Thought exercise: How much investment now would represent one day earlier of retirement 10 years from now. (That is worded so strangely, but please stick with me here, I'm interested to see what everyone else comes up with.)

Suppose I'm 45 and have the ambition to retire at 55, I'll need to bridge some time until I can dig into my 401k and don't want to touch my initial capital. So how much investment today would yield enough to offset what would've been a work day ten years from now. In other words, how much opportunity cost do I need to offset per day with yield income earned from an investment now. Man I hope this doesn't just read like word salad.

Assume the following:

a stable reasonable yield rate %.

The underlying stock value won't change, we aren't relying on the stock value increasing.

Account for taxes and inflation in a way that you see fit.

Anticipate your annual living expense as you see fit.

My rough estimate will be in the comments.