r/fatFIRE

Late 40s. $12M net worth, ~$10M fatFIRE (net worth minus house). The $10M is pretty much all a three-fund portfolio. But bond allocation is very low. ~5-6% currently.

I figure I should get to at least 10% to have 2 years‘ expenses plus a little (annual expenses are ~$400K, kid in private school, VHCOL).

But should I actually be aiming for 20% or more in bonds? Traditional advice I think would say 70% stock allocation by 50yo.

I‘m heavily biased by the long bull run and bonds looking like a drag on my portfolio for basically as long as I’ve been investing. I’m not saying that’s correct, just the emotional bias I know I have here.

So, more bonds?

And, assuming so, best way to hold them between taxable and retirement accounts?

(I also keep a couple hundred K in cash, but nothing that affects the numbers much.)

Thinking of buying a 4M house in the Bay Area. It’s nothing luxurious, just like a regular home anywhere else. We’re drawn to it due to short commutes and good schools.

Here are our financials

Net worth - 10M

Breakdown
Brokerage - 7.3M
Cash - 1.3M
401ks - 1.4M

Income
Base - 550K combined. This will continue
Variable - 2M (this year). Assume 0 for next year onward for job optionally.

Our non-housing spending is about 100K a year now, but we have a kid on the way. Late 30s

To fund the 4M house we’d put down 1.3M cash now, use this years variable pay to pay down another 1M so in a year we’d be left with 1.7M mortgage and 2.3M in.
But even that has 15K+ a month burn at 5% interest. Seems crazy to be spending that. Even fully paid of it’s a 6K a month burn.

Just wanted to get a quick vibe check of the buyer profile here for these homes. I am wondering if we are overdoing it.

Dual working couple in Corporate jobs, 5M NW living in LCOL/MCOL, thinking in moving to Southern Europe.

Current situation:

- $700k of equity in primary home, about $350K of Debt on the that home which is worth close to $1.1M/ 3 rentals with about 1M of equity which I should sell, and the rest is essentially invested in VOO.

- In the last 3 years I got promoted to C level of a medium sized company, now make around $500K a year and my spouse makes $250k, probably I have a raise of $75K/year raise coming this year.

- Current spend level is about USD200k/year already with some extensive international travel, and one month per year in spain/portugal.

- Just for fun, we are now demolishing our current home, spending 900k building a new home, which I estimate will add $500K of equity once completed.

The plan is to move to Spain or Portugal and dial back on the hours and stress, but I still find something meaningful to do while there, maybe some boards of large corporations, etc.

I am a bit shocked with the cost of living will be there for our situation, my overview:

- A nice 3/4 bedroom in a nice part of Lisbon/Madrid is 1 to 1.5M Eur

- International schools add 50k euro per year, this will only be for a couple of years, but still a significant expense.

- Except for these 2 expenses the rest is cheap, so maybe another 40k eur in COL with some travelling within europe.

- I thought it would be cheaper to live there, but wanting a nice apartment and the constraint of international schools keeps fixed costs high until the youngest finishes high school.

Next year Net worth probably will reach $6M, but even with that I feel this is way too close to be able to hang my boots. I really fear the sequence of negative returns with valuations being so high. I keep defaulting that I should be able to make it using a 3 or 4% rule of about 50% of my investable assets since prices will come down.

Anyone with the same issues, what advise do you have?

What do you guys think?

Some folks over at /fire said I may get better responses here...

52M, married, 3 kids - 1 middle school, 1 high school, 1 college. Spouse does not work. VHCOL area that we will stay in at least until the youngest is in college. Was a minority owner in a startup that sold to PE in 2022, which added ~$3M to my $1M investment portfolio (mostly 401k/roth (so total now is approximately $4M.)

PE has indicated they are in no hurry to sell, and shocked us in our last board meeting with a "we'll be here in 2030" statement. That's beyond my acceptable horizon. They've also indicated they would be interested in buying any of us out if interested.

They're also planning on making some financial engineering moves that make little business strategic sense, like merging us with another portfolio company that is 1) not doing well and 2) not really strategically a good business move (we would NEVER have come up with that acquisition candidate on our own).

Having a good year, at the end of this year I could sell all or partial equity from anywhere between $2.6 - $4.5 depending on variables of how much and for how much. No doubt that if I rode it out and the outlook remained positive, I could double or triple that.

Business is good, outlook is good, but 1) I'm exhausted - 11 years in from true startup at this point 2) I don't like the PE decision making 3) I see lots of risks - some are macroeconomic (geopolitical, AI). some are internal, some PE driven 4) This 11 year feeling of working toward an exit event has just taken a toll on my mental state.

I'm already beyond what I though I would achieve, struggling with when is enough enough decision. I'd probably stick around for another year transitioning to a lower stress role, but ultimately I think I would need to make a clean break. I won't retire, I'll have to do something else, but I'll finally quit chasing the ring. Struggling now with wondering if the low end of that value is enough, and whether I'd be irresponsible to take the early buyout, and of course - whether I'll regret the decision.

First time contributor. I've been here a long time and am grateful for the discussion. I also want to start off by saying I know we're very fortunate and try to keep everything in perspective. Many of our friends and certainly our family do not have it as good as us so we're very, very fortunate.

I wanted to throw out a post about spending. I've seen people comment that $250k is "more than enough". Am I just delusional?

I just finished a very high level spend analysis for the past 12 months. Just wanted to show people how "easy" it is to spend mid six figures and not really even feel "rich". Some of the stuff below is "one time" or "temporary" but it seems like there's always another "one time" expense that pops up!

Why it's relevant to FF:
I think too many people here think spending $500k per year means you're flying private or maintaining multiple houses. I'm hoping to illustrate how money can go quick without the "upper class" feel. Or perhaps get perspective about my own spending from you all?

Some about us:

• HH income around $3m last year

• NW around $10m. This is excluding principal res but including remaining mortgage balance.

• Couple in early 40s, 1 small child

• MCOL city

• We have one house, two cars

• We do support three other family members (two parents and one aunt) via owning the homes they live in and paying for a lot of their expenses. I tried to separate that out below but it's hard to track exactly.

My very high level spending last 12 months:

• Country club: $35k
• Dining, trips, flights, yard, insurance (home/auto/etc), pretty much everything on credit card :$190k. This is obviously a big number and where I'm focusing to see if there's slack. I estimate about $75k of this is two international trips. Flew economy but stayed in nice hotels (FS, Ritz).
• Health costs: $10k
• Lawyers (will, etc): $10k
• Shopping other than on credit card: $10k
• Home repair/mortgage/prop tax/utilities: $160k
• Nanny $65k
• Family member support :$50k

Total around $530k. Obviously doesn't include any income taxes.

*Edited to clarify that my house/mortgage isn't $10m lol. My house is around $2 with morgage around $1.5m

FIREd last March (see post here) - since then our NW has gone up to about $10M-$11M.

My wife is still working and making about $200k/yr.

I've loved the past 14 months of retirement - spent time with the kids, flown across the world to see family/friends multiple times, explored a ton of my 'to-do/to-explore' list, etc etc

I'm still really enjoying it (currently vibecoding various passion projects).

Throughout the last 14 months, I'm still consistently getting executive recruiters reaching out to me about potential opportunities, and I've generally not been interested in them. However, recently there has been 2 that have made me wavier a little.

Both of these opportunities are aligned with my passion area (and skills), and I'm tempted. But also I don't want to take on more responsibilities again...

One of the opportunities is with a very big private company, doing something in the space I'm interested in, with a lot of freedom/autonomy, very little short term financial pressure - this company has the resources ($, brand equity, distribution, etc) to really have an impact in the area I'm passionate about (and the same area where my current personal passion projects are) - but I'd have to be an organizational leader/building a team to a good size (hundreds of people+) over the next few years, and I'm not sure if I'm motivated enough to take on that kind of responsibility again.

The other opportunity is with an established and well funded/profitable startup that has been around for a long while, and has gained significant traction recently. This one is also operating in the same space I'm passionate about - I'd basically be the right hand of the founder and be groomed to take over from the founder.

Both opportunities are tempting me... comp is kind of irrelevant here since I'm not taking these for the comp (the big private company's total comp would be around $800k/yr, the startup would be around $250k/yr + ~$500k/yr in equity based on the valuation from the latest round).

I think I should just stay retired, but part of me is itching to take one of the opportunities because they align so much with my passion space anyways...

Any advice from those of you who've retired and gone through similar experiences/thoughts?

I (47F) am planning to FatFIRE in a year and currently thinking of structuring my cash/bond portfolio to hedge both SORR and FX concerns. Critiques and ideas welcome. All number converted to USD for ease.

Investable NW 20m, total NW 25m. 10% of investable assets in GBP, rest in USD. No debt.

Spend is 400k/yr post tax, currently in GBP and likely to remain so until children out of school in 2035. In extreme circs this could go down to 250k if needed.

(Spend after 2035 assumed to be in USD as we will split our time between several countries with 2/3 pegged to USD.)

Dual US/UK citizenship so tax is tricky.

My current plan is to hold 3-5 years of spend in a Gilt ladder as both a SORR and FX hedge. Everything else in broad based equity ETFs. The Gilts are close to tax exempt in the UK and will be taxed as normal in the US.

Questions for the global fatties out there:

1. Am I right to view the Gilt ladder as both a SORR hedge AND a FX hedge? The plan would be to extend the ladder each year as rungs are consumed unless equity market down by >X% (where X = 15%?)

2. Anyone have better ideas than this?

3. Is a ~5% allocation to cash/bonds too low? We have been 95% equity (outside of RE) until this point.

Seems having pets is a major hassle when you are planning extensive or frequent travels. What do you do with them? Pet sitters? Kennels? Have a family member house sit? Bring them with you even internationally?

I think the easiest thing to do is have a pet free life or give up the months long travel dreams for shorter trips but curious what you all do with your pets. 🤷

39M, $8M liquid net worth plus a lot more on the illiquid side (pre IPO tech employer).

I travel internationally about four times a year, mostly to Europe and Asia. Most times for two people.

I never flew business class, always economy. To book, I typically just look at convenient cash fares on Google Flights, or if I happen to have enough credit card points or easy signup bonuses I leverage those to perhaps get a “free” flight, but it’s more rare and it’s a lot more inflexible so I tend to stay with 3-5% cash back cards. Even if I wanted to, my total credit card spending also wouldn’t support getting enough points to book eight RT flights in business.

So I wanted to ask: how do you book business class? Do you go through the same process and end up paying the $5-8k retail ticket price per person, or is there a slightly better way? A coworker a while ago was telling me he had some sort of broker that could get him all business flights for 50% off retail, but don’t know details.

It’s a big step for me and I think I’m ready to book something more comfortable, just checking if I’m missing anything.

Thanks!

Hey all. I have a question for the group about mindset. NW of between 10-12m. It was earned through w2, equity investing, and real estate investments. Like many others this wasn’t a pop overnight but a 15-20yr journey. And now I find myself in my mid 40s.

I recently purchased my dream house and moved our family. Not sure if it’s just some buyers remorse, or overwhelm, but my wife and I are actually considering moving back to our old house which we still have.

On paper we can afford the new house nbd. We have solid cashflow from real estate, equities compounding, and basically no debt - we have a mortgage on the new house but would pay it off when we sell the old one. The delta between the homes is around $1m, and the carry costs are effectively doubles. $50-70k at the old house $100-130k at the new between tax, insurance, maintenance and whatever projects I’m doing since I can’t sit still.

As I said we can afford this. But I think the entire process exposed something else. I can see the numbers on the screen, I see them go up or down or whatever. But all I really feel is the rental income. I left my job the end of last year, and solely operate the rentals. They net around $300k/yr alone in cashflow, and they appreciate and they ensure I pay no taxes plus the equities appreciate. So my income feels low to me these days and a bit abstract, since it’s really the equivalent of a $500k/yr job taxed at ordinary income. And overall the realization I had is that my mindset has simply not adjusted to the our reality. Im finding myself kinda confused since I still look at many things like $1000 is a lot of money and I’m kinda locked into “but I don’t have a job” so I’m conserving mentality. I know if I remain disciplined for 7-14more years our reality estate equity + equities likely take us to $20m +/- 20%. So my goal has been just don’t touch anything until retirement age. That said I am not sure what I could possibly do in 15yrs with $20m I can’t do now. Other than this house purchase and its significant carry costs we kinda live modestly. But we do have 4 kids and are entering the high spend years (outside the NW I have 529s funded for college, so that’s also nearly done it’s just a few more years contributions needed to cover it).

Anyway. With that whole rant. Any tips or experiences shares of this process for others would help. After decades of discipline and goals it seems strange not to have that mission and live off the accomplishments

Just trying to give a few lessons learned that I learned today so someone does not need to learn this the hard way.

Long story short:

So, we are family of 4, and my Cobra is expiring in a month.

I got the HSA plan through CoveredCA, mainly because I already contributed my HSA in January and have to stay with HDHP.

So, Lession 1: don't contribute too early unless you really want a HDHP.

#2 It's hard to get good dental coverage. I think most of plans (if not all) you can find has 6 month waiting period and missing tooth clause. There is not much we can do with the missing tooth clause, but remember to get "proof of prior coverage" before your current plan expired so you can waive the waiting period clause.

I ended up canceled the dental plan I found from the exchange and bought from Delta for their PPO Premium plan (vs just PPO). It is a little bit more than what they offered on the Exchange (Maximum coverage $1500 vs $2000) for $266 a month (vs $188.x from the exchange), but I still need to submit my proof of coverage. It is such a hassle because it's an after-thought of the other insurance company (MetLife).

I wonder what's everyone else buying with FatFire lifestyle ? Do you just pay cash in full ?

I’m curious if anyone else has gone through this, but neither of my parents made it to 70 (cancer for both). I can vividly remember when they retired around late 50s / 60 years old and those first few years they were significantly happier. They went back and lived in Europe for a few months where they grew up, spent more time coming to visit me, etc. They laughed and smiled more. Then health became an issue for years and ruined their retirement. After my dad died my mom struggled emotionally then only made it a few years herself.

Anyway, I’m now in my late 30s sitting at around 7.5M net worth with 2 kids. It’s not fat by common standards, but it is if I live to the same age as my parents. Now obviously I hope my wife makes it much longer than me and it doesn’t guarantee I die before 70 also, but I have found that since their deaths I have been thinking a lot more about making sure I have time to travel and focus a lot on my own health. Currently I don’t sleep well and struggle to find time for exercise. But as long as my wife and I have work from home corporate jobs we’re just like why not keep it going. We make around 370k combined.

I’m just curious to see if anyone else has experienced something similar and how that has impacted your decision making process around pulling the trigger earlier.

I made 160k a year before I was impacted by a layoff - now deciding if it’s time I hang it up for good. Put in my numbers in Boldin and it looks rosy (age 90 shows $11M NW w/ average returns). I went conservative with 6% asset appreciation, and heavier spending (up to$140K/yr) until 65 for travel and even added an additional $200k for an immediate purchase of my dream car! Not planning on leaving much for any heirs, and Boldin is still showing 99% chance of not running out of money without doing Roth conversions. I also feel I have my RE to cash out of if I need liquid funds. Still, I feel hesitant in stopping work altogether, but I know I have the flexibility to work again (part time / contract) if needed, albeit harder as I get older to find work as a tech PM, and should the market crash for a few years. LMK your thoughts on my situation thanks in advance!

M:44 W:40 / 3 Kids
Money is not a major focus.

Grew up in an immigrant household and was pushed then pushed myself. We are in the ballpark of comfortable retirement, and I don't think about money a lot though oddly survival/protecting my kids is. My dad had a very rough childhood, and he prepared us early to survive. Hard to shake that (if you have tips, I'd welcome them).

I am curious how folks have found way to slow down and appreciate things. My brain is wired kind of strangely where sitting down with a hobby or interest can make me hyper fixate. I just want to be more here in the moment. I am wondering if anyone has tips on things that slowed their mind down without forcing it to focus on something else.

The closest thing I have is not very fat, but it's taking a brief walk everyday and sitting with my kids with no agenda. Very mundane stuff but it seems to bring me back to the moment.

Serious question: which cities or countries give the best chance to become a millionaire purely through a salaried job?

No inheritance, no startups, no business owners, just employees + investing.

Are there any accurate rankings

I’m mid-40’s, high earner exec. Spouse retired to support career/family demands. We have approx 4.2m in invested assets now split between taxable, 401k, HSA, 529s for kids and I max the 401k/HSA and contribute another 6k per month to taxable/HSA. Past that, we live a pretty plush life (at least according to my standards) good vacations, nice, paid for cars, nice home with super low interest rate, and we eat/shop/do as we please. We both grew up opposite of this lifestyle so it’s nice to have climbed out of our childhoods. Anyway, the company I work for was purchased by PE and I have potential for a solid payout some years down the line. But, it’s soul-sucking, affecting my health, and is really zapping the energy in my life right now. At the end of the day I know myself and I’ll push through so that I can fat-fire at the end of that rainbow. But damn I daydream often about an epic peace-out and just living a leaner fire life. Any stories of people that gutted out something similar and are really happy they did? Or conversely anyone that left early and regretted or was happy with the decision? It is of course very lonely in these roles and nobody feels any sympathy (which I don’t expect because I’d deeply understand how privileged these “problems” are). Appreciate any stories / support.

For those in the FatFIRE community who are child-free by choice (or strongly leaning that way), have you found it difficult to meet compatible long-term partners?
I’m 35F, and while finding high quality matches hasn’t been a challenge, finding true lifestyle compatibility has felt much harder. A lot of people still ultimately want a fairly traditional path centered around children, deep integration with family of origin, and putting down roots permanently in one place.
I’ve realized I lean a bit more unconventional. I value stability, healthy family relationships, and long-term partnership, but I also value adventure, autonomy, and location flexibility, at least at this stage of life.
For those here who built a life with that kind of freedom and found a compatible partner along the way while being FatFired or on the path to it:
-Where did you meet?
-Did you find it harder once you became financially successful or location-independent?
-Were there certain communities, cities, or environments where you found more like-minded people?

Curious how others in this community navigated this.

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I was fortunate enough to find a good investment in my traditional IRA, and it grew the balance to $1.5 million. But I was idiotic enough not to convert it to a Roth at the time.

Is it worthwhile for me to convert now? I’m fortunate to have a net worth of over $30 million, so estate planning is a concern.

I’m concerned that my income tax rate is unlikely ever to be low. The RMDs could be brutal once I reach that age. In addition, our family has about another $1.25 million in 401(k) assets. That can’t be converted directly to a Roth IRA, but it still has the RMD problem. We also may never need the money in these retirement accounts, so perhaps it makes sense to let them keep growing and eventually pass them to our kids. We understand that an inherited Roth IRA is generally much more flexible than an inherited traditional IRA.

On the other hand, we currently live in a high-tax state and are in the top tax bracket, so converting would be expensive.

We also have trusts set up, FWIW.

This is not easy to admit, and it's been bothering me for a while, especially as my kids begin to grow up and notice my behavior.

My house is big, stuff gets lost. Sometimes I can't find things, or can't be bothered to look, so I just order the same thing new from amazon shipped overnight.

I also don't return things, ever. I just throw them away. Often new things. Also, I'll just pay anyone to do anything, just so I don't have to do that myself.

Do you see the pattern? I wonder where's the line between convince and being wasteful. I don't care about money saved, I just want more time, but the optics of my action are terrible.