I dare say 99% of people don’t truly understand what “financial freedom” means.

These people naively think you can’t run out of money if your principal is big enough.

But the real key isn’t how much money you have—
it’s the speed at which your money generates money,
and whether it can consistently outpace the speed at which you spend.

You spend $36k a year.
If your return rate is 5%, and inflation is 3%,
then only the middle 2% can actually be used to cover your living expenses.
At that point, the principal you need isn’t $360k—
it’s $1.8 million.

This is the first thing ordinary people should really understand:
More money doesn’t mean more safety.
You are safe only when the speed of money making money outpaces the speed of your lifestyle inflation.
Otherwise, no matter how big your principal is, it’s just a slowly melting block of ice.