Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For me it’s not even my work that I dislike, it’s everything else about it - the waking up early getting out of your warm bed on a cold dark winter morning, crappy long commute, have to answer to other people, being compelled to to go work even when you’re not feeling it that day, 5 days week, not having enough time for hobbies, exercise, home cooking, travel, spending time with your family - at least not without feeling like your life is hectic. WFH was supposed to fix some of this but now it’s going away in most places. Also NEEDING to live in a HCOL area with terrible traffic and everyone around you is an obsessive overachiever sucks too.

I ONLY work for money at this point, as soon as I have a few mil I’m gone. I don’t get people with 7+ million dollars who still choose to grind away their young healthy years in the rat race in, to be honest, a crappy city like DC (or any other HCOL area for that matter).

Once you have 7 million, you would want 14.

Anonymous wrote:In order to save millions, it requires alot of hard work, intention, sacrifice, and some luck over a long period of time for most folks. It takes alot of drive to get to a few million saved up and than you just quit?

Are you saying if you were training to be a professional athlete your whole life, worked with all types of coaches your childhood, than get drafted in the first round of football, that you would quit after your first multi million dollar contract? Money typically isn't the primary driver of highly motivated people, the money is a by product of the blood, sweat, and tears, but rarely are successful people only do things for the money which is why they don't quit prematurely after having a little success.

I personally wouldn't be able to just quit, I could scale back some and enjoy more free time doing something stimulating and productive.

Anonymous wrote:Because most people who are rich that work don't do what you do. There's no brutal commute. There's no waking up and dragging out of bed on a cold morning. There is a lazy wake up to get to working whenever they want or managing folks who do all of the hard work. I say this as someone who probably doesn't need to work but puts in a solid 30 hours a week for a very large sum of money, no commute, and not a huge amount of stress.

Anonymous wrote:No one takes the time to study investing, so they have to slave away for decades. Most people don't know there are stocks yielding 10%+ dividends with minimal risk. If you can get a 7% overall withdrawal rate for the rest of your life, which is very doable, you check out at $2M - no one needs more than $140K income in retirement.

But since people are told to buy bonds and other nonsense, they can only safely withdraw 2.5% or 3% of their portfolio and so must slave away until they're 65.

Anonymous wrote:I am 48 and have 6.5 million. No kids.

I stopped working during COVID - project was at a natural end point - and just….haven’t gone back. I’m not sure it’s a good idea or not. It makes me feel uneasy. But people in my family tend not to age well. They get cancer, they get dementia. They’re not the super healthy types hiking and camping at age seventy five. So part of me feels like I need to enjoy life now.

I do feel limited in where I can live because Obamacare sucks in many places. DC has good Obamacare so I am staying here for now.

If I went back to work it would be for:

-societal respect (stopping during COVID made this easier because I haven’t had to answer the “what do you do” question much)
-fear something’s going to happen to Obamacare
-fear I don’t have enough money (I am frugal - my concern is more about elder care costs)

Anonymous wrote:I love Succession but this is the thought that runs through my head when I watch it. Why not just quit and live a life of leisure, live off of investments? I guess I'm just not a killer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one takes the time to study investing, so they have to slave away for decades. Most people don't know there are stocks yielding 10%+ dividends with minimal risk. If you can get a 7% overall withdrawal rate for the rest of your life, which is very doable, you check out at $2M - no one needs more than $140K income in retirement.

But since people are told to buy bonds and other nonsense, they can only safely withdraw 2.5% or 3% of their portfolio and so must slave away until they're 65.

This is half true and half nonsense.

Yes you should have a very equity heavy portfolio your whole life. Yes a safe withdrawal rate above 2.5% can be done.

No there is not minimal risk for any equity investment. Hopefully you build a portfolio that counters this.

In terms of no one needs more than 140k a year. What are you talking about. I spend 25-35 a month. Income is seven figures. I save a lot also. But I want 35k a month in retirement spend. For that you need a lot more than 2 million. Everyone is different.

PP is right that you don't need it, you want it.

It’s just so hard to predict what your costs will be in 40 years. I’m sure my parents didn’t predict that they would have medication that costs 10/day. And most people didn’t anticipate how much the cost of decent assisted living is. I’m just not confident what our country/world will look like in 30-50 years. Things like food might be much more expensive with climate change impacts.

Anonymous wrote:You mean ... Bezos and the other idiots? Those people hoard money. It's an illness.

Everyone else that has enough money to retire but they don't can't stand being alone with themselves. They will say they love to work, but they mean they hate being alone with themselves.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, do you have kids? I think it's having very young kids that makes me feel it's not enough. I just don't know what life might bring.

This. It's different when you still have kids at home in your 40's or 50's vs. it's just the two of you in your 60's. Kids are very expensive. Plus you don't know what the stock market and economy might do. It's a better bet to work more now then retire permanently than retire early with the idea that you'll magically get a high-paying job at age 58 if the economy tanks and you need more money after leaving the workforce for 10 years.

But I hear you, OP. We couldn't wait to leave DC. DH's job went remote during the pandemic, so we moved to an area we really wanted to move to. We had a little over $3M in real estate assets, plus over $3M in other investments. Not enough for DH to stop working, but enough that we could comfortably survive on a lower salary if he ever loses his job. Kids are thriving in excellent public schools, we've made tons of friends, and the lifestyle is just so much more relaxed and fun.

If anyone is looking to do this, look at an area with a decent overall tax picture for your family, excellent public schools, and good, reasonably priced State universities. These things really impact your savings and lifestyle. After freaking out about saving for out of state/private college for our 3 kids (lived in DC), we realized we pretty much already met the 529 goals for in-state universities in the new location. I can't even begin to explain the relief and joy we felt. DC is really hard for families unless you have a high HHI.

Good luck to everyone and I hope you find the lifestyle that works well for your family, wherever that may be.

Where is this incredible place? I want to move there too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one takes the time to study investing, so they have to slave away for decades. Most people don't know there are stocks yielding 10%+ dividends with minimal risk. If you can get a 7% overall withdrawal rate for the rest of your life, which is very doable, you check out at $2M - no one needs more than $140K income in retirement.

But since people are told to buy bonds and other nonsense, they can only safely withdraw 2.5% or 3% of their portfolio and so must slave away until they're 65.

Can you list a few? I'd be interested in investing in them.

I don’t want to list the particular names of companies since I’m continuing to buy them, but I’ll point you in the general direction. BDCs (business development companies), REITs, closed-end funds, and covered call ETFs all have companies paying 8-11% yields.

And they’re not risky (well, many covered call ETFs are risky and I personally don’t buy them). But for example, BDCs lend money to, and invest in, other companies. To get favorable tax treatment, they have to pay out 90% of their earnings. So you get a high dividend (many times 10%+) because they pay out almost all their earnings. The flipside of this is that the stock price doesn’t go up much because they’re paying out all their earnings.

But the companies themselves are not risky – you can look at their portfolio and see that less than one percent of the loans they make are being defaulted on. (Actually, I just read articles on Seeking Alpha from other people that have done the research.)

Similarly, a closed-end fund focused on utilities can pay you 9%. Utility companies pay out a very large majority of their earnings because they’re not going to have great ways to reinvest profits - they can’t suddenly find a way to make you use five times more electricity. But they’re solid and steady – even in a recession, most people don’t want their lights to be turned off so they continue to pay the bills.

Just two examples there, but it’s a game changer once you realize these types of stocks exist.