ER, all very good points and I agree to them all. I was actually the one who mentioned $2M and $100k/year. I actually mean $100k before tax, not after tax. $100k after tax would definitely make my retire that much more lavish.

Sure, the last 3 years, CDs might be paying ~3%, couple years before that, there were around 6%. If you have $2M and retiring today, you should be laddering your CD. I’m sure if you average CD rate over the last 10 years, it would be >5%.

I also totally agree about rental properties. I like to have my retirement fund more diverse. Which would also include rental properties. I don’t want to put all of my eggs in one basket.

I personally don’t care too much about all the expenses in individual categories. I’m more concentrated in total expenses. I keep track of all the big expenses, but all the smaller categories, like groceries, insurance, gas, etc, I just keep track of total monthly expense. I can always look up the details with Quicken or Mint, but they’re not something I look at every month.