It's hard to realize that it's happened. My company was acquired, and I chose to take a severance package. My last day was in January. The last couple of months I've taken up new hobbies and am slow traveling. It's been amazing. I've lost already a bunch of weight and am exercising regularly and eating better. I am 45, single, no kids. My portfolio ended up currently around $6M... of which $250K~ is in HYSA, $250K~ is in real estate, and $5.5M~ is in equities split across a number of ETFs between tax-advantaged and brokerage accounts. Most of the surge in my portfolio happened in the last two ..read more

So, the well known rule of thumb is that you can take a 4% withdrawal or your initial retirement fund, adjust for inflation each year and be pretty safe from not running out of money in 30 years. Seems simple, but why so conservative? If one had a savings account that kept up with inflation only, a 4% withdrawal would last 25 years guaranteed, so it doesn't take much positive real return to get to 30 years. Treasury bonds, for example have a real yield of 1.5% over the past 95 years, meaning you'd last 31 years at 4% withdrawal rate. If you are looking for an absolute guarantee and are lookin ..read more

Hello, everyone; I'm considering a scenario involving property investment and early inheritance, and I'd love to get your insights. FIRE is my primary financial goal, and I see this scenario as generally positive or worst-case neutral. I would like my internet friends to tell me differently if needed. Note: I would love feedback both for me AND my parents. The goal is a good/neutral deal for me and for them. Scenario: My 70 YO parents currently own a property in the USA. They are retired and would now like to move home to the UK. I also live in the USA and, coincidentally, have been intereste ..read more

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply! Have a look at the FAQ for this subreddit before posting to see if your question is frequently asked. Since this post does tend to get busy, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts. submitted by /u/AutoModerator [visit reddit] [comments ..read more

I was on a beautiful beach on Thailand not long ago after a stressful year at work. I think it was 2-3 days into a week long holiday before I felt like I needed to go back to work. I just kept thinking about it and how I could get so much better at it. It's mad because I've spent close to the last 10 years working towards FIRE, have close to £200k invested not including home equity and now realise I have my best earning years ahead of me, and my planned retirement age of 50 was probably really silly. I don't know if I'm in the boring middle or if I've realised that FIRE isn't really for me. I ..read more

Note: all numbers below are using an inflation adjusted 7% annual return. Before you comment the obvious answer is to take the tax free money and max the 401k, let me lay out the only reason I’m considering otherwise. I like in a VHCOL city and I really love it here. If it’s possible, I would love to buy an apartment here and stay for the long haul. I’m early in my career but jobs in my industry should be based out of my region for the foreseeable future so I think staying here long term is doable. The problem lies in building up a down payment. I’m currently 25, about the turn 26. I’ve been ..read more

I’m in quite a different situation and wanted to see if I could get some input from you all. I’ve been lurking this sub since I was a 20 something in my first job and now 10 years later I feel so fortunate that I’ve put myself and my family in a good situation given that I was diagnosed with a stage IV cancer with not the greatest prognosis late last year. Long story short I’m doing “ok” now.. no evidence of disease but with stage 4 you never know when it’s going to come back. And still dealing with side effects of treatment and drugs that I’m currently on. Anyway for the stats and financials ..read more

Long-time member, but using my throwaway account. I retired back in May of 2021 as a software engineer at a large tech company. My NW was about 1.3m through a combination of ridiculous tech salaries, getting lucky with a few investments, and general frugality and simple tastes. Almost three years later, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I'm doing. I've done some traveling, worked on a few personal projects, got in better shape, bought a house, spent a lot of time and money fixing things with the house, researched stocks, went to shows / music festivals, read a bunch of books, hiked ..read more

As a long-time member of this subreddit, I'm using a throwaway account to ensure privacy. I've utilized ChatGPT to help maintain anonymity. My intention in posting this is to provide a fresh perspective, participate in discussions, and offer encouragement to individuals starting with limited resources. We attained financial independence a while back, but we both choose to keep working. The majority of our wealth, approximately 95%, comes from my contributions. We're both in our mid-thirties. Background: We’re both children of poor immigrant parents. Our early life lacked material abundance ..read more

I’m (26M) getting married this Fall to a wonderful woman (23F) who is very aligned with me in terms of spending habits, paying down debt, etc. She was pretty uncertain about making money decisions beyond socking it away in a savings account, so I’ve been able to convince her to do some simple things like open a HYSA and contribute more aggressively with her retirement while she’s in her 20s. She’s a public school teacher which will limit her earning potential (pay the teachers, btw), but she does have decent retirement benefits through our State’s teacher retirement system. She plans to put i ..read more