Retirement... (i.e. what are you going to be after you've grown up)

Khane

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Gravel said:
You seem to be purposefully missing the point just to create an argument. Have fun with that, not worth my time.

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I'm not. He made a silly argument that ignores CAGR trying to compare lifestyles of someone with 1m vs 5m. Its a disingenuous stance.
 
Cad

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Gravel said:
The point he was making was that if you have $5m, you're not flying a private jet. No matter how well your portfolio does, you'll never be the super rich. Yeah, it will provide you with more comfort, but you're still only living marginally better.

I hope this doesn't sound gloating, but when you've got as much money as we do, money isn't really a concern anymore. If I had an extra $5 million, what would I do with it? Not a whole lot different. Like I said, I'd probably build a nicer house in a nicer area. But it's not going to be a $10 million mansion on Hawaii. I'm not going to fly a private jet. I'd fly first class probably (assuming I fly, which I refuse to, but that's a different issue). I'd drive a slightly better car. I'd probably build a drum studio. Are any of these things life changing from where I'm at now, as someone who retired at 39? Absolutely not.
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For retirement though I'd argue the income provided by $5M will allow you to do a lot of things that $1M won't. If we simplify and just follow the 4% rule, $5M gives you $200k/yr you can use while $1M gives you $40k - to me that is a wildly different lifestyle.

I know I have more, but I plan to live off less than 50% of the gains so I'll continue to accumulate and models show if I make it to 80 or so I could have $100M by then, depending on my spending.

$5M is where it really starts to snowball like crazy and self-sustain assuming you don't start buying luxury items.
 
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Captain Suave

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Cad said:
For retirement though I'd argue the income provided by $5M will allow you to do a lot of things that $1M won't. If we simplify and just follow the 4% rule, $5M gives you $200k/yr you can use while $1M gives you $40k - to me that is a wildly different lifestyle.
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I'm fortunate enough to be in the middle ground you and Gravel are talking about at ~45. The wife and I plan to work for another 10-12 years until the kids are solidly launched and their lives don't depend exclusively on us. By that point between savings and gains we should be where our target lifestyle is comfortably under the 4% rule, which has great appeal for the financial conservative in me.

My current #firstworldproblem is that we put too much money early in tax-advantaged retirement accounts and despite having enough total assets for retirement we might not be able to do it at the age we would otherwise want without paying a withdrawal penalty.

Cad said:
I know I have more, but I plan to live off less than 50% of the gains so I'll continue to accumulate and models show if I make it to 80 or so I could have $100M by then, depending on my spending. $5M is where it really starts to snowball like crazy and self-sustain assuming you don't start buying luxury items.
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Yeah, the best-case gains if you are living inside of the incremental returns are stupid. According to these monte carlo simulations there's a good chance of ending up sitting on an absurd pile of money, but that's kinda what it takes to ensure that there's a >90% chance that you'll never run out if things go REALLY badly. I plan so that the 10th percentile performance still lets us be comfortable.

 
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mkopec

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Yeah, I got about 12 more years. I was a fool in my 20s and was silly with my cash, should have put more of it away. I would be well better off and prob retiring right now at 53. But I was a dumb fuck. But ive been pretty good since my 30s when I had the kids. Made me rethink a lot of shit. I dont regret any of it though. I had some good fucking times and memories. I mean I could probably pull it off right now but im still willing to work a bit longer.The job is easy and im good at it. Shit, post covid they have me going to office only 2x a week, lol. I still have both my 20 somethings living with me. So until they move the fuck on, there is no rush. I like having them around anyway. Place would not be the same without them. So yeah 10-12 more years is what I figure.
 
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Falstaff

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Gravel said:
The point he was making was that if you have $5m, you're not flying a private jet. No matter how well your portfolio does, you'll never be the super rich. Yeah, it will provide you with more comfort, but you're still only living marginally better.

I hope this doesn't sound gloating, but when you've got as much money as we do, money isn't really a concern anymore. If I had an extra $5 million, what would I do with it? Not a whole lot different. Like I said, I'd probably build a nicer house in a nicer area. But it's not going to be a $10 million mansion on Hawaii. I'm not going to fly a private jet. I'd fly first class probably (assuming I fly, which I refuse to, but that's a different issue). I'd drive a slightly better car. I'd probably build a drum studio. Are any of these things life changing from where I'm at now, as someone who retired at 39? Absolutely not.
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Cad

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Falstaff said:
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They're right, but there's nothing wrong with being the poorest rich person. You're still financially independent you're just going to have to live like a normal working stiff who just doesn't have to work.
 
300Lane1

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Both me and the wife are 43. I'm in government work and have been a PERS member for 20 years. I can collect my full retirement at 55 and that's been the plan. I contribute the max to my deferred comp and the wife does the same to her 401K. We've been maxing for a few years now and part of me feels like we should be doing something else on the side but haven't put much effort into it.

We are both born/raised in Cali but the plan is to leave. We love it here but the political landscape isn't getting any better and the taxes are ridiculous. We enjoy traveling and have a 5th wheel so we are considering purchasing a house in a income tax free state and using that as home base and then getting a small motorhome/super C to do our travling in.

A lot could change in the next 12 years, but I do think about retirement every day.
 
fris

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The fact that so many people in this thread are seriously talking about taking on "volunteer" gigs or "part-time" work during retirement is absolutely fucking insane to me.

Let's be real here: by the time most people hit retirement age, they've spent over three decades slogging through the grind. That's 30+ years of mind-numbing commutes, office politics, incompetent managers, and coworkers who range from barely functioning to outright repulsive. You've dealt with Carol microwaving fish in the breakroom every goddamn day, Steve who hasn't done a full day's work since 2003 but still somehow gets promoted, and some walking disaster of a supervisor whose entire skillset is emailing meeting invites and mispronouncing your name.

And now, with that shit finally behind you, you're telling me the dream is to... voluntarily walk back into that kind of environment? On your own time? For free? Are you out of your goddamn mind?

Here's a radical idea: don't. Don't spend your hard-earned, limited twilight years reenacting the same corporate nightmare you just barely escaped. Hit the gym to keep your knees from turning to dust, eat some vegetables so you don't stroke out at 70, but beyond that? Do nothing. You've paid your dues. You've spent decades as a wage slave, watching a third of your paycheck disappear into a black hole labeled "taxes" so your government can buy more missiles and potholes.

You're not obligated to "stay productive." You’re not a cog anymore. You earned rest. You earned boredom. You earned the right to wake up on a Tuesday and decide you're doing jack shit.

Retirement isn't some opportunity to prove you're still useful to the machine, it's your final, well-deserved middle finger to it. Use it, IMO.
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My grandmother died about 20 years before my grandfather. During those 20 years, he volunteered almost daily at the Hospice that my grandmother went through.

My dad is 75 and still bills about 30 hours a week as a CPA, more in March and April. He plans to see off more of his accounts and keep a few that are easy so he can keep taking my mom on cruises 3-4x a year.

Some just have a drive to be busy and productive, others can easily sit in the rocking chair while they slowly die
 
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BrutulTM

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Cad said:
For retirement though I'd argue the income provided by $5M will allow you to do a lot of things that $1M won't. If we simplify and just follow the 4% rule, $5M gives you $200k/yr you can use while $1M gives you $40k - to me that is a wildly different lifestyle.

I know I have more, but I plan to live off less than 50% of the gains so I'll continue to accumulate and models show if I make it to 80 or so I could have $100M by then, depending on my spending.

$5M is where it really starts to snowball like crazy and self-sustain assuming you don't start buying luxury items.
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You have to realize though, that you can always make the number keep going up . The question is where your life is actually better in a meaningful way. Obviously there's people with tens or hundreds of billions in net worth that are still killing themselves and buying politicians to let them fuck over millions of people to try to get more.

I've heard that no matter how much people have, when you ask them what they would need to be "comfortable" they tend to say double what they have. People with $1M say they would be comfortable if they had $2M, people with $10M say they would be comfortable if they had $20M, etc. If you have $200M and invest it at 5%, you can spend $27,000 a day without touching the principal but you can bet that most people with $200M are probably trying damn hard to get to $400M. You have to make a decision to say "This is enough." or it never will be.
 
Control

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BrutulTM said:
I've heard that no matter how much people have, when you ask them what they would need to be "comfortable" they tend to say double what they have.
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I can personally guarantee that some people would say more than double!
 
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Cad

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BrutulTM said:
You have to realize though, that you can always make the number keep going up . The question is where your life is actually better in a meaningful way. Obviously there's people with tens or hundreds of billions in net worth that are still killing themselves and buying politicians to let them fuck over millions of people to try to get more.

I've heard that no matter how much people have, when you ask them what they would need to be "comfortable" they tend to say double what they have. People with $1M say they would be comfortable if they had $2M, people with $10M say they would be comfortable if they had $20M, etc. If you have $200M and invest it at 5%, you can spend $27,000 a day without touching the principal but you can bet that most people with $200M are probably trying damn hard to get to $400M. You have to make a decision to say "This is enough." or it never will be.
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Yes, but I'm not doing anything to accumulate anymore, my investments are just growing on their own. I probably could have quit earlier, almost certainly I could have, but there's a lot of good timing coincidences that work out for now.
 
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Burren

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I just want to race cars and pet dogs while drinking and eating well. Not too much to ask. 12-17 years until retirement though, which seems really far away 😪
 
Mahes

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Burren said:
I just want to race cars and pet dogs while drinking and eating well. Not too much to ask. 12-17 years until retirement though, which seems really far away 😪
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It goes by a lot faster than you think it will....
 
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Furry

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Control said:
I can personally guarantee that some people would say more than double!
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It baffles me how many people are paycheck to paycheck on six figure or near to salaries. I could still easily survive on 8$ an hour, I just feel like they never truly had to struggle in their lives.
 
BrutulTM

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Furry said:
It baffles me how many people are paycheck to paycheck on six figure or near to salaries. I could still easily survive on 8$ an hour, I just feel like they never truly had to struggle in their lives.
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I've been listening to Dave Ramsey clips on YouTube lately and some of the calls are what you expect. "I'm a single mom that doesn't have a marketable enough skill to justify the expense of day care and I have been using credit cards to fill in the gaps." but it's surprising how many people call in and say "My wife and I are bringing in $240k a year but keep going into debt because we can't figure out how to get by on 20 grand a month."
 
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Khane

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Furry said:
It baffles me how many people are paycheck to paycheck on six figure or near to salaries. I could still easily survive on 8$ an hour, I just feel like they never truly had to struggle in their lives.
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Bud $8/hr is like 16k/yr. Let's not get carried away
 
Haus

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Yeah, some of it, I think, has to do with letting lifestyle inflation creep in on you. You start making more money and there are things you associate with "well off" and you start doing those, and those cost more than the frugal means you'd been living with.

Like when the guy who usually kicks back on a Sunday to watch football with a 12 pack of Modelo suddenly discovers "craft breweries", and then next year discovers "he has a taste for good scotch".....

Or the woman who shifts from coloring her hair at home and doing her nails on the couch with some friends that came over to going to a nice nail salon with them every week, and going to an exclusive "coloring salon"...

One thing I think I've lucked out with with Mrs. Haus Mrs. Haus is that between us we just don't have many fancy (and ergo expensive) tastes. Her worse habit is that she loves scented candles, but also maniacally shops for when the ones she likes go on sale. My "expensive hobby" is finding metals in the neighborhoods bulky trash put outs and melting them to make things. (Admittedly propane is going up in cost, but still). Neither of us have ever been "big fancy trip" people...

In my line of work (technology sales) I have a base + variable (commission) structure. I have always lived on the mantra of "live off your base, luxuriate off your variable" Right now my variable is around 40% of my income and my base is around 60%. Base covers all expenses, plus maxing 401k, and putting in on my employee stock purchase program where I work. Variable checks (monthly, with a bonus kicker on the quarters) go into investing, saving, crypto, house projects with the occasional seasonal hold out (like the next quarterly check will cover X-mas gift shopping and all that entails).

But I still know people who are peers to me who are constantly desperate for "that next big deal" to land because "they REALLY need the money" and it even leads to some unnatural sales motions as they try to push and pull deals.
 
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Furry

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Khane said:
Bud $8/hr is like 16k/yr. Let's not get carried away
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Thats sounds like a perfectly fine amount to live modestly off of to me. I’d have to pay off my mortgage to make it work, but I have the money to do that. I don’t have any expensive habits that I feel the need to do.
 
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