful and intelligent, the likelihood of a BP user just checking out entirely is something I would rate with very low odds. The excitement of a new deal will probably always lurk in the shadows, so 25x your annual expenses might even be high for you. This doesn't take into account selling assets, being hired occasionally for your expertise in your field, selling all that awesome art you created, inheritance, or finding all those gold coins in the crawl space of your trusty SFR.
I believe the quickest way to this number is reducing expenses (although boosting your income is definitely a close second, and something we're all in this thing for right?).
That's just my two cents. See you on the beach!
