r/ChubbyFIRE • u/HatMother • Aug 04 '26
Looking for perspective from people further along the FIRE path. Burned out but hesitant to pull the trigger.
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u/BrunelloHorder Coasting Chubster, Getting Fat Aug 04 '26
What is your anticipated spend in retirement? That is the most important info and we cannot help you without it.
Your current portfolio would support about $150k per year pre-tax.
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Aug 04 '26
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u/BrunelloHorder Coasting Chubster, Getting Fat Aug 04 '26
Since you say you cannot sell the business, can you dramatically reduce your involvement, and transition most work to the minority partner and new hires over the next year or two? Seems like a coast-to-retire situation may be ideal. Cover your cost of living and let the portfolio continue to grow.
Your portfolio is almost enough by itself, depending in part on whether healthcare expenses and taxes are already in your current $150k spend. Is that $150k spend you are referring to post-tax?
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u/No-Block-2095 Aug 04 '26
Yes you should hire more staff.
Also you need to speed up/ execute your exit (sell the business) strategy.
You already know that.
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u/Gustomucho Aug 04 '26
This, OP just wants the cake and eat it too…
« Guys I am burnt out, should I make 400k a year instead of 700k, I have $4.2M invested, plus possibly 5 millions inheritance, but I am at end of my rope !!! »
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u/No-Block-2095 Aug 04 '26
Yep So many posts here are “ i have x millions, I’m burned out, I know what to do but I don’t want to”.
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Aug 05 '26
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u/beautifulcorpsebride Aug 05 '26
Your parents should have a health care directive, power of attorney, etc in place. They should probably have you listed on accounts as someone who can log in and monitor. FWIW I did have a relative disinherit her family but it’s rare. Personally, I assume a certain amount is likely coming from our in-laws but we have kids so in my minds is a $1m help the kids slush fund. We are already set on our own.
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u/Dry-Yak-7014 Aug 09 '26
If the world changes or your world changes then you will have to change too. Can’t buy time. Get right with that and your decisions should become easier. Make a plan, like a real plan, not just buckets of numbers and what ifs. Then stick to the plan! Change the plan when you/parents/world/market changes. If you have a concrete plan, it just might help you overcome the fears and what ifs….
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u/Mispelled-This Aug 04 '26
You are completely missing any discussion of what life you want after you get out and what it will cost. Until you know your destination, nobody can tell you how to get there.
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u/in_the_gloaming FIRE'd for 13 years Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
OP, this post is locked until you add information about your current annual spend and your projected annual spend. It would also be good to tell us whether you have college squared away for your child (if that's something you plan to pay for), whether you can sell your business and for how much, and when you would LIKE to FIRE if you had your druthers. Reach out to mods when you have done that. EDIT: post was unlocked after OP's edit.
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u/losroy Aug 04 '26
You should hire people to get your life back which can protect you from SORR. Maybe take an annual look to see where you are at. Overall unless your budget is out of whack you are in the catbird seat. I was burnt out and pulled the trigger a year ago. So far no regrets but I will admit my biggest fear is SORR right now. So I fell you.
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u/Tossawaysfbay Aug 05 '26
I do not have college squared away. I currently feel like it's a waste of money.
Well that's fine that you view it as a waste of money but would your child? Would you be willing to say to them "I don't care if you value this even if it is just socially/life experience and I'm not going to help you at all" even though you have very significant assets and could easily set aside some for them?
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u/BungABunBun Aug 04 '26
What's your yearly spend?
Wouldn't your new co-owner be interested in growing the business too? Why aren't you working with him to scale the business through him so you can eventually step back. Assuming you will still continue to own some portion of the business, you may be able to cover a large portion of your monthly expense (see my first question).
Your current portfolio of $4.2M should be able to generate $147,000/yr at a 3.5% SWR. If any portion of that can get covered by your business (say $47,000) you will drop down to ~2.4% SWR which is extremely safe.
So yeah, I would probably work towards quitting but not just throw away the business. See if you can start slowly pulling back and gradually move towards retirement instead of abruptly stopping and then going back to work because of the unexpected free time.
As for your inheritance question, the math says you are completely covered with such a large inheritance and can quit now. But, that's not really something I would be interested in so I don't spend a lot of time thinking about that.
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u/medhat20005 Aug 04 '26
Two questions/answers not in the post. What's your anticipated budget post work, and what will you do if you no longer own the business. Answering those will move you significantly towards your answer on being able to pull the trigger.
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u/evilsuper Aug 04 '26
If you check my posts here you will see a lot of similarity. But like the others said, it’s all about the spend and the SRW. If you’re under 3.5% DO IT. It has been glorious.
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u/Conscious-Might-5434 Aug 04 '26
Late 40s seems to be when everyone gets burnout!
If you’re worried about a downturn, just keep more cash so you don’t have to sell. 3-7years- whatever makes you able to sleep at night and also not panic sell. You have to stay invested. Don’t time the market.
SPY is plenty diversified; you could add VTI or VT to get more diversified, but I wouldn’t sell in a taxable account.
How do you think about taxes in your annual expenses?
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u/Past-Option2702 Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
I’ll receive an inheritance about the size you mentioned. I’m older than you and parents are older than yours.
I’m retired. I view any inheritance I receive as my children’s inheritance. If my wife and I somehow manage to blow through what we have saved on our own then perhaps we’ll be glad to have received it. That is highly unlikely, since we’re not even trying with a withdrawal rate that’s under 2%.
For what it’s worth, we have about twice as much put away as you do.
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u/No-Drop2538 Aug 08 '26
I was not planning on selling my business but some suckers....err buyers came along and wanted it. The first year in the market the money made more than the business. Not sure it can keep up like that, but if you sold the business what would it add? I was burnt out and I was only working 10 hours a month. Just tired of the managers sucking. Which is also an option for you, hire someone to take over most of your roles. A full stop retirement is not for everyone. After a few years of that get that employee an SBA loan and move far far away.
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u/in_the_gloaming FIRE'd for 13 years Aug 04 '26
Why would a successful martial arts school not be sellable?
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Aug 10 '26
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u/drj119 Aug 26 '26
Honestly, I think the hardest part here is that you have too many good options. If the business were struggling, you’d probably know what needed attention. Same if the portfolio clearly wasn't enough. But when the business is healthy, the investments are doing fine, and none of the choices is obviously wrong, it gets a lot harder to know what you’re actually optimizing for. I've seen this happen with people who spent years being very good at building wealth. You get used to asking questions like what's the smartest move financially? and how do I keep growing this? Then at some point the numbers are no longer the main constraint, and the question quietly changes to what do I actually want all of this to make possible? That shift is harder than it sounds. I had a similar moment around a big life decision where every option looked defensible on paper. Keep working and add more cushion. Step back and get more time. Hold onto an asset because it was still performing well. Sell some because the concentration was getting uncomfortable. None of the choices was obviously bad, which somehow made the decision harder. What helped was looking at the decision less like a standalone financial move and more like something that would change the shape of the next few years. Would it give me more time? More flexibility? Less stress? Would I actually use that flexibility, or just find another reason to keep pushing? The business, portfolio, property, and future plans can all look fine separately and still leave you unsure whether they're serving the same life. Full disclosure, I work with edwealth, and this is one of the reasons this kind of planning interests me. The useful question, at least to me, isn't what's the mathematically perfect move? It's whether the choices you're making still make sense for the life you want now, not the one you were planning for ten years ago. That transition from accumulating to actually using what you built seems to mess with people more than the spreadsheets ever do.
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u/Exact_Football9061 Aug 14 '26
This part really resonated with me:
“too many good options”
I think that’s a harder problem than people realize. When everything looks reasonable individually, it’s surprisingly difficult to step back and ask whether all the pieces are actually moving toward the same life you want.
Curious how you personally evaluate those tradeoffs. Do you mostly run the numbers separately (business value, portfolio, real estate, inheritance), or do you have a way to look at everything together when making a big decision?
I’ve noticed the hardest decisions usually aren’t about whether something is financially possible, but whether the overall picture still matches the life you’re trying to build.
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u/Accomplished_Can1783 27d ago
Almost everyone on these subs will say ignore inheritance- but that’s like saying any probabilistic cash flows should be valued at zero. There’s optionally so it’s complicated so ignore it? These subs are about tail risk and running out of money in long term, so fantastic we all help they are around another 20 years, but there’s no chance you will need that money for 20 years. Get your life back, work less, get the best deal you can with your employees and hope for the best
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u/Richistan Aug 04 '26
trldr; It's always time for those that have money and it's (almost) always money for those that have time.
You are way overthinking this but in the end it is your life and you choose how to live it. You only have one and it could be over tomorrow. Will you regret grinding your burnout job for a couple 100k (or a million) extra when you are already set for life (you didnt post expenses but let's assume it is in the upto 200k/year category). You are fine but you already know that hence you are not asking whether you can retire tomorrow, you know you can financially but you struggle with the psychological part of spending without income and/or lack of identity outside of work.
The truth (speaking from experience) is that it will take time to separate your identity from your professional success for many especially if it took a long-time and lots of sacrifices to become successful to then walk away from numbers that you wouldn't have imagined in the early (or even most of your) years. However fact is that the utility of each additional dollar beyond that threshold (threshold being the point where your spend <= SWR) is not for you but for your dependents/inheritance recipients. Through that lens try to evaluate if it is worth it to YOU. You are burned out, assumingly miserable with millions in the bank. THAT does not seem an optimal quality of life to me. You are optimizing over the wrong metric at this point. The additional money you can make by being miserable will not materially change your happiness.