It's only "conservative" if you don't understand variance.
The risk isn't in the value of the average. The risk is in the variation around that average. Like I said: if you invested 66% of your net income in the stock market in 1999, you'd be a long way from retirement today.
And if you're tempted to keep arguing this point, you might want to take a moment to consider how I know this. (Hint: the reality of a great many investors trumps your theories of how the stock market works.)
Not all stocks offer dividends, and not all investors choose stocks with dividends (there are tax disadvantages to returning value via dividends rather than via appreciation of stock value.) Dividends offer a lower risk component of return, but typically in a diversified portfolio you can put some share of the portfolio in a lower-risk investment to have that lower-risk component.
So, for growth focused investors that aren't risk sensitive, dividends can be a negative feature, and for investors that are risk sensitive, they aren't essential as there are other ways to tune a portfolio around risk. This makes, at best, only a weakly positive net incentive, and more likely a negative net incentive, for firms to offer dividends.
RETIRING in San Francisco would be a massive mistake. If you are retired why the hell are you living in a uber-expensive city. Location matters less when you don't have a job. Move up to Oregon.
Also if you decide to have children, that is a conscious decision you made to dump your millions down the toilet. I guess some people like kids enough to work an extra 30 years. I sure don't.