For what it's worth, a spare $500/mo is never going to happen. I think I was 33 before I had an extra $500/mo.

$500/mo is $6k/year. There are definitely people for whom that is not possible, but there are a lot of people for whom that is possible. If you work in software, odds are pretty good you're in the latter category, even at the start of your career. $1M as a target is chosen arbitrarily, and often people save less earlier and more later; it's a simplistic model. (As financial advice: you should still save, even if you can't save $500/mo.)

"Never going to happen" is probably overstating it.

If you had reduced your latté consumption by just 5 lattés per day you'd have had that spare $500.

That means I have to make and sell 4 lattés per day, which doesn't seem probable.

You just need to invest in an automatic espresso maker to have your 5 lattes a day at a reasonable price.

But this is all thinking from an American perspective. Plenty of other countries with higher interest rates in the range of 7 to 9 percentage from banks and double digit from the share market.

I do wonder why don't more people move in to the third world from the West, it makes a lot of sense I think, especially if one is looking for financial independence. In third world, generally the same amount of money goes much longer than in the West.

> In third world, generally the same amount of money goes much longer than in the West.

There are some things that just cannot be purchased in the third world, though. Stability, a well educated population, a fair court system, confidence in the institutions that supply infrastructure (roads, trains, bridges, water, electricity, etc.), low perceived corruption, confidence that property rights will be upheld, high trust low friction transactions, and so on.

There's definitely variance between the different first and third world countries, and all countries have their pros and cons, but some things can definitely not be purchased with money.

> Plenty of other countries with higher interest rates in the range of 7 to 9 percentage from banks

Technically, only interest rate above inflation is interesting though. Might be 8 pct at high inflation still wins out, though.

> and double digit from the share market.

I'm curious about this - we're are these emerging markets? I suppose the Asian Tigers have slowed down a bit? Parts of Africa and South/Latin America?

My original comment was in dollars in response to a comment in dollars; we've been talking American perspective the whole time.

I don't think it's as reasonable to make 45-year compounding interest models for retirement in 3rd world economies. There's just a lot more going on as far as stability, interest rates, personal safety, etc. You can still do it, but I don't know if the numerical result tells you anything.