People with $5M+ NW, why do you still choose to work?

[Anonymous]

If your household net worth is at least $5M, what are the reasons that you continue working? Do you and your spouse both work or just one of you?

[Anonymous]

“You can’t do anything with 5, Greg. Five is a nightmare.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“You can’t do anything with 5, Greg. Five is a nightmare.”

This is actually true, especially if you have multiple kids.

[Anonymous]

Because we want $10m to retire.

[Anonymous]

Retired people generally are:
- Relatively old
- Have similar aged retired people to hang out with
- Have kids that are grown up and moved out
- Feel content in what they've accomplished in life

Unless those things are true it's pretty unpleasant to retire.

We're late 30s with way more than $5M, but what would we do with our time if we retired? We're relatively young, our kids are still in school for 10+ more years, and our friends all still work. We also feel like we can do interesting things in our jobs and get paid a lot of money for it. So we both continue to work.

Also fwiw $5M is not very much to stop working at an early age. The Trinity study wasn't looking at 50 years of retirement, and a family of 4 living on $150k is not much when you consider that most people who reach $5M before retirement age probably made a lot more than that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Retired people generally are:
- Relatively old
- Have similar aged retired people to hang out with
- Have kids that are grown up and moved out
- Feel content in what they've accomplished in life

Unless those things are true it's pretty unpleasant to retire.

We're late 30s with way more than $5M, but what would we do with our time if we retired? We're relatively young, our kids are still in school for 10+ more years, and our friends all still work. We also feel like we can do interesting things in our jobs and get paid a lot of money for it. So we both continue to work.

Also fwiw $5M is not very much to stop working at an early age. The Trinity study wasn't looking at 50 years of retirement, and a family of 4 living on $150k is not much when you consider that most people who reach $5M before retirement age probably made a lot more than that.

$150,000 after tax guaranteed with a paid off house is not tough to live on comfortably, even in a HCOL area, unless you've got 2+ kids in 60k/yr private schools.

[Anonymous]

I love love love my job. And we have 2 kids in college.

[Anonymous]

$5 million doesn’t seem like it’s enough. We would need to draw out more than 4 percent annually, so the capital would likely erode faster than I would like. We have three kids and a lot of high expense years ahead of us. I’d rather not make any withdrawals, and just keep chugging away per normal. I also like my work and don’t yet feel a pull toward retirement.

[Anonymous]

Partially because I basically enjoy my work, not every minute of every day, but overall.

Partially because we are still fairly young and have kids we will want to put through college, and maybe a second home would be nice. (Even as I type this it feels silly because we have money saved for college that at present market valuations would cover undergrad… by the time we need it likely grad school as well)

A part of it is also just kind of inertia. I can’t imagine what I would do all day. I am way too young for most retiree stuff.

[Anonymous]

We are early 50s with a NW of $11M which includes a paid off home. Both working. Last kid in college funded with separate 529.

We work because:
—Gets us out of the house and social
—gives us a sense of purpose and challenge
—would like to pay for regular & big extended family vacations with nieces and grandchildren someday
—would like to fund private school and college for grandkids
—expect high healthcare expenses
—intend to pay professional school for any children that want it
—we are not ready to retire

[Anonymous]

We're at roughly 4m + pension. I now work part time because I appreciate keeping my brain engaged and being a productive member of society. I stayed at home when the kids were younger and it was fine for the first couple years but then the novelty wore off and I got bored so I went back. A little extra spending money never hurt either.

[Anonymous]

The fun things to do if you’re young and stop working altogether cost a lot.

People are more likely to switch jobs or start a business, if that’s something they want to do.

Truthfully a lot of the slack gets taken up by caregiving. Children and elderly parents.

[Anonymous]

If you develop a $5M NW you’re probably pretty good at what you do professionally, assuming that it wasn’t inherited. I worked for another 25 years after achieving that level of NW because I found my work to be challenging and fulfilling (most of the time). It was never my goal to achieve a certain NW and then retire. I enjoyed staying in the game until my late 60s.

[Anonymous]

We have $6.5M not including the house, and work for health care benefits. Paying out of pocket for 10-15 years for the two of us plus kids before reaching Medicare eligibility seems like such a waste of funds. Since one works for health care benefits, it is only fair that the other works, too.

[Anonymous]

Here we go again….