Anonymous
Post 05/12/2026 09:18     Subject: People with $5M+ NW, why do you still choose to work?
We would love to early retire but we can not. healthcare.gov for gold plan ppo because I need to go to doctors is 5K per month deductible 4k OOP 16.4K.
If we are so lucky, maybe we will do it at 60 yrs is the earliest.
Anonymous
Post 05/12/2026 08:51     Subject: People with $5M+ NW, why do you still choose to work?
Anonymous wrote: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.


OP here. For those with part-time jobs, what do you do? I want to downsize to a part-time job, but I don't think my current job could be made part-time. Most part-time jobs out there outside of the healthcare field or working for yourself pay very little per hour, which makes it hard to justify switching to one when I have elementary school-aged kids whose schedules I would need to work around. My spouse is also very much like some of the people earlier in the thread who expect both partners to work and believe the more assets, the better.
Anonymous
Post 05/12/2026 08:51     Subject: People with $5M+ NW, why do you still choose to work?
We are 40s at that level and I guess it's enough to bum around my house indefinitely without working. But not enough to live some fun rich lifestyle like lots of travel etc given th # of yrs we hope to have, young kids and their expenses, and hoping to help them launch. So it doesn't seem worth leaving the workforce and honestly feels very risky still. If I had some crazy level of $$$$ and was jet setting around then sure I'd leave my 9-5.
Anonymous
Post 05/12/2026 08:48     Subject: People with $5M+ NW, why do you still choose to work?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:DH still works, but I consider myself retired at this point. He has a very high salary, and it's hard to walk away from that when you have the opportunity to build wealth for the benefit of your children and grandchildren.


How do you "consider" yourself to be retired? Either you're retired or you're not. If you have a paying job or are caring for a minor child at home, you are not retired.


I have a high school senior and one in grad school. I am not going back to practicing law or any other kind of paid work. I can start collecting my DOJ pension in the fall. I'm retired.
Anonymous
Post 05/12/2026 08:46     Subject: People with $5M+ NW, why do you still choose to work?
Anonymous wrote:DH still works, but I consider myself retired at this point. He has a very high salary, and it's hard to walk away from that when you have the opportunity to build wealth for the benefit of your children and grandchildren.


How do you "consider" yourself to be retired? Either you're retired or your not. If you have a paying job or are caring for a minor child at home, you are not retired.
Anonymous
Post 05/12/2026 08:43     Subject: People with $5M+ NW, why do you still choose to work?
DH still works, but I consider myself retired at this point. He has a very high salary, and it's hard to walk away from that when you have the opportunity to build wealth for the benefit of your children and grandchildren.
Anonymous
Post 05/12/2026 08:42     Subject: People with $5M+ NW, why do you still choose to work?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:This and the other thread are cracking me up. Can we agree on this: 1. If you have kids at home and you're not working you are not retired, you're a stay at home parent. 2. If you have kids at home and you are working, this question is not for you because, whether you're working or not if you have kids at home there's no such thing as "retirement" for you.

Somebody can start another thread asking "if you have more than $5 million and still have kids at home, why are you still working and not being a stay at home parent?" Then everyone can argue about that. But that is not this thread.


A SAHP to teenagers? Who are never home?


Doesn't matter. They're still anchoring you to your home. You're still not free in the retired sense. It's not just semantics.
Anonymous
Post 05/12/2026 08:37     Subject: People with $5M+ NW, why do you still choose to work?
Anonymous wrote:This and the other thread are cracking me up. Can we agree on this: 1. If you have kids at home and you're not working you are not retired, you're a stay at home parent. 2. If you have kids at home and you are working, this question is not for you because, whether you're working or not if you have kids at home there's no such thing as "retirement" for you.

Somebody can start another thread asking "if you have more than $5 million and still have kids at home, why are you still working and not being a stay at home parent?" Then everyone can argue about that. But that is not this thread.


A SAHP to teenagers? Who are never home?
Anonymous
Post 05/12/2026 08:26     Subject: People with $5M+ NW, why do you still choose to work?
This and the other thread are cracking me up. Can we agree on this: 1. If you have kids at home and you're not working you are not retired, you're a stay at home parent. 2. If you have kids at home and you are working, this question is not for you because, whether you're working or not if you have kids at home there's no such thing as "retirement" for you.

Somebody can start another thread asking "if you have more than $5 million and still have kids at home, why are you still working and not being a stay at home parent?" Then everyone can argue about that. But that is not this thread.
Anonymous
Post 05/12/2026 08:26     Subject: People with $5M+ NW, why do you still choose to work?
Late 50s and working to make sure we can afford the very expensive long-term care that one of us will almost certainly need due to a pre-existing condition.
Anonymous
Post 05/12/2026 08:22     Subject: People with $5M+ NW, why do you still choose to work?
That's like 5 years of retirement
Anonymous
Post 05/12/2026 08:18     Subject: People with $5M+ NW, why do you still choose to work?
We are mid 40’s and our kids are in 9th and 12th grade. I guess the reasons are - we are still tied to this area and a school schedule for a few more years. We don’t have quite as much as we’d like (We are at $6M excluding home and college funds) and we are not really sure what we’d do with ourselves if we retired. As PP’s have pointed out, most other retired people are late 50’s at best if not much older. We talk about it a lot, and it’s still nice knowing we COULD retire even if we don’t.
Anonymous
Post 05/12/2026 07:53     Subject: People with $5M+ NW, why do you still choose to work?
We have about $10M. We have three kids, the oldest is in middle school. We are early 50s. DH works and I don’t. Given our kids’ ages, he will likely work another decade. The schedule of everyone we know is based on working with kids at home. We are stuck at home because of school schedules. He might retire when the oldest is at the end of high school.
Anonymous
Post 05/12/2026 07:51     Subject: People with $5M+ NW, why do you still choose to work?
We are mid 40s and our kid is still in 7th grade. Nw is 5 mil not including primary residence.

If we both are fully retire, we d like to travel a lot and move to another country where we originally came from. But with kid still in school and he plan to continue his collage here. So we just keep working here for now until at least he goes to collage. Plus my husband love his job. He makes a lot of money working a little less than 40 h a week.

I just decrease to part time last year.makes my job very enjoyable again.
Anonymous
Post 05/12/2026 07:50     Subject: People with $5M+ NW, why do you still choose to work?
We spend too much monthly.
Taking money out can trigger lots of taxes.
Kids in college.