r/ChubbyFIREd

Hey everyone,

I've been looking into estate planning specifically around digital assets and crypto, and honestly, most existing options feel pretty broken.

Right now, it seems like you only have three bad choices:

1. Hand over raw seed phrases/private keys to a lawyer or family member ahead of time (huge security risk).
2. Rely on traditional probate courts and legal wills (takes 6+ months, completely useless for highly liquid or volatile positions).
3. Hope your heirs figure out hardware wallets on their own if something unexpected happens to you (usually ends in total asset loss).

Social recovery works fine for everyday users, but it doesn't really scale for larger, institutional or high-net-worth setups.

For those holding significant non-custodial assets: what’s your current setup for liveness risk or unexpected contingency? Are you using dead-man switches, multisigs with trusted third parties, or just traditional legal trusts?

I’m currently researching non-custodial automation around this to see where the biggest pain points are, so any raw feedback on how you've set this up (or why you haven't) would be super helpful.

We (56M/60F) are in the position of loving our jobs, so we are really only working another 12-24 months to ensure a very chubby travel budget. We’re planning on about $100K per year for travel. That includes at least one bigger trip per year with kids and grandkids (total 5 adults, two kids).

We typically travel first/business but are willing to give some of that up except for international. (But for the kids-premium economy 😂). The only thing we are “set” on (at least for now) is an annual one-month stay on a lake over the summer months (AirBnB prob).

What’s your travel budget? How much are you traveling? What kind of accommodations? Hotels or AirBnB? Cruises? All-inclusives? Are you bringing extended family? Is your budget enough? Would you want to travel more? Or is there a time where you’re like, nah we got tired of too much travel? Thank you for your perspectives!

“While exact, official federal decile data fluctuates based on specific tax years, analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics highlights a massive divide between the lowest and highest income percentiles for retired households. [1, 2]

Estimated Annual Income by Decile (Households 65+)

(From OP- I only included the top 5 deciles here)

5th Decile (Median - 50%)
Around $56,680
The true middle. Income is evenly split between Social Security, employer pensions, and occasional part-time work.

6th Decile (50% to 60%)
$56,680 – $72,000
Increased influence of traditional pensions and structured 401(k)/IRAwithdrawals.l

7th Decile (60% to 70%)
$72,000 – $92,000
Substantial private savings distributions begin to rival the household's Social Security income baseline.

8th Decile (70% to 80%)
$92,000 – $125,000
Asset-driven income (dividends, real estate/rent, interest) becomes a primary driver.

9th Decile (80% to 90%)
$125,000 – $188,000
High retirement-account balances. Pensions and savings make up over a quarter of all revenue.

10th Decile (Top 10%)
Over $188,000
Driven by active wages/business earnings (39% of total mix) and significant investment portfolio returns.

How Income Sources Vary by Decile
The drastic gap between deciles exists because the types of income change entirely as you move up the wealth ladder:

The Top 20%: Rely primarily on earned wages and market assets. Over 39% of their total income comes from ongoing employment or business earnings, and 18% comes directly from investment dividends, interest, or rental properties. Because of these heavy market ties, a small percentage of wealthy retirees pulls the national "mean" retirement income up significantly higher than the median. [2, 3]”

[1] https://www.fool.com
[2] https://www.fool.com
[3] https://www.congress.gov
[4] https://www.census.gov

M59, wife 61. Husband retired, wife plans to retire in 4 months or grind out one more year and collect more stock options/RSUs.

We have a 401k balance of 4.3 million. Additional 1.4 million in brokerage. Also have 1.5 million in company stock in an account we plan to leave to our kids. Have $150k set aside in cash reserves.

No debt, houses paid off, no cc debt, no auto loans etc . Monthly run rate is 11-12k .

Kids are grown, college fully paid for and completed.

We do not use a financial advisor of any sort.

We are trying to figure out how to rebalance our 401k for retirement and figure out what to do with the 1.4 in brokerage .

Trying to stick to the 4% rule roughly for annual spend. We will probably spend more on travel in the next 10 years than we normally do.

Any suggestions on 401k allocation? Specific funds we should be looking at to get a balanced portfolio?

Hi Everyone for those that reached 5-6m in invested assets. Did you decide to retire or keep working and how hard was it motivating yourself to go to work everyday and deal with the usual corporate struggles? Thank you for all of your valuable insights as always !!