Verified account. This is a 1 year update from when we hit $5M in 2025. Our careers and investments have gone bananas, especially with this bull run.

2025 post: https://www.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/s/mxvCrdQWAP

2026 NW breakdown:

$4.4M - index funds + stocks
$300k - cash (very untrusting of the current market hype)
$300k - alt investments
$350k - ESOP
$1.6 M equity in properties, broken up by:

2 rentals & a $1.2M primary house with a $400k mortgage left

Our income;
HHI: $1M, which is doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
$300k husbands tech job
$700k business owner (saas), my income is definitely more fluctuating in nature, can go between $500k-1M

Spending: We still spend 120k a year. I thought it would go up but it really hasn’t.

We still drive normal cars and have a small house in a semi-nice area. It’s not our dream home but it keeps us from falling into lifestyle creep.

Last year I was weighing up if we should tell people, and I’m so glad we didn’t. It seems to only bring unwanted attention from what I’ve seen with others. Only our parents/inlaws know as we help them out.

It feels peaceful. Like a sigh of relief than we will be ok. And if AI comes and takes both our jobs, at least we will be ok, which is a huge privilege in itself.

I have been thinking about something a lot lately. When should kids know about how money their family has?

If you have a lot of money and a big plan for what happens to it when you are gone do you tell your kids about it or do you keep it a secret until they are older?

I am not really worried about making sure everything is taken care of when I'm gone. I am worried that if my kids know much about our money too soon it might change what they want to do with their lives or the kind of work they want to have.

For people who're a little ahead of me, in life what did you do and would you do things differently if you could go back?

Over the last year I've been researching the semiconductor ecosystem and one thing that surprised me is how much attention goes to chip designers and GPU companies, while far less attention seems to be given to the companies that enable production and deployment.

I'm talking about businesses involved in areas like:

Advanced packaging

Semiconductor testing and inspection

Metrology and process control

High-purity systems and materials

Other physical infrastructure required to manufacture and scale advanced compute

It made me wonder whether the market is underestimating the importance of these infrastructure bottlenecks as AI demand continues to grow.

For those who follow semis closely:

Do you think this part of the supply chain is underappreciated by investors?

Are there existing investment products that already capture this exposure well?

Which infrastructure companies do you think will become more important over the next 5–10 years?

I'm genuinely interested in hearing different perspectives and seeing if others have come to similar conclusions. Also would love feedback on whether investors would find this type of exposure useful

I'm more chubby than fat but I live a modest lifestyle and I'm pretty a ok with that. I doubt the wife would want to move at this point anyway. I'm young, at least at heart at 41. I've been out of the game for a couple years now after a layoff. I just tell people I'm living off of savings and odd jobs which is like kind of true.

I'm kind of bored. My days mostly consist of getting coffee and the latest comics plus working out which by all means is great. I honestly don't know what the hell I want at this point. I day dream about starting something but I'm not even sure if that makes sense.

I lost a friend recently which sucks considering I already had none. Lack of a real community is killing me. I'm in the Detroit metro and the average age here is old.

If you have advice, inspiration or recommendations let's here them. Appreciate it, thanks.

From searching this sub, it seems that most folks are considering a 5%-6% real return (so adjusted for inflation) when they want to be conservative in their planning. However, when we spoke to Vanguard and Charles Schwab planners, they used rates that were WAY more conservative - roughly around 3.6%-3.9%. That's a pretty significant difference and changes our calculations in a big way. I'm not really sure what rate to rely on because I do want to be conservative but not so much that I end up delaying retirement for no reason?

Late 40s, $9M NW, still grinding — at what point did you actually feel "enough"?

Long time lurker, first post. I've been in a highstress professional services career for over 20 years. Net worth sits around $9M, mostly in diversified equities, some real estate, no debt. Household spending runs about $180k a year and I can't imagine it jumping dramatically in retirement.

By the math, I know we're there. The 4% rule, Monte Carlo simulations, conversations with our financial planner all say the same thing. We could stop tomorrow and almost certainly be fine.

And yet I keep going. I tell myself it's about one more year, building a bigger cushion, staying sharp. But honestly I think it's psychological at this point, not financial.

For those of you who have crossed over, I'm curious what actually shifted for you. Was it a number, a life event, hitting a specific milestone, or just a slow internal change where one day you realized you genuinely felt done?

I'm also wondering if anyone found working with a therapist or coach who specifically understands high earners and wealth transitions to be helpful. Not looking for financial advice here, more the human side of it.

Would appreciate honest takes from people who have been through it. What did crossing that mental finish line actually look like for you?

I'm 45, my wife is 48, and we recently crossed $8M in net worth and are now at roughly $8.2M. Here's our breakdown:

- Stock market investments: $5.7M
- Cash: $1.3M
- Home: $1.2M (paid off)

I know we're carrying a lot of cash, but we're considering buying a home in a lower-tax state soon (we live in NY), selling our current home, and then balancing our buckets a bit better.

I run my own business, so with expenses, our current monthly spend is around $30,000. If I stopped working, I could cut our expenses down nearly 20% to probably $23,000 to $25,000 per month. And of course, if things in our portfolio changed for the worse, we'd be able to go lower. But our preference is to continue living our normal lifestyle.

I will likely inherit my parents' home (worth roughly $400,000 today) in 20 years or so, and maybe have minimal Social Security, but I don't really count that stuff as I think about this situation.

I've run the numbers on Claude and ChatGPT and whatnot, and the answers all seem to swing wildly. Sometimes it says I can spend $18,000, and other times it will tell me to spend $28,000, just depending on the style of analysis.

My hope is that someone has either A) lived something similar to this and has some advice, or B) understands how to truly run the numbers so I can get a little confidence in either direction (yes I can retire, no I cannot, or even "work 5 more years at $500K" or whatever.)

Can we retire?

Happy to answer any questions. Totally open book and just looking for a bit of guidance, as I've inherited a very worrisome money mindset from my father.

Appreciate everyone.

A few years ago I had a very clear number in my head. I told myself that once I reached it, I'd stop worrying so much about money. It wasn't about retiring early, just getting to the point where I'd feel secure enough to relax a little.

The strange part is I've passed that number, and my thinking hasn't really changed. Instead of feeling finished, my brain immediately came up with a new target. Then another one. I have some money saved up, invest consistently, and objectively I'm in a much better position than I ever expected to be. But when I look at my finances, I still find myself thinking things like just a little more and then I'll feel comfortable.

What surprised me is that the goalposts seem to move on their own. The number changes, but the feeling doesn't. I'm not complaining because I know it's a fortunate position to be in, but I'm starting to wonder if financial security is partly psychological. For those who have already reached what used to be your dream number, did you ever actually feel like you'd made it, or did your definition of enough keep changing too?

For those of you now in the stage of 401k withdrawal, how do you keep your tax bracket down? Lets make a couple assumptions, annual expenses are 200k per year, social security is 80k per year, the rest is covered by 401k withdrawals, married filing jointly.

There is really no way in this scenario to avoid the 22% and 24% tax brackets is there? Early on you could have contributed to Roth instead of 401k and diversified in that way, but now it is basically too late to keep all 401k withdrawals in the 12% tax bracket? Any ideas? Obviously reducing annual expenses is one option, but let’s assume we want to keep that constant.

Current HH income is 450k a year, but we feel stressed by the grind and want to retire in 5 years and spend more time with kids when they are still young, we don’t know many people at work who retire this early and wanted a sanity check if we’re being too optimistic about our finances. Do we have enough in 5 years or are we too optimistic here?

Currently: 41 married with 2 kids (4 and 7) -529 is done funded at 400k. House paid off no mortgage worth 1mm. We live in a MCOL suburb and spend about 100k a year. Budgeting around 220k a year in retirement (including health insurance, and converting 220k a year to Roth- estimating tax to be 50k)

Based on average returns and continued investments into these accounts, I’m expecting in 5 years to get to -

Total investments and cash: 6.5mm
401k: 2.6mm
Brokerage: 3mm
Roth: 600k
Cash: 400k

Interested in the community’s thoughts on my very lucky situation. 

Me (32M) and wife (32F) live in VHCOL city and are planning for kids in the next year or two. My current role is demanding, but due to RSU appreciation very high paying. The company is not public, but has given liquidity opportunities the last several years. My wife works for the state part time, but gets full benefits and a pension after 20 years of work. She enjoys the work and sees herself doing it for the foreseeable future. I have questions around kids, concentration risk, early 30’s retirement, and opportunity cost risk. 

Job situation

Me - 50hrs/week, $250k base + $1.4M/year in RSUs. (The RSUs will reduce to $600k in July of 2027). 
Wife - 20 hrs/week, $50k/year, only two years in but enjoys the work

Current plan - continue working until July 2027 (when compensation decreases) and then leave to take a break and care for the kids in the first few years before primary school starts. 

Current Net-worth breakdown

Total - ~$6M 

1. Investable total - $5.3M 
   1. Cash - $100k
   2. Taxable total - $3.8M 
      1. $1.6M in semi-liquid pre-IPO company which does yearly tender offers. 
      2. $2.2M in liquid brokerage accounts - Index funds - this is from regular tender sales of the above.

       

   3. Traditional retirement - $670k (me + wife) 
   4. Roth retirement - $650k (me + wife)
   5. HSA - $50k

    

2. Home - $1.1M - this is a pretty modest home in a nice part of town in our city. 
3. Debt - $340k on 15yr mortgage at 2.125% with 9 years left on note.

 

Expenses Total - $170k / year

Essential - $100k/year

• Mortgage - $50k
• Home repair - $10k
• Groceries - $15k
• Transportation - $5k 
• Utilities - $5k
• Pet care - $5k 
• Health - $5k
• Etc - $5k 
• Not including health insurance because my wife is planning on continuing to work part time with benefits.

 

Discretionary - $70k/year

• Vacation - $26k 
• Gifts - $10k
• Fun fund - $10k
• Dining out - $10k 
• House cleaners - $4k
• Etc - the rest - $10k

 

Thoughts

If we count the private equity, we are able to RE given our current nest egg ($5.3M) and expenses ($170k)  - roughly 3.25% withdrawal rate. If I don’t count the private equity, the math works out closer to a 4.6% withdrawal rate, but we will have my wife’s income until she doesn’t want to work, and some discretionary spending flexibility. I think the math mostly works with kids if we assume ~$15k/year in cost per kid (assuming I’m doing child care) - we’d like 2. 

If I add the kid cost in - total costs rise to $200k / year for a while - which is still within the 4% rule counting private equity, and less if my wife continues to work. 

I would love to stop working my current job in July 2027. I find the job very stressful, and it has impacted my health (high blood pressure, overweight, etc). July 2027 would be after a large equity cliff, if I stayed, comp would drop to ~$850k/year which is still an insane amount of money, which is part of why I'm second-guessing leaving.

I have a few worries: 

1. Unexpected child costs - I’m worried that I’m underestimating the cost of having kids, or the risks associated with leaving work just before having kids. Am I thinking about the total costs correctly? 
2. Concentration risk - The company I work for is not public, and historically only gives liquidity opportunities once per year. It has been very successful and I take every opportunity in tender offers to diversify, but my current plan is still to leave with a significant portion of my net worth invested in the company. How would others value this equity? 
3. Opportunity cost - my current compensation is insane. I don’t think I will ever strike it this lucky again, would I be nuts to leave this job? 
4. Wife work dependency - my wife working and providing benefits feels like an important part of the plan (is this true)? It feels safe because she is working part time already and enjoys it, but I’m also thinking about how much to depend on this. 
5. Very early retirement - I am perhaps overindexing on money in this situation, I’m curious how many folks actually never earn another dime after they have left work, especially in early 30s. 
6. Anything else I’m missing?

 

Some options I’m considering: 

1. Work my last year and leave July 2027 (current plan) 
2. Work until kid 2 arrives. 
3. Leave now 
4. Work until the Lord takes me.

 

Thank you in advance! 

Incoming likely r/fijerk cross-post

One of the key things I see on r/fire is not to plan for inheritance until it hits your bank. I think this is the right way to think and exactly how my wife and I have been planning our finances in the first 10ish years of our careers. It helped us to get in the 10ish % range of our retirement number while still having a lot of fun.

But lately I have realized that planning for zero inheritance might be a little conservative. I’m not in the scenario where inheritance would be as much or more than our FIRE number, but it is way more than negligible.

It’s not all that relevant right now, but if I plan for no inheritance, we likely have 20-25 more years of work to get to our full retirement number. If instead I plan for what we realistically could inherit, we’d likely be at our FIRE number in 10 years or less.

Now even if I got guarantees from all parents involved on intended inheritance, I wouldn’t retire with it fully accounted for as there’s just too many variables. But it also seems too conservative to completely write off a committed and planned inheritance literally until the day it’s in your account.

Thoughts from ya’ll? It’s mostly just a thought exercise, not looking for a concrete answer. Posting here as opposed to the main FIRE forum as I think fatFIRE might have more folks that receive inheritances in the range of 30-50% or more of their FIRE number.

​

Part of me wants a cushy IT job. That ship has sailed. I was making 100k+/year barely doing anything and almost 200k/year for over two years. Now I can't even land a 60k/year job.

I used to be cheap af. Now I'm living like a normal person and my cost of living is going to jump to 50k/year after tax. I want at least enough money coming in to not touch the invested 500k.

Ideally, I want the work I do to be challenging and a scalable skillset that I can eventually do for myself. The only one that comes to mind is sales though...

I come from a health and IT background with over three years working as a software developer. Since I half-assed it and coasted on my salary and saving, I never grew any skills and now my skills are heavily outdated even for a junior job.

For context, the way to get me to act is routine, dealing with people in some pressured way, and repetition that I can tweak. I like optimizing systems and learning about human behavior.

I have a few options:

\- Keep applying and networking for IT roles. It's been almost a year already.

\- Get my PMP. I may be able to secure a somewhat cushy project manager role. Perhaps in IT. No guarantees.

\- Get into sales. Go all out on learning, and try to get into IT sales or even IT health sales, eventually doing consulting, and selling my own products.

Suggestions?

I quit my corporate tech job at 65, but it feels like early retirement because I feel super young, my wife is 36 and still plans to work for 20 years, and I have a five and seven year old. I’m torn between continuing to work on money making projects like app development, real estate, and real estate because I’m driven and want to set a good example for kids. Or, just having fun doing my own thing and maximizing time with the kids. I’m also concerned about resentment from my wife if she’s working all day and I’m off golfing, or tennis, or whatever. Maybe there’s another subreddit for this, but what are everyone’s thoughts?

44yo with over 12M in investments/retirements and a 500k/year income (passive+part timing). Everything is paid off including my kid's college. Have 2 grade school children.

Do you guys find that eventually there's nothing else left to buy if you want to keep it on the down low? I mean sure there are always something you can buy to blow your money, but eventually you hit a hard wall with diminishing in returns while getting unwanted attention. I honestly don't feel comfortable coming out of a Bentley/Lambo with an AP Royal Oak and LV my entire wardrobe. I mean I would totally buy a Ferrari due to my desire for them, but there's no way this desire supersede random stranger's attention every time I go out.

I know most people say travel is the answer, but with it's difficult when kids have school so you are limited to their schedules. Even when I do travel, I enjoy living and talking with the locals and not hide away in 5 star resorts. I especially like for my children to experience 3rd world harshness so they can appreciate the life they have since these opportunities are more rare in the States. More importantly, I want my children to understand they are not above others and must continue to feel comfortable in harsh environments while interacting with people with little status or money.

Others may say "spend it on food" but our palette is unaccustomed to the culinary arts. In fact my wife just enjoys her noodle soups with simple beef (no seafood, no wagyu, no nothing).

Curious what you guys are spending your money on if you already more than satisfy with what you already have? I am trying to find this balance in which my kids are raised to understand the value of the dollar and hard work while not ending up not enjoying life. Even with current financial situation, my wife and I still show up to work(part time) making insignificant amounts of money and still answers to a time card/supervisor just to be a role model(even though deep down we are totally done with work).

Edit: Seems like people thinks I am looking for ways to spend money which is not the case. I am seeing if there are other Fat Fire people in my situation and if there's anything learned/regrets dealing with this scenario.

I just returned from about a 2 week long trip in Europe (Germany, Austria, Prague). As I am sure many of you are aware, the heat wave in Europe can make for some unpleasant nights. We stayed at decent hotels (ex: Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten Kempinski Munich) during our trip, but oddly the hotels still didn't really get "cold", not to mention they didn't dehumidify the rooms, just cooled. It seems the heat problem may be here to stay. What are other folks doing or planning on doing while vacationing in Europe. I'll refrain from commenting on getting ice. :)

So a bit of a conundrum. Currently, in Bay Area with a decent role in tech. Husband is in a full remote position. Me in a 3 days a week hybrid situation. we have long been planning to move to Oregon from CA. The plan was to accumulate some more money in the Bay Area and then eventually move in 3 years or so from now. I was planning to take a remote / local role at a much lower comp and he could continue in his current remote set-up. currently I make about 800-900K per year and he makes about 250K annually. NW about ~8M with two toddlers.

However he would be required to go in office very soon because employees close to his office need to go back to office 3 times a week. [our house is right at the threshold (everyone within 50 miles needs to go and we are right at 49 miles]. So the commute is going to be really rough for him given he has been working remote for last 5+ years. mine has been 3 days a week for since covid and I'm used to commuting this long (mine is actually slightly worse). also next year our older one would be going to Kindergarten, however she is Oct born so she will have to go to a private school however there aren't any good options within reasonable distance and would be a struggle given both of us would need to be in office 3 times a week.

Now if we move to Oregon

• He can still keep his job remote
• We would be able to send her to our preferred school and she wouldn't need to change schools a couple of grades down the road if move a few years later (as planned initially)
• however I would need to fly roughly 30 times or so annually to satisfy in office requirements. these trips would be 3 days and 2 nights each.

Another option would be to relocate locally here to a more commute friendly location.

• however we have no appetite to buy another property for only a few years(and it won't be cheap).
• Or we rent (and rent out our current place). I just can't image renting again especially with young kids. also it won't be cheap as well.

Lastly we stay put at our current place but then schooling situation next year would be rough. we will need to manage school pick-ups/drops with office commutes.

I'm kind of torn what's the best move here. also once my husband starts going to office, he is locked into in-office and won't be able to go back to remote ever again. we have some family and friends at both places.

Couple 38 (me) and 35 years old, no kids.
Annual Expenses projected in retirement: $239k
Paid off house $800k worth
Invested assets+cash: $6.5M

I love my job but I have had hypermobility related health issues for years that might benefit from retiring or taking a break from my desk job and work stress. I have a good set of hobbies and good social circle. I don't think I will have trouble keeping myself occupied with fitness, community and hobbies but I might miss the intellectual stimulation and deep engagement that my work offers.

If you were me, would you retire from my $1M+ a year job? Husband makes $500k a year and wants to work for 5 more years and get us to FIRE.

I'm curious how people who are now financially successful think about educational investments in hindsight. I'm considering a one-year M.S. in Medical Science (~$14k) to strengthen my dental school application. I come from a lower-income background, work while in school, and would likely need to finance part of the degree.

Looking back, would you have made this investment if it significantly increased your chances of entering a high-earning profession? Or would you have chosen a different path? I'm less interested in whether dentistry is a good career and more interested in how people who have built wealth think about investing in themselves early on.

Context: Mid-30s, Bay Area. Currently making $240k W-2 in tech. On top of that, I also do content creation that's grown to around $60-$80k/r. At this point, it probaby isn't much of a side hustle anymore. My account has been growing pretty quickly, which I can assure.

My net worth is around $1.8M, mostly in a brokerage acc and vested equity, plus some rental real estate.

Rn, I'm just reporting the content income on Schedule C and tracking deductions for things like editing, software and equipment. It works, but I don't have much confident that I'm optimizing everything.

Would love to hear from anyone who's been in a similar situation with both W-2 income and a growing business. Did you get like tax consultants for high net worth individuals, or you have this CPA who handle everything