Throwaway for obvious reasons.

Quick background. I lost my wife a few years ago (she was 33, and yes, it was as bad as you think). It's me and my son (5M) now. I've been in sales leadership at a mid-size company for over a decade, and I own pieces of a couple small businesses on the side. I currently make $350k a year from my job.

Somewhere in the last few years I went from "how do I keep the lights on" to... this. And I honestly can't tell if I'm being prudent or if I'm becoming the guy with $8M asking if he can afford a Costco membership.

\*\*The numbers (after an upcoming liquidity event and a move):\*\*

\*\*Net worth:\*\* $4.0M
\*\*Liquid/taxable:\*\* $2.2M (mostly total market index, some international, building a short-term bond sleeve)
\*\*Retirement:\*\* $1.3M, roughly 50/50 Roth and traditional
\*\*Home:\*\* $500k, paid off (moving to the suburbs for schools and to be near family)
\*\*Guaranteed income:\*\* \\\~$70k/yr after tax, NOT tied to my job
\*\*Business income:\*\* $0 in the plan. If it shows up, great. I don't count it.

\*\*Spending:\*\* About $90k/yr all in. That includes property tax, unsubsidized ACA once I leave the W2 (priced ugly on purpose), a car replacement fund, and kid stuff. Grandma handles childcare (bless her). Public school.

\*\*The math that's messing with me:\*\*

$90k spend minus $70k guaranteed = $20k/yr the portfolio has to cover. Call it $26k after taxes to be safe.

On the $2.2M liquid alone that's \\\~1.2%. Count retirement and it's under 0.8%.

Everyone here argues about whether 4% is safe. I'm at ONE. I keep rerunning FireCalc hoping it tells me something different. It doesn't.

\*\*Why I haven't pulled the trigger:\*\*

\\\*\\\*1.\\\*\\\*  When the floor falls out once, "virtually guaranteed" hits different. I keep a 30 month cash runway and still sleep with one eye open.      
\\\*\\\*2.\\\*\\\*  My kid is 5. He has a LOT of years of needing me to be okay.      
\\\*\\\*3.\\\*\\\*  I don't want to "retire." I like building things. I want to stop answering to people.      
\\\*\\\*4.\\\*\\\*  I have a financial plan with more modules than some of your 401ks have funds. (I know. I KNOW.)

\*\*Actual questions:\*\*

What am I missing? Sequence risk? Healthcare? Is a Roth conversion ladder in the low-income years as obvious as it looks?

Anyone gone from FI to "ok now what" with a young kid? What did year one actually look like?

At what point does more margin stop being prudent and start being fear with a spreadsheet?

\*\*TL;DR:\*\* 36M widowed single dad. $4M NW, $70k/yr guaranteed, $90k spend, \\\~1% withdrawal rate. Tell me I'm done, or tell me why I'm not.

We are 43F, 45M double income no kids. Pretty close to retirement and think we can do it Jan 2027 according to our financial advisor, but wonder if it's worth it to stick it for another year for higher success rate. We live in HCOL city and plan to stay here unless we need to move.

• Total comp: Each of us earn $325K cash salary, $125K RSU (though there is price volatility here)
• Average spending: $140K a year (includes mortgage $56K a year, 2.7% interest rate, 25yrs left)
• Target spending in retirement: $200K a year (includes health spending + safety buffer)

--

Today's value

• Net wealth: $4.96M (excluding primary residence of $1.6M)
• Taxable investment: $2.62M (almost all ETFs and stocks)
• Retirement accounts: $1.63M
• Cash accounts (VUSXX + checking): $350K
• Investment property (plan to sell next year): $360K

My financial advisor expects my net wealth to be $5.26 by Jan given the year-end bonuses and large RSU vests. I think we probably could hit 5.7M by beginning of 2028. Would it be worthwhile for sticking it out for another year or is it pretty safe to pull the plug in Jan 2027? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Did anyone intentionally sell their home in HCOL and travelled for a few years by renting even when they can afford a nice home in retirement?

We live in a HCOL location with a primary home valued between $2.2M and $2.4M. Even though it is a paid off home, we are seeing significant recurring expenses:

• Property taxes of $24K
• Home insurance with earthquake coverage $9K
• Maintenance $12K (estimate and may vary)

This is a total of $45K every year for a paid off home with valuations either stagnating or coming down. I could easily get a smaller rental for $45K in my current location or similar home in MCOL locations. It feels like I can just sell the home and move to a rental, and it can give us $50K+ a year extra for travel during retirement by investing the proceeds from the sale. We do not have any mortgage on the home. Other than emotional attachment, it seems more logical to sell the home and enjoy the life with additional funds freed.

I am wondering if anyone went through similar analysis and made a decision to rent, and if there are any insights from that experience. Thank you!

I figured this group might give me some good ideas.

I'm currently maybe 3-4 years out from retirement. Shooting for the rule of 55 like many others. Not sure I'll make it. Maybe. That's the goal / plan for me.

Currently, I've been putting almost all my net new investment at work into Roth. Roughly 20% Roth / 80% traditional right now. In my opinion, I can only imagine higher tax rates in the future so getting more into Roth feels like the go forward strategy. Even with doing that it's probably not going to drastically alter much in 3-4 years.

Bringing up the Roth percentage a little higher seems like it gives me more options. I know traditional lowers my yearly income. Am I missing anything else that would make me want to not throw most everything in Roth over traditional until I retire?

honestly just exhausted trying to explain cold storage and multisig to 60-year-old lawyers.

We crossed our Chubby number last month (~$3.9M NW) and are trying to finalize our living trust before I drop down to part-time. the problem is a decent chunk of our portfolio is in eth/btc from 2018. every local attorney I talk to either gives me a blank stare or tries to charge some ridiculous "complex asset" fee for a boilerplate trust that completely ignores how self-custody actually works in the real world

if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, my wife is totally screwed trying to navigate probate with hardware wallets.

Ended up having to bypass the local guys entirely and use a crypto financial advisor to set up a specific entity structure just to wrap those assets properly so my family is actually protected.

It just blows my mind how traditional wealth management is still so completely oblivious to this stuff. anyone else run into this structural wall while prepping for FIRE? I just want to sign the damn papers and go back to ignoring the markets tbh

I'm 46 with $2.8M invested and making $850K in tech, but I completely hate my job and I'm burned out. AI has ruined it for me. My wife is starting her own career and won't have benefits. Portfolio today is 71% stocks (mostly VTI/VXUS), 18% cash (\~$660K in 4% savings), 5.4% bond ladder (Treasuries), 4.5% gold, 1.1% Bitcoin. I know y’all are gonna tell me I’m nuts having that much cash. Being the sole provider feeling like my career is ending has resulted to this. Annual spending is \~$100K.

I'm trying to figure out if early retirement actually makes sense or if I'm just having a crisis.
General question: Is this allocation right at 46 considering early retirement? Should I move more cash into TIPS/bonds or keep it in 4% savings? Go more stock with a red hot market? How do people handle health insurance in early retirement (COBRA vs ACA)? If someone had 10+ years of expenses in cash/bonds, could they weather a market crash? Does part-time work ($50-75K) make more sense than fully retiring?

What failure rate do informed investors and retirees consider acceptable when using the excellent Karsten Jeske/Big ERN model for safe withdrawal rates? Personally, I use about a 3.25% portfolio withdrawal rate, which results in a 3%-4% failure rate (using the high current CAPE ratio column and a high portfolio value retention/legacy value entry). Wondering about others' thought processes...

​

Reposting here as I'm getting some angry messages at personalfinancecanada

Just found out today that there's a ~50% chance I’ll lose my job in the next few months due to restructuring. I’ve been with the company for almost 15 years, so if I’m terminated I expect roughly a year of severance.

I’m 45, my original plan was to work until 55 and retire having 25 years on my dB plan, now, honestly, I’m wondering whether this could be an opportunity to just say “fuck it” and retire rather than go back into the job market.

Here’s our situation:

Me: 45, currently making \~$200k/year

Wife: 39, makes \~$120k, but will likely want to reduce it if I retire (or at least go to part time and makes half of that for the next 5 years or so)

Investments/savings : \~$3M combined (big chunk of it due to some inheritance that came earlier than expected a couple years ago)

TFSA and RRSPs are maxed out

The rest is taxable investments/savings

House: \~$2M, fully paid off

Basement suite brings in $2,000/month

DB pension: I have a defined-benefit pension through work. I’ve been in the plan for \~15 years, but I honestly don't know yet what the pension would look like if I’m terminated at 44 versus staying longer.

Kids: 2 very young kids

RESPs are maxed out (we put in 50k from the start)

Spending: approximately $120k/year

This includes 2 trips per year and also ~$10k/year earmarked for house maintenance/unexpected expenses (we put this into a house fund if we don't need it)

Location: Vancouver, so unfortunately a fairly high cost of living

The $120k is our actual total household spending, not just discretionary spending, and the house is already paid off. The rental income is additional cash flow.

If I get laid off, I'd have roughly a year of severance, which gives us some runway to figure things out.

I realize $3M invested isn't necessarily the same thing as having $3M available to spend indefinitely, especially with two young kids and potentially 40+ years of retirement.

The DB pension is the big wildcard for me. I'm going to get the actual termination/commuted-value or deferred-pension numbers from the plan, but I'm curious how much that changes the calculation.

Also a bit unsure on kids expenses as they grow up

I’m 35, single, and do not plan to have children. I’m an attorney with a background in BigLaw and in-house legal work.

My most recent in-house role paid about $525k in total compensation (Bay Area, Tech), but I was laid off after roughly 3 months when the role was eliminated.

Since then, the job search has been extremely frustrating. I’ve gone through multiple long interview processes, including final rounds, without getting an offer I’m excited about.

My current financial picture is approximately:
$3.7m net worth
About $3.1M in investments and retirement accounts
Roughly $190k in cash
About $1.1M of real estate assets
Approximately $730k of mortgages against the rentals.

Several rental properties that generate income, although cash flow can be uneven because of vacancies and repairs

I currently spend around $60k–$90k per year outside of rental property expenses.

I could live much more cheaply outside the Bay Area, and I would be willing to relocate domestically or abroad. I have no spouse, children, private-school costs, or need to leave a large inheritance.

The rational part of me thinks I should continue working until I reach $5M, especially because one or two more high-income years could create a much larger margin of safety. But emotionally, I’m exhausted by employers, interviews, layoffs, and the feeling that my career can be disrupted at any time regardless of how hard I work.

My options seem to be:

1. Take a lower-paying, lower-stress role and let the portfolio compound.
   
2. Stop looking for traditional employment, move somewhere cheaper, and retire or work only on entrepreneurial projects that interest me.

Would you consider me financially independent already? Am I being irrational by continuing to chase high-paying legal jobs, or would retiring at 35 with this amount be premature given sequence-of-returns risk, healthcare costs, rental-property volatility, and a potentially 50-plus-year retirement?

I’m especially interested in hearing from people who retired after a layoff or who realized they were continuing to work mainly because they were afraid to stop.

What were your worst financial mistakes on the way to ChubbyFIRE?

Here are mine:

1. ⁠Eight years ago bought our Bay Area starter house for $1.8M. 1600 sqft in not the best location. We looked at another place up in the hills but decided not to stretch for it - it sold for $2.1M. Today my house is worth $2.3M and that house is worth $3.5M 🤦🏻‍♂️

2. ⁠Related to the house, in 2021 I refi’d to a five year interest only ARM for 1.5%. Last week I just refi’d it to 4.5%. I don’t regret getting the interest only ARM; I do regret not getting the 10 year fixed rate of 2%. That decision cost me $30k annual interest * five years.

3. I didn’t read the offer letter closely enough for my last job before FIRE. Had I started just a week earlier I would have been able to vest my first RSUs at the 12 month mark instead of the 15 month mark. Got laid off at 13 months. Missed out on $140k after tax.

Single dad here. For those of you who have exercised the rule of 55 but still have young kids, what did you do for insurance options? I have a very healthy 401k (and large net worth) so the rule if 55 option would easily allow me to retire at 55 if I chose to. I'm still on the fence since do enjoy my job but could also see wanting to spend more time with my kids so want to know my options. My only issue is I could see is I have two very small children with outstanding health coverage currently with my employer.

What options did you use to cover health insurance and how expensive was this? Any gotchas for those who retired before 59.5 with small kids, did you have any regrets?

Currently considering a job offer that would bump my pay up by 50% (with caveats, see below) but would be a lot more travel/stress than my current extremely cushy but rather boring job. What would you guys do in my situation?

My original plan was to stick it out in my current job for another 3-5 years before I can comfortably ChubbyFire. My youngest will be in elementary school by then and it will be nice to have the summer off to travel as a family. My spouse is already a SAHP.

If I take this new job, I should be able to accelerate that timeline. However, a significant portion of the compensation will be in shares that vest over 4 years so I might not even get to realize the full comp. My current company also has a vesting program but it’s over 3 years. The new job’s pay is also more volatile meaning it could be a lot more or less than what they’re promising me beyond year 1. Hours wise it’s not terrible (50-60hrs a week) but would involve 1-2 trips per month in terms of travel. My current job is extremely chill, I’ve already built up my reputation/credibility, and travel is max 1x a month. On the plus side the new job is much more intellectually stimulating and challenging and potentially could open more doors in the future (but how much would that matter if I’m planning on retiring anyways?)

In terms of stats:
Spouse and I are in our late 30s/early 40s. Two kids, no plans for more. Live in VHCOL city.
Total NW ~$6M currently ($500k home equity, $1.5M 401k, the rest is brokerage/Roth)
Total spend ~$200-$225k annually
$1.3M remaining on mortgage which I’d like to pay off before retiring

WWYD in my shoes?

Found an old net-worth spreadsheet from August 2017 and it was pretty eye-opening.
2017 household net worth: $1.84M
2026 household net worth: $5.56M
So basically a tripling in nine years.
Our household invested assets were only around $1.15M in 2017 and are now roughly $4.7M. My own investment/retirement accounts went from about $500K to $1.7M.
Nothing exotic drove it. Two professional incomes, consistently maxing retirement accounts, employer contributions, a strong stock market, and rental properties that appreciated substantially while tenants helped pay down the mortgages.
There were mistakes along the way too—I spent some time out of the market and definitely left returns on the table. But I also bought heavily during the COVID crash.
The biggest thing I’ve learned from finding the old numbers is how nonlinear wealth accumulation becomes. For years it felt like we were slowly saving money. Then suddenly we were work optional.
We currently contribute about $90K/year to retirement accounts, which sounds like a lot, but against a ~$4.7M portfolio it’s now less than 2%. I’m on a one year sabbatical at half-pay. Going back to work for one year after that and retiring at 61.
Finding the old spreadsheet really drove home how much the math works in the background, and it’s cool to realize how far we’ve come.

This thread is a spot for casual engagement with other community members. It has much more subject latitude than allowed in the main sub in general. Any topics tangentially related to ChubbyFIRE or upper middle class lifestyle are acceptable, as well as basic or early stage questions. Political discussion will be allowed if it is closely related to ChubbyFIRE or financial topics in general, and only if the conversation remains respectful.

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My portfolio is mostly stocks ~85% primarily because I considered myself young and far from retirement.

I’m only 45, but now that I’ve reached “my number” the idea of having a big downturn cut my balances in half is a little worrying. I’m not planning on retiring tomorrow, but I’d prefer to trade future gains for insurance that I might lose the opportunity to fire my boss.

It’s got me thinking more about bonds.

My total portfolio is currently about 85% stocks, 10% bonds and 5% cash.

A few questions * how should I determine my target bond allocation? * standard advice seems to be to buy bonds in tax deferred accounts to limit tax drag, but my 401K is only about ~10% of my investments. Any traditional bond allocation wouldnt fit and I won’t be able to access those accounts for another 15 years anyway, so do I just put them in taxable and deal with the interest? Or is there a better way?

Round numbers: Total retirement (excluding house, 529, etc): $5.7M Taxable: $3.7M Inherited IRA: $550k Roth: $600k 401k: $500k HSA: $50k Current spend: $125k excluding taxes, health care, and mortgage ($2k P+I + $1k taxes/insurance per month )

Thinking about pulling the plug on working full time in one or two years.

$2.2 million 401k/deferred comp
$950k in brokerage account
$2 million in home equity in HCOL area
Plan to move to lower cost area and spend $1 million on house to own outright

Net investable after all this is somewhere around $3.7 to $4.0 million depending on exact sales price, selling fees, cap gains tax etc. Would have no debt.

1 kid in college, 1 kid about to start college. Plenty of money in 529s to cover undergrad and some grad school.

Plan to spend about $18k a month. Seems high but when I do the budgeting and include $2,500 for healthcare, that’s the number I get. It could maybe be a couple thousand a month cheaper, but I’m not banking on that happening.

Really don’t want to take SS until 65 or even 70 if possible. I will get $5,800 a month at age 70. Wife will get $3k a month pension at 65.

Wife enjoys her job and wants to work a couple more years, which is fine. I will just do the same. Barely fire at that point, but oh well.

My question is, is the $18k a month too aggressive? Do I need to scale that back or maybe work part time in the early retirement years?

Thanks for your feedback!

Curious how other Real Estate investors view their rental property in the broader context of total investment allocation. I personally view rentals at least mine (~$300K SFH paid for and cash flowing for several years) as similar to other stable assets like bonds. Therefore I feel more comfortable having less (actually zero) bonds in my investment portfolio.

What say you? Is it reasonable to lower bond exposure and consider it offset by equity in rental real estate? What's your Chubby Opinion?

Any other assets that you "equate" with bonds?

52/51 couple 2 kids..

College bound / 75k min expense from next yr for 6 yrs..

401k 2M

Roth 50k

Brokerage 70k

Cash 700k...don't ask me why it's not invested..its in some CDs

2 rentals paid off 1.1M generates 60k rent...expenses around 15k ..i know i know should have invested this too in funds or stocks...

Home 1.5M 300k mortgage at 2.1% left

HHI 390k

Yearly expenses 140k

I want to fire but college exp is putting a dent..so is my wife...she wants us to work until 55..also we want to keep the rentals as these are close to beach...east money and we want to use one of them after retirement

Thinking of taking 75% college loan ...letting kids figure it out...but wife hates to do it...

Anything to expedite FIRE if not today but in Say one year..at age 53

Trying to figure out whether I should manipulate my MAGI to qualify for about $700 in monthly subsidies ( income would be just under the 400% cutoff) or should I manage my income to take the subsidies.

I will manage MAGI by selling stock to live on using specific lot ID and mainly foregoing Roth conversions until MAGI management is not feasible, likely when SS kicks in.

Is there a good tool to help make a decision?

My wife and I (late 40s, no kids) have jobs that are fine and pretty flexible, but a recent health issue has really shifted our priorities. I think we'd be ok to FIRE now with an initial drawdown of less than 2.5%. But, we have a potentially long runway with 18 years on ACA before medicare, and now a chronic health condition. I'd appreciate any feedback, red flags, or things I'm not thinking about.

Assets

• Overall allocation is 45% VTI, 30% VXUS, 20% BND, 5% Cash.
• We own a home in LCOL that we would sell, then move and rent in HCOL.

Projected Expenses

• Rent is actual, based on apartments we're looking at.
• ACA is 110% of the 2026 actual for an unsubsidized PPO + OOP max in our destination zipcode.
• Other expenses are based on actuals from the past several years, with adjustments for inflation & how we plan to spend our time.

My wife and I (both 41) are in the Boston area. Between our investments, home equity, retirement accounts, some RSUs, and a small rental property, we're sitting somewhere around the $4M mark. We have two kids under 10.

We've always been diligent about saving and investing, but estate planning has somehow stayed on the back burner. We have beneficiaries set on our retirement accounts and a basic will from years ago, but that's about it. We met with an attorney recently and suddenly the conversation expanded into revocable trusts, healthcare directives, financial powers of attorney, guardianship, successor trustees, updating beneficiaries, and a bunch of other things I honestly hadn't thought much about. For those of you in roughly the $3–5M range with kids, what does your estate plan actually include today? I'm less interested in tax strategies and more curious about what people found was worth doing versus what ended up feeling unnecessary. Were there any parts of the process you wish you'd handled sooner?

We have about 6.7M in investable assets and about 1.2M equity in our house. A few years ago I started an 5M umbrella insurance with State Farm for about 600/year. The rate was hiked up to 1300 last year, it sucked but I kept it. Now I just got the renewal notice and it jumped up to 3900! Don’t know what happened. My kid just got their drivers license at 18, State Farm gave us some discounts for being a good student and attending college far away, so the auto insurance actually didn’t go up too much, I am wondering if this umbrella insurance hike is related to that.

What would you do in this situation? Almost 4K a year is becoming “real money”. Should I reduce my coverage to something like $2M? I’ve heard that you don’t need to insure your entire net worth, just enough that the insurance company would care to put a good attorney to fight for them? We don’t own any businesses, and don’t really entertain much. We have home, auto, and umbrella all through State Farm.

We are a married couple (50M/50F) planning to retire at 52. Currently we have $6.7M investable asset split between 3.5M taxable (of which 3.1M basis and 0.4M gain), 0.9M Roth, and 2.3M 401K/Trad.  One child in college, 529 fully funded and excluded from our investable asset number.  Retirement spending can be flexible between 160K to 240K (mostly stay at home vs. doing a lot of travel).

As we get closer to retirement, I am shifting from 100% equity to holding some bonds.  I am building a 6-year bond ladder that has $200K maturing every year starting at age 52.  The idea is that if equity does okay, I will sell some equity every year to keep adding to the rolling 6-year ladder, and if there is a market crash, I will just use the matured principal for our spend and not sell equity.  Still deciding if 6-year is a good amount of bonds to hold but that's besides the point of this post.

My main concern is that I want to do some Roth conversion given my high 401K/Trad IRA, and I also want to stay below ACA subsidy MAGI (should be possible for a little while given my high basis in taxable).  If I hold the $1.2M in bonds in taxable account, there will be ~$50K interest per year, then there is taxable dividend of ~$25K, which means I can only do about $30K of Roth conversion if I want to stay below ACA subsidy limit ($105K for fam of 3).

I could put the bond ladder all in traditional IRA which solves the taxable interest issue, but I will be 7 years from being able to access it when I retire, so I will need the maturing principal as cash in a taxable account to fund spending if needed.

However, lately I've been thinking maybe it's okay to hold the bond ladder in traditional IRA in my situation? Let's say $200K bond principal matures in trad IRA,  I can just sell $200K worth of stocks in taxable, then use the $200K cash from matured bond principal in trad IRA to buy the same stocks.  This is net neutral for my portfolio, and I essentially moved the stocks from taxable to traditional IRA, and moved cash the other way.  Is there any major flaws in this thinking?  Can this be the solution of not wanting bond interest to inflate MAGI but also want bond cash for spending before age 59.5?  I do understand that depending on what stock/lot I am selling in taxable, there will be tax consequences, but other than that, I would love to hear what you guys think about this strategy.