There happens to be an article in the New York Times today about the 4% rule, based on a new paper titled The 4 Percent Rule is Not Safe in a Low-Yield World. It also seems worth noting that the 4% rule assumes a payout period of 30 years, so it's not entirely applicable for the purposes of this thread.
I wasn't suggesting that it was safe ("more to reduce risk"). For example in Russia, there is additionally the issue of high inflation (in USD) while the prices catch up with US/UK levels, so even a 3% rule should only apply to cost of living that's about 2 times higher (adjusted for US inflation) than at present, which turns it into a 1.5% rule, or up to 15 years at 80% saving rate. Of course, if optimizing primarily for smaller working time, one should earn at a high-costs place, like Silicon Valley, and then move to a low-cost place, with possibly moving again if that place catches up.
Thus spake Eliezer:
It seems that many here might have outlandish ideas for ways of improving our lives. For instance, a recent post advocated installing really bright lights as a way to boost alertness and productivity. We should not adopt such hacks into our dogma until we're pretty sure they work; however, one way of knowing whether a crazy idea works is to try implementing it, and you may have more ideas than you're planning to implement.
So: please post all such lifehack ideas! Even if you haven't tried them, even if they seem unlikely to work. Post them separately, unless some other way would be more appropriate. If you've tried some idea and it hasn't worked, it would be useful to post that too.