Reply to "$5 Million is a Nightmare... the Poorest Rich Person in America."

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Reply to ""$5 Million is a Nightmare... the Poorest Rich Person in America.""

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m the early retired big law partner above.  It worked for us because we got married young, had kids (four) young, avoided the private school money pit, and lived well within our means when I was making good money.  When our youngest was late into their college years (UVA) the light was very clear at the other end of the tunnel so I decided to quit messing around and just walked away.

When you’re not paying for the kids’ educations, have a nice chunk of equity in your house after years of ownership, and no longer saving for retirement $200k to $250k goes a surprisingly long way.  We have a nice house in the city, a nice house in the country, and a rental property in a desirable part of the DMV.  We travel extensively and well - not luxuriously, but well - and don’t want for much of anything.  And, as I said, our net worth has actually almost doubled in the last decade despite neither one of us working.  The key to really is to live below your means when making good money.  We never lived like millionaires even when we were actually making (close to) that amount of money, so we didn’t have to change our lifestyle at all once we stopped pulling that kind of money in. [/quote]

This, exactly. The perception that 5-10 million is not enough, or is even a liability, is driven entirely by the tendency to always be looking up and wanting to have what even richer people have, or to be seen as peers of richer people. At that point, it has nothing to do with your actual needs or even material wants -- if you are feel that 10 million is insufficient, the problem is in your mentality and insecurity.

And the point about "living well within our means" is central. If you have a high income and millions in the bank, there is a very nice lifestyle to be had that is still well within your means and allows you to continue to bank money and invest creatively and aggressively. The mistake people make (and that someone like Greg on Succession, and all those fools, would definitely make) is getting your 5-10 million and immediately trying to live like you're a billionaire. Why? Do you really think you can't achieve personal satisfaction and happiness unless you have a personal chef and can take private jets everywhere and multiple homes in very expensive locations, etc.? If that's where your head is at, then you will never, ever be happy or satisfied. Not at 20m, not at 500m, not at 1b. You are looking for something money can't buy. You'll be looking around your custom built yacht and thinking "this isn't good enough." The problem is you.

I feel like a lot of people don't understand that Succession is not a guide, it's a cautionary tale. The stuff they say on that show is not funny because it's true, it's funny because it's so unbelievably stupid.[/quote]

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