Its just before noon on a chilly Sunday morning. I was up early today, dialing in to monitor a system upgrade. I never sleep well, the night before having to do that, and I almost always wake up before the alarm. Of course, then I turn it off and lie there, and moments pass...or more. The upgrade was without incident, as we expected it would be. While I was waiting for them to announce that it was a success, I took the opportunity to fire up Quicken and create some reports with which to update our retirement spreadsheet. The recent surges in the market have had a startling effect on our net worth, and I have taken to saying well, when the market dropped, we lost this percent of our stock-based net worth, so if that were to happen again, here's what our net worth would be. Which is sobering, but only for a little while. In fact, we had arbitarily picked a total net worth (excluding the house) value out of thin air a few years ago, saying that when we reached it, one of us could retire, and it actually seems like we're going to reach it this year. Then you start thinking well, sure, you're at that number, but retirement means an immediate drop in income, so don't you really mean some higher number, like 1.1 or 1.2 X, so that the drop puts you where you were when you retired? Truth is, no matter how much we have, it never seems like it'll be enough. Then you look at some articles about the number of people living in middle-class poverty, let alone all of those living near the actual poverty line, and you feel positively flush.