You don’t have kids? Plan to retire? Have an emergency savings amount? No credit card debt? Car loans? Student loans?

I probably should have been more clear when I said “minimum basic requirements”. I wasn’t talking “survival”…I was talking about “comfort”. The point at which you are no longer living paycheck-to-paycheck.

I was also assuming household income…not individual…so I should have been more specific there, as well.

I make about twice what you calculated, and my bank account is consistently at zero after all my household expenses are covered. That’s for my family…not just me. I have no emergency savings, which means if anything in my life breaks down, I go into debt just to pay for repairs…and it takes months to finish paying it off. That’s not “comfortable”. It’s eternally stressful, since emergencies like that usually come up more often than I can pay off the last one.

My point, though, was that it’s all quantifiable. Even the differences between individual circumstances can be calculated. Everyone can look at their life and “know” the number that would get them into that “comfort zone”.