[nootropicat]

Relying on constant insane returns isn't financial independence. Considering how many people are working to extract money from equities it's most likely luck.

Insane returns is one way to get to financial independence, because even if the edge exists, it's going to eventually disappear. You can boast about financial independence once you make enough to live the rest of your life from safe passive yield, after inflation, which in the current very low real rates environment requires a lot - maybe $3M as the bare minimum.

[paulpauper]

Considering how many people are working to extract money from equities it's most likely luck.

renaissance tech. has been doing it for 3 decades and with vasty more capital. maybe it is skill, too.

[rqtwteye]

My guess is that they also have a lot of connections that make deals and information accessible to them the little guy doesn’t get.

[altdataseller]

How much is reasonable for a family with 2 kids living in a medium expensive city in the US?

[acapybara]

It's not so much about family size as it is burn rate.

Check out something like FIRE calc: https://firecalc.com/

What you need to do is figure out the burn rate to sustain your family, figure out your safe withdrawal rate (e.g. 3.5%), then you can easily get amount of capital required.

A Mormon friend of mine, with 5 kids, spends less on food for his family than we do (family of 4) --he/his wife are just much better at spending on it. There are also factors like, it's possible to get a 3-4K sqft house for a very reasonable price & low taxes, vs. living in a tiny box in San Fransisco for 2x more.