I've only been on Steemit for less than a week and only had the chance so far to spend a couple solid hours browsing the content, but one thing that seems to be prevalent is so many of us on this site making posts and comments about making enough money to retire which I find laughable.
While I'm sure a few whales might actually be able to do so [if the platform keeps the wheels from falling off over the next couple of years while they power down], I think the rest of us making these claims need to really think for a moment about how much it costs to retire and then evaluate what your likelihood really is of earning enough STEEM to convert to Bitcoin -> USD -> invest and live off plus how you even do that without getting nabbed for tax evasion.
The Sep 2014 real median household income was $52k. If you want to draw $52k a year and protect your principal, you're realistically going to need about about $1,400,000 in today's USD (or 2080 BTC) to be able to draw $52k interest only from that at a conservative 4% annually. If my math is right, that's about 500,000 Steem. Obviously, if you're willing to take a little more risk, or you don't have kids you want to leave a legacy with and are fine leaving this world with a $0 balance, or you don't need $52k/yr then you can get away with less but you're going to still need well over $1M. You won't be living a life of luxury, but you'll be able to get by relatively decently depending on where you live and how good you are with money.
Now before the optimists, glass is half full kind of people come at me with torches and pitchforks - I'm not saying it's not possible if you work hard and everything falls into place for STEEM. Plus it all depends on you also not doing something that compromises your account security (another common theme with crypto currency in these early days) and a myriad of other variables, some of which are out of your control. Anyway, good luck!