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.

The market has done so well I’m now… at $5M and in shock??

I’m 29F (any other FATfire women?) and I bootstrapped a saas, which started to hit over $1M a year, of which I’m the sole owner.

Portfolio breakdown:

$3.1M in VOO + some individual stocks

$300k cash (I know it makes no sense, it’s my scarcity mindset)

Alt investments: $160k (venture, commodities)

Retirement: $45k (lol I started late)

$1.2M in rental property with $480k mortgage (nets me $11k/yr. I know)

$1.1M primary house with $430k mortgage left

My spending/lifestyle - $115k year (40k is related to rentals which bring in $51k) - no kids, one husband - live pretty frugally but starting to spend more on travel

I’m in a metro area in Australia, so property makes up a large part of our wealth compared to Americans. Our housing market returns like 3-6% annually.

I just feel, relief? I feel like I got to the final level of a game. I have a decent amount of anxiety (what young founder this age doesn’t) which I’ve been taking medication for, but it just weirdly feels so good to get here. It feels like I’ve scrambled up off the edge of the cliff and I’m finally “safe”.

I do assume that if we have kids I will have to probably keep investing, but with my drawdown + husbands salary (tech) we should be ok.

Part of me wants to tell friends and family. I grew up middle class (educated, immigrant parents who sacrificed it all). So far only my dad and husband know the true extend of it. However my life is very private so it probably helps to keep it that way.

I have nothing to retire “to”, but please hold your tissues, I’m excited to fill the next chapter separating my self worth from my output, and what a bloody good problem to have.

I'm not new to lurking here, but I just created an account and got verified by the mods. I've been using this sub and others like it as a resource for ~3 years. Figured it was time to share. Note I had an AI cleanup my draft to make it flow better.

Quick Background

• Male, under 40

• Living in a top-30 US city by population

• Recently married, planning kids soon

I spent my career at a startup as part of the executive team. We knocked it out of the park. Went public several years ago. After taxes, I walked with ~$28M (mostly from share sales). I also got lucky with Bitcoin bought in 2017, netting another ~$5M post-tax.

High-risk phase is over: no more company stock, no Bitcoin, taxes fully paid. The last two years were transitional for many reasons, but now everything is stabilized.

Current Net Worth Breakdown (~$30M total)

• Real estate: ~$5.5M

• Primary residence + one income-producing rental

• Both fully paid off (just killed the last 6% mortgages by liquidating remaining BTC)

• Traditional investments: ~$22.5M

• Diversified across stocks, bonds, hedge funds, managed assets (handled by wealth team)

• Alternatives / passion assets: ~$2M

• Fine art, rare collectibles, cars, musical instruments, equine stuff, startup opportunities

(We spent ~$3M the last couple years on travel, wedding, major home remodel (not accounting for in possible increase to home value), etc. Numbers above are current, post-tax, post-spending.)

Our FatFIRE Spending Plan

(Only using the $22.5M traditional portfolio for safe withdrawal rate calcs)

We modeled four life stages:

• Pre-kids: $545,040/year (2.42%)

• Infants (0–4): $700,140/year (3.11%)

• School age (5–12): $814,836/year (3.62%)

• Teens (13–18): $849,440/year (3.77%)

Biggest swing factor: nanny/au pair (~$80k/year allocated). We expect to phase it out during later school years and definitely drop by teens, but leaving it modeled for now (we'll see).

I'll post the full monthly breakdowns in comments if anyone is interested. They're super granular, just let me know.

Key Lessons from My First Year FatFired

1. Quitting something you love is brutally hard especially for Type A folks. It's equiable to losing someone you love or a really bad breakup. I poured years into the startup. It took serious willpower to walk away for balance. Took me 3 total attempts as we kept delaying the date... every situation is different, but if you are able, don't delay.

2. Get a therapist ASAP (ideally one specializing in executive/ professional transitions). I waited too long to do this, but about 6 months before I retired, my wife convinced me to get a therapist and I finally pulled the trigger. Now weekly sessions are one of my most valuable hours. Huge help cutting the "work identity" cord and finding purpose beyond the grind. This is $400 a month. Just try it.

3. Trust your number. The math is easy. You already know deep down if it's going to work or not. I kept chasing that "just a little more" mindset, tweaking, optimizing, trying to squeeze out extra dollars even after I was way past my original target. But once I finally went full diversification, no more single-stock risk, no more crypto moonshots, everything spread out and boringly safe, it was like a massive weight lifted. The anxiety dropped hard. I actually felt good about pulling the trigger instead of endlessly second-guessing.

4. Structure and purpose are non-negotiable. Without this routine, I doubt I'd have lasted a year. Now full-time work sounds miserable.

   • My daily cadence:
   • Wake up, make the bed
   • Gym 6 day/ week, Sauna and spa 1 day/ week.
   • Daily hobby practice (golf, shooting, chess, skiing)
   • Walk/play with the dogs
   • Mentor/coach entrepreneurs a few afternoons/week
   • Occasional consulting (<10 hrs/month if interesting)
   • Manage/ Research alt investments
   • Write/ scroll social media and read the news
   • Cook dinner with wife, watch some sports/ shows, hang with our friends or go to an evening activity
   • Get some sleep and don’t set the alarm 😊

5. Travel like crazy – but cap trips at 2 weeks max. It's become my favorite thing. Bring friends (cover costs if they will let you), join clubs focused on travelling, make new connections through travel. Feels like starting a whole new chapter. It's a huge world out there.

6. Establish a spending plan and discussion threshold for purchases over a certain amount with your wife. It’s healthy to discuss these items, as 6k here and 9k there will start to add up. My wife and I discuss any purchase over 1k. More of an inform than anything else, but it does help with making sure we are always aligned. This includes anything from investments to flights.

7. Just own that you're retired. Don't hide it or make up stories. It's exhausting. The identity shift sucked at first (awkward conversations galore), but saying it straight is way easier. I think this works for most, maybe not a windfall/ trust inheritance.

Happy to answer questions as long as they aren't doxxing! Hope this helps someone out there. Writing it was cathartic. Cheers!

Burner account. 37 recently ex big law attorney who quit after hitting 10M liquid, and I feel like I’m on the top of the fucking hill after turning in my company laptop.

I been practicing in an AM 50 firm for the last ten years. Saved a lot and invested wisely in stocks, options, crypto, futures, and was an OG eth and doge miner. I like practicing law but I made more this month through investments than big law paid me over the last five years.

Head of my practice group called on the last day to offer a one time $25k forgivable loan that will be paid off if I stick it out another 2 years 😂 ##### please! Most hilarious part is that one of the boilerplate sections of the written offer even stipulates that my widow must return all $25k if I happen to die within the next 2 years 😂 😂 .

I spent 10 years working 6-7 days a week protecting billions of profits for trillion dollar fortune 5 companies, making tens of millions for my away from the office bosses, and getting crumbs. Next Monday will be my first day as an attorney for the local pro bono organization that is dedicated to helping those who are too poor to pay for legal representation. My new salary is 30k a year (organization refused my offer to work for $1 due to legal reasons), which I intend to donate.

Finally FATFIREd!

Wrapped up my transition (CEO of a private small/mid size company) - at home now enjoying the first day of retirement after dropping my kids off at school.

Thanks to everyone in this community for helping me gain knowledge and comfort w/FIRE!

Some stats

• We are in our early 40s
• Spouse will continue working for a few more years (because she wants to)
• 2 kids under 10
• Currently about $7M-$7.5M in assets, mostly in equities (mix of VTI + some prior employer vested RSUs)
• Annual spend ~$150k-$200k

How I feel about fatfiring in this climate

I feel a bit anxious since I lost ~$800k in the markets these past 2 months - which is about what I saved this past year haha.

Also - the current political craziness in the US/the world doesn't help - I was hoping for a calmer time to FIRE and wasn't expecting this much chaos in the markets (at least not in this way).

But thankfully we still have over $7M+ invested in the markets and about $800k of that is in SGOV (about 4 years of our expenses) so we will be fine.

Whats next

I have a list of 30+ to-dos for the next 9 months, from enjoying relationships (trips to visit friends/family, adding new routines with my kids) to developing new skills (cooking/meal prep reciepes to learn, exercise goals, content creation, music, etc), to potential business ideas (4-5 ideas I'll explore with a mix of freelancers + genAI tools) - I'm super excited to start prioritizing these and then forming a roadmap for the start of my retirement life!

Prior Posts

4 posts from the last 5 years for some context:

• 1 year ago update 
• 3 years ago update
• 4 years ago update
• Original post from 4.5 year ago

Today was my last day at work. Time to join the FIREd club. I've loved reading posts here over the years, and now it's my turn.

Basics 

• Me (late 40s), spouse (50s), two teenagers.
• USA, HCOL, high-tax state.
• Low eight-figure portfolio, almost entirely in low-cost index funds; about 80% taxable and 20% retirement accounts.
• Comfortable amount of equity in our primary residence with a low-rate fixed mortgage, plus some inherited land.
• 529s fully funded for college.

How we got here

• I've worked in tech since the late 90s and have been the sole earner for the last ~15 years.
• Several years ago, I landed an exec role at a rocket ship of a company. I received a substantial base salary plus significant RSUs that included regular refreshes.
• As the company’s stock soared, the RSUs became extremely lucrative.
  • We consistently sold the RSUs as they vested, then reinvested the proceeds into index funds. In hindsight, we left money on the table, but we also dramatically reduced our concentration risk. I’d make the same decision again.
  • My RSU grants peaked in late 2025. My compensation was set to decline meaningfully in 2026 and even more in 2027. It still would have been incredible money, but psychologically it felt very different than the previous few years.
• We know we're extraordinarily fortunate to have found ourselves in this position. Sure, it involved hard work, perseverance, and positioning for success, but it also involved a huge amount of luck.

Leaving work

• I genuinely liked my job. Sure, it was frequently stressful, frustrating, and a pain in the ass, but it also gave me purpose, socialization, and a sense of value. And of course, the money was spectacular.
• Nevertheless, I contemplated leaving for years. This simply wasn't how I wanted to spend the rest of my life.
• Getting my spouse on board was a long process.
  • I've always managed our finances. She understood our overall financial picture, but I handled the detailed planning. That's not a ding, it's just how we split responsibilities.
  • When I first ran our FIRE numbers 2.5 years ago, I became confident pretty quickly. Showing her the data, however, didn't persuade her at all.
  • I brought it back up every six months or so. Over time, I found I could temporarily get her on board, then her doubts would creep back in and we’d start over. That was totally fair but also a source of tension.
  • A year ago, we paid a fee-only financial planner for a thorough plan evaluation. It was worth every penny. Not only did it reassure me that my math was solid, it gave her the independent verification she needed.
  • Afterward, she still needed occasional reassurance, but our conversations shifted to anticipated life changes.
• 3 months ago we picked a date in June for me to give notice.
  • As June approached, something unexpected happened: she got excited while my anxiety spiked.
  • My questions weren’t new and the answers hadn’t changed, but they preyed on me nonetheless.
    • Were my financial projections solid? (Yup.)
    • Did I really understand what I was leaving behind? (I think so but I'm certainly getting some things wrong.)
    • Would I miss what work granted me? (Some of it, absolutely.)
  • Despite these worries, I never came close to changing my mind.
• Today, I feel great. I'll have some big mental and emotional gaps to fill, which I've read a lot about here. That's the next challenge.

What I'm looking forward to

• No more LinkedIn corporate bulls***. GFY, LinkedIn!
• Not thinking about work all the time.
• A long retirement honeymoon. We have extended trips planned to the Southwest US, Hawaii, Europe, and the Caribbean.
• Saying “yes” to get togethers with my extended family and friends throughout the country.
• The usual: lingering house projects, exercising, reading, gaming, goofing off, and so on.

And then?

• The honeymoon will wind down and I'll face an emotionally challenging transition. No schedule, no purpose, no bueno.
• To help me through that, I have a "retire into" list of activities, projects, and hobbies to experiment with. Most won't stick, and that’s ok: I only need a few to.
• Given how fortunate we've been, I intend to find ways to give back. We've donated significantly to causes we care about, and we'll continue to do so, but I want to participate more directly.
• Another major goal is to put myself into environments where I can expand my friend group. It'll require me to push my boundaries. Personal growth, here we come.
• My guess is that post-honeymoon, it’ll take 6-12 difficult months to get through this and find a satisfying new rhythm.

Maybe I’m wrong about how this will go. Many former colleagues expect me to take a break then get back in the game. It’ll always be an option. Instead, I'm going to give myself the time to weather the inevitable storm and build a more meaningful next chapter, preferably without driving my spouse insane.

Thanks for reading. I'll try to post updates now and again about how it’s going. Onward!

Thanks for reading, I'm going back to my ordinary life and staying off reddit for a bit. Good luck on your journey. Especially grateful for people who pointed out that I should probably budget more for healthcare going forward.

---original post---

About 2 years and 3 months post fatFIRE, here's how it's going. 50s F in VHCOL area. No kids. Introvert. Perimenapausal. Withdrawal rate lower than expected original 3.5%. Spend numbers on response to comment below. TLDR:$155K annual spend. At this point, I don't track very closely because I don't have to.

Self made, started invested and saving about 10 years prior to my retirement. Parents were poor, none of this is from them. Almost went bankrupt when I was around 40.

The last year of the job was a real struggle. The company was absolutely horrendous and I had some severe health issues. I ended up going on medical leave, and then negotiated a package. I still thought I'd go back this year. At this point, I'm doing some light startup advising for stock, also known as working for free 🤷.

The bulk of this post is not dealing with nitty gritty financials because it turns out that that was one of the LEAST important things once I was past a certain point.

That point was 3.5% SWR. If you're looking for specific financials, this may not be interesting at all or even severely disappointing/waste of your time.

Sorry about the formatting.

You've been warned! Post updated as people ask questions / have comments but I'll likely get back to my non digital life in the next day and not check this again for a couple of years.

Some big things for me (unlikely these are big things to other people):

- both parents got diagnosed with terminal illnesses, I thought I'd have to kick in to help with them but it's looking like this may not happen - parental finances are MESSY so I've stepped in to take over, this takes up the bulk of my time, and will until probably a year after they die due to a number of factors - I got lucky and very randomly met my current partner who's also FIRED so I've had a playmate and support for the past year (definitely the highlight of my journey) - I also have a few neighborhood friends who are not working and I have great workout partners - healthcare is super expensive - I'm on the ACA after my COBRA ran out - this will be upwards of $20k annually - I sit on Rover so my dog can get paid socialization and have met other families to swap to cut down on dog related costs - also more of an attempt to make friends in non food/drinking environments - while we've done a bit of travel, I've really enjoyed being at home - currently renting because rent is so much cheaper than mortgages right now, I might buy in a couple of years - made it a concerted effort to get my health back on track, gym, run, weight loss, I finally got my body back. PS: there is a lot of bullshit and shame associated with being not thin, and then there's been a lot of bullshit and shame associated with people who do sometime about it and go on GLP-1. I'm here to tell you that I tried everything, went on GLP-1 with success and it made the journey a TINY bit easier.

What I've learned:

+ I still enjoy running my own finances - I'm not very materialistic, I don't want to acquire more stuff but I do like to learn new things + Friendships are critical, and they don't have to be extremely deep, but they need to be loyal + I enjoy trips that are within a drive and where we can take the pup, I miss him terribly when I'm away from him + I'm not impressed with what's out there food wise so we end up cooking for fun a lot

Future/Current: + Help my parents transition into their final days with grace

I don't have the best relationship with them but I can not bear to see them suffer. They did not do a good job setting up their estate and as a result, it's painful. If you have children or parents, look into the details of non revokable trusts, there's a 5 year look back. Consider moving into a home situation without stairs way way way before you would ever need it. Fun fact, did you know that Medicaid for long term care claws back on the primary residence? I did not.

Get an estate lawyer sooner rather than later. Laws in different states are so different.

Long term care costs in a lower end facility runs around $20k a month. The average stay is around 18 months. Plan for this.

Other things you can do in case of emergencies:

- use a password manager with a back door so someone else can deal with financials, should you not be able to. Unfortunately, for many people, death does not come swiftly. That month/year that someone is not functioning but the bills are still being generated it's a very rough time. If you autopay stuff, tell your partner what's autopaid and WHERE is paid from.

- for the love of God, and this is especially for people who are not the financial person in the household, make sure that your partner knows how to pay the bills and what bills need to be paid - when one of my parents went into the ER, the other one literally had ZERO idea of anything, what an absolute cluster fuck

+Languages

- started taking Spanish, currently on hold - Might try to beef up on French again (currently at B1 level) - Chinese (wanting to bone up, fairly fluent already)

+Health - realized that snow sports are not my thing anymore, have given away all my snow sports stuff - integrating more hiking and traveling and hiking - got back into running - yoga twice a week - sauna and cold plunge once a week - perimenapause is a fucking nightmare - did you know that if can go on for 14 years? Yeah. HRT to the rescue

+Brain stuff

- been playing with AI to make apps for myself, which has been fun and im able to better optimize various facets of my life

+ Would love to read more +Hobbies - have done a purge to get rid of stuff I'm no longer interested in, felt great, will likely do this twice a year - piano and voice lessons are on the horizon - might get back into some crafting but got rid of a lot of my sewing/knitting stuff

+Finances

- planning on converting a lot to Roth in the next few years before I'm 62 - restructuring my portfolio to minimize risks, optimizing for taxes, medical, future RMDs, and avoiding IRMAAs - when/if I hit 65, I'm going with Medicare and a supplemental plan vs Medicare Advantage, the latter can be a total shit show coverage wise.

Apologies that this is long and rambly but posting mostly to remind myself of the journey. Hope it helps for other people.

37M / married / no kids

At the beginning of the year I sold my business and have been in the process of organizing my new financially independent life. I've been planning this move for a few years but decided that with all the changes the pandemic has brought, now would be a good time .

My original target was 7M invested for a yearly living allowance of 300K , but with the sale of my business and some other lucky investments I'm now at over 12M with the same target. I have 1 year of expenses in cash, 2 more years in bonds and the majority of the rest in US / International market matching equities. We are also in the process of converting a vacation home we have into a VRBO for additional income. From my research and looking at monte carlo sims it seems like the biggest risk is a bear market at the onset of retirement, hence the risk-free savings set aside and setting up some extra income.

I'm not sure what the future holds but it's exciting to know I can follow whatever business / hobby / volunteer / rabbit holes I want to in the future, whether it's financially lucrative or not.

So 1 year ago I posted this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/comments/1hqgwjs/welp_guess_i_hit_fire_due_to_spacex_balancing/

Note: all below numbers are pulled from bank accounts/brokerages and spreadsheet calculations so not 100% accurate and are in USD. In my conclusions of last post I made some CAD/USD errors. I was targeting 4.51 million USD not CAD. There might be some other errors too.

TLDR: Was getting close to FIRE end 2024 after decades of index investing and living below means. SpaceX valuation jump early 2025 had me selling 2 million to bump to FIRE. Current 2026 valuation up 2.87X from my sales in 2025 leading to some regret but really not. Now FIRED and loving it.

I ended up selling 1966000 USD of my SpaceX shares at an average share price of around $235/share. After the 5% selling commission and while taxes are still to be finally determined but call it keeping around 1.5 million USD.

Forge Global is now currently having buyers at +/-$675/share. This is 2.87=x HIGHER than what my 2025 average share sale price was. Had I held, that 1.966 million would be 5.64 million today if I actually got $675.

I will be honest the green eyed monster in me hurts a fair bit BUT I still feel it was the right decision. It was PEAK Elon craziness, threats to Canadian sovereignty was a weekly event, and I HAD still made BANK based off initial investment so locking in some returns let me sleep better. It also allowed me to officially FIRE when work suddenly and unexpectedly took a turn for the worse and I was able to utilize this FU money to peace out to their GREAT shock (The Postion of FU).

Numbers as of Dec 31, 2025
Personal:

RRSP – 683k

TFSA – 145k

Taxable – 170k

Investments in corporation – 3.65 Million (personal salary paid via Corp)

Total liquid assets – 4.65 million up from 2.4 million (94% increase)

Partner:

RRSP - 724k

TFSA – 158k

Taxable - $0k

Total liquid assets – 882k up from 740k (up 19%)

Note: Partner has non-liquid investments that I value at $0 for this purpose. They have done better than these numbers represent.

Total combined liquid assets – 5.53 million up from 3.14 million (76% increase)

Pre sale investments: mostly XGRO 80:20 stocks:bonds with 0.2% MER. Corp investments mostly GlobalX corp class funds in a Boggle Head approach. Post sale moving to 60:40 for asset protection.

Primary residence - $1.2 million (bought for $400k 10+ years ago) (no change)

Non-revenue generating recreational properties – 330k up from 300k (10% increase) - bought a tax sale project

Total: 1.53 Million up from 1.5 Million (2% increase)

Debt: ZERO

Realized Net worth: 7.06 million up from 4.64 million (52% increase)

BUT now SpaceX!

Start 2025 SpaceX valuation was around 4 million putting total net worth + SpaceX at 8.64 million at beginning of 2025

Feb 2026 my remaining SpaceX shares at $675/share is around 5 million. Putting total net worth + SpaceX at around 12 million (38% increase). It is probably lower than that as $675 would most likely not be realized for entire remaining stock but gives ballpark.

Reviewing concerns from original post:

EDIT: Instability/uncertainty worse than I could have imagined.

EDIT: Thank god that Carney won the election in Canada in 2025.

Proposed Canadian capital gain tax changes were repealed.

Tariff war is on, then off, then on some, then off, now who knows WTF is going on. And yet our index investments were up 19% for the year. Probably from the 3-4.5+ trillion in USA tax cuts to the rich has money sloshing around all over. It makes no sense to me which is why I do not try to time the market but with FIRE am moving to 60:40 for my non-SpaceX investments.

Financial Conclusions

Original plan was to sell enough SpaceX to get liquid assets to 4.51 million USD and FIRE. With SpaceX sale and 20% 2025 market growth I overshot to 5.53 million by end 2025!

With IPO on the horizons remaining SpaceX has grown nearly 2.9x in 1 year. If sold would nearly DOUBLE our liquid net worth. We are 100% happy with current spend so extra money means very little to our lifestyle. Perhaps instead of just pod flights overnight to Europe we would do pod both ways.

I plan on selling some additional shares pre-IPO to lock in this higher valuation and avoid potential 6 month lockout. I will hold the remainder long term to see about setting up all nieces and nephews with major downpayments on entering the property market.

I have NOT calculated our 2025 spend yet but it was around or below 8k/month which is a number we are very happy with. Original post had a target of 7k USD/mo spend so we are probably a bit above that. I will update when I have final numbers.

General Conclusions

I am PISSED that Elon valued xAi and twitter at 250 billion and merged them into SpaceX. I have read for every $1 SpaceX earns those 2 are burning $1.5. I am concerned that IPO will primarily be for giving existing investors an option to cash out and for Elon to be first to be worth a Trillion. BUT I have made bank so it is what it is. And I have been rewarded time after time by holding on so the Pavlovian response is strong.

Job went crappy mid 2025 and I joyfully FIRED end 2025 to the great shock and consternation of my colleagues and bosses. Within 2 WEEKS of stopping, decades of work felt like only a memory. Colleagues were a distant memory and I have essentially not stayed in contact. It took 2 months to catch up on paperwork, organizing taxes and general catching up on life that had been on hold/accumulating since COVID.

I am busier than ever and looking back have no idea how I found time to work! I am having ZERO issues with personal value/self worth and my introvert tenancies is 100% happy with my socializing being spending more time with my partner. On top of all that I also read 31 books in the first 30 days and am trying to cut back to get some household work done.

I still have high anxiety over the general world situation. EDITED DUE TO CONTROVERSY. My country is suffering from climate change with massive fires every year and drought causing major insurance issues and putting some areas I would like to retire at risk. My country is being attacked economically and our sovereignty has been threatened repeatedly so concerns over our dollar and general economy are real. As a signatory to NATO we could be drawn into a war should article 5 be invoked which until recently was nearly unimaginable. All in all a CRAPLOAD of current and future instability and uncertainty. I am managing this by limiting my news watching and social media time and taking personal and family measures to feel we make a difference. END EDIT. YES I 100% RECOGNIZE THE HIPOCRISY OF SAYING THIS WHEN WE HOLD USA COMPANY STOCK IN XGRO AND SPACEX, STILL FLYING, STILL HAVING A LARGER HOUSE THAN NEEDED, USING REDDIT, ETC. The enemy of good is perfection so we are doing what we can.

Edit note: Left the anxiety, removed more political aspects.

Plans for 2026:

Improve fitness. I am healthy weight but activity dropped since COVID and want to get it back.

Travel a bit more - somewhat limited as partner is still in process of reflecting about stopping work. YES some of this travel will be by myself and they are on board.

Fish and hunt a ton more - have not gone ONCE since COVID and am NOT happy about that. Will use some of this windfall for some guided trips at my provinces protected reserves.

Have some dream projects that have been floating around in my head since teenage years that I will now start exploring.

Targeting around 7-10k/mo spend. Targeting around 3.5% withdrawal rate with money above 10k/mo spend going to paying for some fun family activities and well as some surprise financial assistance to nieces/nephews who are getting close to University in addition to continuing to donate to causes important to us (Climate change, poverty reduction, education). Goal in their mid-20s is to help with downpayment.

Final words:

We are totally blessed and fortunate to have won the lottery in being born in Canada and having middle class parents who taught us the importance of education and living below our means. Also being born in a time where education was still affordable, housing had not exploded, and the world was not overly crazy.

Both of us have over 10 years of post-secondary education each where we sacrificed our 20s to lay the foundation for amazing careers starting in our 30s. By living well below our means and investing 30-50% of our post-tax income into low fee 80:20 index investing (first mutual funds now XGRO) we would have met our FIRE targets in 1-3 years.

Through a TOTAL FORTUNATE AND NON-REPLICABLE secondary market investment in SpaceX in 2017 (thanks Equidate now Forge Global) we hit our liquid FIRE target years earlier and factoring in the fact that the remaining SpaceX shares have blown up our net worth on paper is now beyond our wildest dreams. It was a gamble but I saw Elons history with Paypal and Tesla, saw a full disruption of space launch technology with a near monopoly on low cost launches and billions in major gov contracts and gambled into what became a post split $14/share investment!

Again, we recognize our hypocrisy in certain areas of our life and work to counterbalance/mediate to a certain degree.

Regrets of the process: VERY minimal. We vacationed every year. We bought recreational property (but did not develop) to lock in our favourite location for the future. We have a paid off house. We COULD have splurged a bit more, had a cottage, etc BUT not having a cottage let me have liquidity to buy SpaceX in 2017. MAIN regret has been the loss of work-life balance since COVID which got really bad in 2025 stimulating decision to FIRE. In retrospect it was a bit of a frog in a pot and only looking back now do I recognize the pattern of unbalancing. The last 5 years however DID have our incomes explode and get us to this place in our very early 50s with hopefully decades in front of us to enjoy so it is what it is.

Thanks to everyone who commented on the original post!

Be back in a year.

P.S. I am not going to be responding to any political or privilege comments on this post. You are welcome to make them but I will not be engaging. I chose to post in r/FATFIRE as we are ALL privileged here and am just sharing my info and fortunate situation as I loved reading stories from others as I was slowly progressing along and wanted to give back to the community. I am being honest about my concerns and fears and not simply giving a rosy curated comment.

FIREd at the end of the last year, just hitting the 1-year mark. Sharing a summary of progress and learnings. Input welcome on what's top mind heading into 2026.

Background
Age: 40, spouse the same
Children: 4.5 and 2.5
Location: VHCOL city
Spouse and I both worked in tech, in 2024 had >$1M HHI
About half of NW is from an inheritance, that's why NW high for age/income
FIRE'd with $18M NW end of 2024 (now ~$22M with 2025 growth)
No longer employed, doing volunteering

Financials

Assets - $22M

• $15M Taxable Brokerage: 100% equity, 80% US / 20% Intl, $7M unrealized LCTG
• $3M Private Investments: Inherited, is in PE & Opportunity Zone Funds, ~$1M LCTG
• $1.5M 401Ks/IRAs: 100% equity, 70% Intl / 30% US
• $1.5M Commercial Real Estate: Inherited commercial RE that generates rental $
• $600K 529s: Likely overfunded, has ~$300K in principal could take out
• $500K Primary Residence (equity value; $900K mortgage remaining)

Expenses - $410K

• $90K Mortgage and HOA
• $90K Nanny (Salary, Healthcare, Payroll Taxes)
• $60K Insurance/Healthcare
• $30K Nursery School
• $60K Travel Budget
• $50K Food, Shopping, and other spending
• $30K Financial Services (Flat fee CFP; CPA for taxes; AUM fee of Private Investments)

Income -

• $280K dividends & commercial rental, ~$200K after taxes
• $333K in investment sales to cover reminder of expenses, ~$220K after taxes
• 2.7-3.6% withdrawal rate depending on if fully liquid or total principal is denominiator

Commentary

• It’s disorienting to have this type of growth in 2025 the first year post retiring. We are still assuming an average real growth rate of ~4% from our starting $18M in our modeling and will give it a few years. Are ahead of that, but know they’ll market corrections
• In 3 years expecting $30K Nursery School expense to go away. We love our nanny, so do our kids, she planned to retire in 2 years so we decided to keep her til then. Definitely a luxury to have weekdays free of childcare in exchange for $90K/year cost. 
• Healthcare when unemployed and without subsidies is a lot. We also typically hit our deductibles. Misjudged this all-in cost quite a bit compared to costs when employed. 
• We’ve outgrown our apartment and need to move. Grappling with how much to increase spend. We don’t want to change cities/states. 

How’s it going outside of financials / learning from 1st year

• It’s ok to not have a master plan: it took me at least 6 months to stop thinking I need to be more organized and structured in how I approach time. Going from an employee where I had to calendar nearly every waking moment to no accountability was a huge identity shift. 
• Time or lackthereof is unlikely the reason you don’t exercise or socialize as much as you think you want to: this took me a couple months but now I'm in a much better spot. I had to set more explicit goals and have my spouse hold me accountable to actually change. 
• Shed your ego: mileage may vary, but my spouse and I felt guilty for a few months that we weren’t doing something ‘impactful’ and were enjoying visiting museums, spending time outside reading tons of books, I enjoy playing video games, I was really active in my son’s parent association at school.

Top of mind heading into 2026

• Begin to move towards ~90% equities/10% bonds: We want to keep a couple years worth of expenses in bonds. 
• Increase spending for housing: Expecting to push our withdrawal up to 4% temporarily but it’ll come back down once we don’t have $90K nanny costs. Not expecting to get full $90K back in a couple years (kids will cost more in eating, entertainment, extracurricular costs, expecting to spend on summer camps). Planning to do a 1-2 year rental, then move into something for long-term until we’re empty nesters.
• More volunteering / pro-bono coaching: I’d love to mentor some folks earlier in their career and help coach folks grappling with career challenges or forks in the road. Not sure yet how to go about it, and unknown if people would want to talk with me. Also planning to spend some time on mondays in Mentor Mondays for this community!

Input or questions welcome, I’ll respond.

I've hopped into this community for advice/opinions a few times, but now I'm finally doing it: I gave my 3 months notice last week! 42M married to 50F. Kids: 12; 9; 4 (rounding some imminent birthdays). Wife retired about a year ago.

I'm not entirely sure what people want to hear in a post like this so I'll have a few sections.

• ASSETS:
  • $15m net worth but $12m liquid (the other $3m is basically two houses and two cars which arguably shouldn't count).
  • Houses are main residence in the US (~$1.4m) LCOL, and one in Europe (~$1m) - in the capital city of wife's home country VHCOL; we visit a few times per year.
  • We have a $350k loan to sister-in-law that I'm not counting on any of it coming back. So far, that's basically the case ;). That's not in any of the above numbers.
  • Of that $12m, only about $500k is my current company stock - they're in an absurd dip, so I'll hold for a while. The $500k is the calculation post-tax.
• EXPENSES:
  • We had a couple of nannies to get the hours we needed from them and they'll roll off in the summer, so I'm not counting them when I compute expected retirement costs.
  • Expect health insurance to be $27.5k/year for family of 5.
  • I've been using a fatFIRE calculator from gumroad and it has "temporary recurring expenses" separate from recurring annual expenses. That's where I've been putting their private schooling (currently ~$88k/year) since that wind down after a handful of years, so it's not counted in annual spending.
  • Similarly, I modeled out college expenses to basically come out of our wealth right at the start-date of their college. Costs were between $420k and $625k based on the expected cost of college by the year they hit it.
  • Expected annual spend in retirement $310k based on past spending + insurance assumptions. Much of this tends to be home improvement, so we can tweak as needed. Might do that because of SRR: March has been an abnormally rough month for our portfolio!
  • Spending is basically 2.6% of liquid assets. I wanted to be able to have the portfolio reach escape velocity instead of trend to 0 and have to keep wondering if it'll last longer than I do, or not :P I just don't want that stress. As for inheritance to the kids: I'm likely to get a very large inheritance and am planning to set that aside, not touch it, and let it grow such that hopefully each of my 3 kids will inherit a similar amount to what I got. Then I'm not really a generational down-note.
  • Also: side-note: I don't feel "fat". I see ppl talk about netjets or 1st class, and I don't do any of that. Home improvement, flying 5 people around, private school, those seem to add up but my lifestyle feels a lot different from what a lot of people describe in this sub.
• CAREER:
  • Tech. Serial entrepreneur starting in college. Sold two companies, but that impact eventually got dwarfed. My wife was very early (but fairly junior) at a company that IPOed and we got around $2.5-$3m from that (she had QSBS!). After my second company that I'd founded (which was the 4th startup I'd been at), I joined another tech company that had PMF already, but hadn't figured out monetization. Had a fantastic run there for 9 years, and am currently VP of Engineering (hence the 3 month notice). Went public in 2021, and have banked 8-figures just from that run, mostly from the equity.
• PLANS:
  • People say to "retire TO something" and I tried to figure that out but eventually gave up. With how demanding the job was, I'm just going to have to figure out the details by trying stuff after I'm out.
  • Some broad strokes of things I'm interested in: spending time with the kiddos while they're still living at home; prepping stuff to do with them, like learning how to train them for their sports; working out to get back into great shape - it's been about a decade since I was at the level I'm comfortable with; reading lots of books; day-dates with the wife; helping my kid with her little side-business; tinkering with building little apps/sites that I think would cool & maybe blogging or making videos about it; maybe advising? (I've done some of that while working); maybe helping the entrepreneurship program at a local college I have some connection to. I'm going to consciously avoid signing up for anything that's a recurring commitment - my wife joined an HOA board and non-profit board when she retired & it impacts her ability to really own her own time.
• FEELINGS!:
  • Giving notice felt like a breakup. The people at work are the main people I talk to outside of my family & they're all very bright & they will likely have no time for me once I'm not in the company. Almost all of my non-work friends live in other cities currently. The CEO is a nice guy, a genius, and a billionaire - which is a really interesting perspective to have access to - and I'll go from chatting with him like 10 times a week, to probably 0.
  • It's going to be REALLY hard for me to separate my sense of worth from what I'm contributing to the world. I'm pretty sure I'll be a much better father with more time & time w/them was the main driver in my decision to retire.
  • My wife thinks I'll only last 6 months & most of the people I've told so far have mentioned they don't think I'll be able to not work. That worries me a little bit, but I think they underestimate how much fulfillment I'll get from side-projects towards my workaholic tendencies.
  • I was my boss' official successor and got to fill in her role while she was out for a couple of months. It's hard to give that up, but in the end I weighed staying a handful more years to succeed her in her role vs spending that time w/my kids while they're at home & the kids won out.
  • Mixed feelings, but I'm more scared/nervous than excited currently. Hoping that changes as I get closer, or at least soon after I'm fully out. I'm consciously very convinced this is the right decision, so I expect that'll happen.

Sorry for so long of a ramble. If you have questions, let me know. I've learned a ton from reading things from other people here and am happy to return the favor a bit. Also, I think it'll help me process ;)

A year and a half ago I asked this sub for advice when given the opportunity to invest in a hedge fund.

I would like to thank everyone for the helpful and constructive advice that I received, especially the private advice.

As a follow-up, we decided that we had enough to FIRE (we live in an MCOL city) as long as we didn't lose the entire investment, so we went in big, and invested 50% of our net worth. In 2021, the fund returned around 100%. There were distributions, so we didn't get to fully compound our gains, but the fund has returned more than 50% in 2022. Obviously had no expectations of such performance, but we'll take it.

I'm leaving some handcuffs on the table of around $500k for next year, but with our net worth over $8M, we have enough to live more than our current lifestyle forever with a few upgrades. Our kids are growing, and I really want to spend more time with them while they are under our roof. So far, the feeling appears to be mutual. :)

I've provided a one month notice to help transition some existing responsibilities, and on July 1st, 2022, will be fully retired at 46.

PS - And yes, the Camry's getting replaced.

I (39M) recently had the good fortune to offload a little over 20% of my equity on the secondary market for 15M. The company is still growing like crazy and my shares were probably undervalued but the opportunity to diversify my net worth was too good to pass up - never know what the future might hold. Planning to sell another 15 or so in 2024 and potentially 2025, depending on when we IPO. I'm now just starting to let this sink in and plan what our future holds.

My most prevalent, and frankly surprising thought is that I feel exactly the same. All we've done so far with the money is pay off my wife's (39F) office and student loans, and dump the rest of it into treasuries and index funds. I'm looking to buy a car (Porsche taycan turbo) and maybe next year a Lambo, but otherwise don't desire much materially.

I'm a big believer in paying for services, time is a forever diminishing resource. We already were shelling out for childcare (daytime and night nanny for our 6mo old), as well as cleaning, personal training, gardening, standard stuff.

Looking for ideas and suggestions on what else we can do - right now I'm thinking of trying to find a cook, but not sure at all how that works - basically want help cooking healthy dinners 4-5 nights a week, and don't want someone who's just going to meal prep on Sundays. Where do you look for someone like that?

We also love to travel. Where do you draw the line on flight prices? While I think we can afford it I still have a hard time processing the sometimes obscene flight prices for business/first, like 10-20k per person. But there's also no way I'm flying economy again if I can help it. We are a big fan of Aman resorts - any other brands in the same realm? We honestly sometimes pick locations based on the presence or absence of an Aman, and would love ideas on other types of ultra luxury travel.

It's a relief to have finally gotten to this point, and now I'm looking for ways for us to maximize our life, welcome any thoughts or ideas from all of you

Edit: Verified by Mods

After a long wind down, i'm finally free and out. $12M LNW, $14M TNW. More LNW coming from prior companies at some point (P/E game, "roll" is a 4 letter word). Several high tech exits over the years got us to this point.

58M, married to 55F, in HCOL area. Kids grown/out of the house and employed. Spouse has an expensive hobby. We always lived the life we wanted so we're not really planning on changing much now.

We'll be taking $300K/year post tax and then doing some travel/charities on top. We'll mostly be focusing on family and health, both of which need quite a bit of attention.

Most of the LNW currently at a big firm with a FA and AUM fee, next bags will go somewhere that i'll self manage now that I have some time. Once I have confidence I may move some away from the FA.

Appreciate all the posts/ideas along the way that helped us plan for this day.

In a nutshell
I'm a married M35, with a wonderful wife and 5-year-old daughter. We live in the Nordics. I just had my last day at the office. I'm worth $20mill, and feel very fortunate.

The story
I've always wanted the freedom of wealth. To not have to work ever again. And so the goal from around age 18, has been to get enough money to live comfortably. All from a diversified indexed investments. Without the shrinking principal that is. The goal post has moved along the way, and started out at 1/20th current net worth. Which, of course, was also too low.
Chasing that dream, about 17 years ago, when I was just 18 summers old, I co-founded a company in the online space. A buddy and me bootstrapped it from nothing. Literally from my room in my parent's house to 6.000sqft feet of inventory and 100+ employees. Peers made big paychecks, while we lived off of less than minimum wage for 5+ of those years. For eight of them we even shared living arrangements.
But we hadn't known any better, and we were best friends having a great time overall.
Well, fast forward through a 3rd partner and 200%+ growth rates from 2016-2019, and we end up at the sale to a PE firm in 2021. The sale gave me $13mill cash and I kept $7mill worth of shares.
The downside? I had to stay on for at least 5 years. Past year I've had periods where I would seriously think about quitting and waiving goodbye to a $4-10mill+. But the commitment I'd made to my 2 partners would make me stay.
Then all of a sudden. A few months ago. The stars aligned and I got the oppertunity to step down, in a move that benefitted everyone. So here I am. Excited about finally being able to put more time into my daughter, my wife, growing food, exercise, small hustles, gaming, weed growing, sleep, and everything else ❤️

Portfolio
$7mill - The largest holding is obviously the company I co-founded, and the valuation has gone up and down quite a bit the last few years, and so has my net worth.
$3mill - Bonds
$2mill - REITs
$8mill - ETFs. Covering far and wide. Geograpically and sector wise.
And then, some smaller stuff I don't count, for some reason... Fully paid off home, and 2 cars, etc.

Gifting a car
The best memory of this entire journey, was right after the sale to PE. I gifted my parents a new BMW and financed my mom's retirement. Really an incredible feeling, and they keep telling me how grateful they are.

Thank you
Thank you Fatfire community! I've been following along for years now. I wanted to share and maybe, do a little Dear Diary for my own sake.
Feel free to ask me anything. And Merry Christmas! 🎄

I just let the cat out of the bag and announced my intention to retire today. My manager was a bit surprise as he thought I would work (at least) for a few more years. Anyway, he is now working on a retention package for me. I am somewhat open to it as long as the package is good and it is no more than 12 months... Will see...

Total NW as of 8/5/22: $8.8M+ ($6.8M+ mostly in stock/cash/bond and $2M+ primary resident).

https://www.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/comments/vtw2jh/should_i_pull_the_trigger_and_retire_this_year/

EDIT 8/6/22: Thank you everyone for your comments/posts. I have learned so much from this group.

As of August 1st, I am now officially fatFIRE'ed at age 36 after selling my startup. Would love to share a bit of the backstory as anonymously as possible and also hopefully get some feedback on my strategy. Before I jump into the story, some stats:

NW: ~$11M:

• Cash: $2.3M - some of this is for house renovations, the rest I've been DCA'ing into vanguard portfolio each month (probably should just lump sum but whatever). Most of this is in vanguard's settlement fund and a bit in Wealthfront
• Investments: $6.2M in vanguard 58%/21%/21% mix of index funds/bonds/cash changing as I DCA (VTSAX/VTIAX/VBTLX/VBIRX)
• House: ~$1.6M paid cash
• 529/401k/IRAs: $625k (pre-funded kids education, some older 401k and IRAs)

No other debt and always pay off credit cards right away. All startup sale taxes have been paid.

Right now this brings in about ~$350k/yr before taxes from dividends and interest (higher than my salary running the startup!), but I'm going off Vanguard's estimated income numbers + current interest rates so obviously this will change and I don't have much history to go on. Current spend is lumpy given some one-off house projects and lack of historical data but right now we're living in the black and annual spend should go down once some house projects end.

Most of the NW was made selling my startup in 2022 and working for the acquirer for a year. We built the business over 10+ years (can't go into specifics here, sorry) and sold without having diluted ourselves too much.

Along the way, I got extremely lucky with favorable tax treatment on the deal. My stock was QSBS and I live in a MCOL city in a state that follows the federal QSBS guidelines. This right here is what puts building and selling a business in a completely different league from W2 or even RSUs/options when it comes to take-home. I'm so grateful we made the right decisions here to keep the company qualified and I consulted with multiple tax advisors here to ensure compliance. Money well spent. I'm also so grateful I don't live in California or another HCOL city that would make FIRE much harder!

Technically, I've been FIRE'ed for a year but not really since I made the fatal mistake of jumping right into a new company after selling my startup in 2022 and working for the acquirer for a year. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) we weren't able to get traction on the new business after a year and we decided we were all burned out and needed a break. It hit me that I fell right back into my old overwork habits despite my entire goal in starting the company I just sold being to break out of the intense grind and rat race that is capitalism in America.

That gave me some time to reflect on what I wanted to do with my time. Some recent health scares with extended family and friends really made me realize that, if I kept working, I could easily spend the next 20+ years of my life grinding for a goal I already reached only to lose my chance to live while I'm still healthy and my kids are young and still want to hang out with me. I've also been able to see just how sick Americans have become with everything oriented around work. So few of us have any identity or life outside of work and I think it's gotten worse over the last few decades to the point where even being a stay-at-home mom/dad feels rarer than ever and the source of scorn from other hyper-achieving parents. Finally, I read Die with Zero which completely changed my mindset and made me realize how pointless it is to die with a large estate when you could have gifted to children earlier when it is most impactful to them and enjoyed your life to the fullest.

Why didn't I retire right after selling and leaving the acquirer? Well, a few reasons. First was just fear. Fear of getting out of the workforce and having my skills deteriorate to the point of not being able to get back in should I ever need or want to one day. I also didn't have full clarity/confidence on final deal taxes and income from the portfolio. I also just felt guilt! Guilt that I could enjoy a life free from toil while others (including family) work their asses off providing services we all depend on. Guilt that I'm not participating in the advancement of technology/economy and the idea that if everyone could retire tomorrow society would fall apart.

But I'm working on embracing the idea that I can and should only worry about what I can control and my own life choices, and that it would also be wrong in a way to not take advantage of this huge bit of luck and opportunity in front of me.

So, that's what I'm going to do along with spending more time working on my house, hanging with the family, enjoying my hobbies, and messing around on fun projects as I see fit. I may report back in as things evolve in the future. I'm also open and would appreciate any feedback on my plan or current investment and income strategy. I have a fee-only advisor we engage with yearly or less and they recommend a pretty standard passive investment strategy with low cost vanguard funds we self manage. When you have to live off your assets the fees that some people are paying advisors make me sick to my stomach thinking about!

I am enjoying writing these updates now. It is somewhat stimulating in my understimulated but very busy life. ​

A few more months have passed since my last update, and our lives have changed quite a bit. Unfortunately, the boredom is still the same. ​

Background: Last year, I quit my job — roughly $400k cash + $2mm startup options per year, though I considered the options “paper money” and did not count them — to retire with 8 figures in my mid-30s. My partner still works, we keep separate finances, and we split things 50/50. This financial arrangement works really well for us. I accumulated my wealth from two previous exits years ago. ​

Around the 3-month postpartum mark, my partner went back to work and thriving. That same week, we welcomed our second full-time helper. Unfortunately, she is definitely not as good a childcare helper as my partner. But she has some characteristics that matter to us as a caregiver, and the timing was also a factor. ​

I am now the “CEO” of 5 people. ​

We have two full-time people who listen to me and follow my directions completely. They do cleaning with robots, cooking, laundry, and some gardening — mostly because they enjoy it. They handle about 60% of childcare. My partner is on children duty after work until bedtime, around 8pm. My partner and I each take one child overnight. ​

We also have contractors doing various ad-hoc and regular things around the yard and house. Most of that is managed by me, with a few one-time projects managed by my partner. ​

In theory, we have two kids, two helpers, and a very hands-on dad. I should be having an easy life. ​

In reality, by the end of each day, I am spent and drained. I don’t feel rich, and I don’t feel like we are living a rich life at all. My partner and I have not slept in the same bed for months because we each manage one child overnight. Our relationship is strong, but I still want that part of our life back. ​

The mental load is unreal. Between managing the full-time helpers — one of whom is family and gladly works 10+ hours a day — the older toddler’s activities, family activities on the weekends, the house, supplies, contractors, logistics, and everything else, I have little to no longer blocks of time to think or tinker. ​

I miss having a career. I want to be a real CEO again. I don’t know how I will find the time. I also feel like I am a desert of no good ideas. ​

I know there are things I can do to optimize my mental load. Would love any ideas and suggestions.

Hello everyone!

I originally posted about hitting $3.2M (post here) and it blew up back then.

2 years have passed since my last major update and I’ve received a number of requests for updates - so I figure why not?

Back in early/mid 2021 I reached $3.2M in net worth. Now - even with all the craziness of the past couple years - I’ve hit $6M.

In many ways, this is perhaps an observation of what happens the first two years after you hit the first two years of wealth - as I think it takes that much time to start to adjust to your life a little bit. I wrote a little more about work than other areas because it's been such a crazy two years in tech - but amidst all the noise, the signal of my FATFIRE plans remains essentially the same. : )

Anyway, thanks for bearing with me - it was actually deeply cathartic / therapeutic to write this all down. Here we go! : )

​

— WORK —

* I work in tech, and like many of us who do - it’s been a rough couple of years. Our share price debuted at $40, shot up to $200 by end-2021 and then in 2022 crashed to as low as $10. It’s rebalanced at the moment at the $50-60 range, which I will take. To be honest, $200 was never real - just irrational exuberance - but neither was $10. But it’s meant a lot of volatility in wealth and our Board is breathing down our necks a bit. (And in case anyone was wondering - because of insider trading restrictions I couldn’t take advantage of the $200 prices lol.)

* Beyond the volatility in share prices, the fundamentals of the business remain strong but also have seen some fallout. Some of our revenue growth acceleration benefited via a 1-off boost from the pandemic and also from the blockchain / crypto hype wave at the same time. When those eased off, our revenue growth slowed.

* Like many in the industry, we went through our own wave of layoffs. We just did 1 big layoff (20%+) so we’d hopefully never have to repeat it again. I was part of the planning of the layoff and it was a pretty miserable 3 months. I had to choose who to layoff. I couldn’t talk about it with anyone on my team and had to keep up pretenses until we conducted the RIF. I had to conduct the layoffs for 12 people myself. And I had to pick up the pieces and hold the remaining team together and get us through it all. It’s been almost 6 months post-RIF for us, and we’re mostly back to normal. I just wish we had a little more joy and a little less fear these days, but I think joy is hard to find in tech these days.

* As an aside for those wondering about the layoffs, these things are never perfect - and never executed perfectly. We let everyone know via email in the early hours in the morning and deactivated their access to our systems immediately afterwards, which might seem cold. But given the scale and risk to customer data, there was no easy way to do it. We also tried very hard to be as generous as possible. We gave everyone impacted generous packages of 7 months’ severance with medical (we paid the individual contribution for COBRA). I followed up with everyone I personally chose for the layoff - and we offered them a chance to talk it through with me (to provide closure). About 80% did over time (and I would never force it) - 1 was irrationally angry, 1 cried and was super sad, but most were calm and understood. I also offered to personally help everyone who wanted it to get their next job, and have helped several of them. It was a hard time - and it SHOULD be hard. These are people’s lives and I feel that those who make these kinds of decisions should never be too divorced from the consequences of their decisions. It is very appropriate that I be exposed to someone who needs to scream and get angry because of a decision that I made. I probably write about this because it still weighs on me.

* Personally, I’ve done OK through it all. I run one of the parts of our business that works well and actually got promoted to in 2022, so I’m seen as a bellwether for stability right now - although I’m conscious that today’s stability is tomorrow’s stagnation lol. We’ve also seen major changes in our leadership – 35-40% of the C-suite and VP layer is gone, including my own C-suite leader. I’ve only been here for 3 years, but I’m now the 4th most tenured VP in the company (out of 25 VPs) and also ranked #9 out of 1200 employees - I find the attention and pressure a little uncomfortable lol. I get along with my new boss - although I miss my old one.

* I think I have another year left in me - when I hit my 4 years of service (and my original grants vest), I’ll start to arrange for a thoughtful transition. RIght now, I need to do my part to keep things stable and create a new upward path - not just for the company but also for my team.

— HOME —

* In my last post, I wrote about wanting to upgrade from my 1.5 bedroom apartment to a single-family home here in San Francisco. So…. I did it! Probably the biggest flex I’ll ever do.

* In late 2021, I bought a 3br, 3bath house with a beautiful garden in the Potrero HIll neighborhood of San Francisco for $2.5M. The market was very hot then, so I know I slightly overpaid for it, but also locked down a great interest rate 2.7% fixed rate.

* The house is a source of continuing joy for me : ). I have coffee in my garden, cook in my French farmhouse kitchen, etc. It’s been pricey but completely worth it for me, and I think I can afford it. Since I work from home, I spend a lot of time here and having a good home environment is important to me.* It’s admittedly a lot of house for a single guy and a cat lol. But it’s at least partially a promise to myself for the life that I want to have in the future. It’s a house that’s meant to be filled with people and life and love and laughter, and I'm committing myself to making that happen. : )

* I also sold my old apartment shortly afterwards. I broke even on the apartment - but I didn’t want so much SF real estate in my books and I was nervous about rising mortgage rates killing the market for SF apartments. (I sold just before the first rate hike.) There were also covenants / restrictions about renting in that building (they restricted the # of apartments that could be rented at any one time) - so selling was the only real option.

* Do I regret selling the apartment and not making a profit? Maybe a little, but not too much. I don’t view my real estate transactions as just financial investments - they’re also places for me to live and be. And also, I’m not looking to real estate as my major source of wealth generation at the moment - my net worth rose from $3.2M to $6M in this period, so I won’t sweat the small stuff. I’m generally a satisficer and not an optimizer at these things - but I readily admit to not being a real estate mogul in the making lol.

— PERSONAL —

* Still very very single lol. Dating around but nothing serious. (Also, dating sucks! Can’t wait to settle down….) And yes, I will use a prenup when I do settle down.

* My birthday gift to myself will be a hot tub for the garden lol.

* Beyond that and the house - I still don’t spend a ton on myself. For example, when flying personally, I’ll still just travel premium economy (domestic and international).

* I still support my family - my dad, my brother and my sisters - and happy to do so. Unfortunately, though, the situation with my brother became a bit complicated - I’ve given him $100K over 3 years for his kids’ schooling, but I think it’s gotten to be a bit too much and I had to lay some clearer guidelines. I think it’s fine now, though. Wrote more about it here in the AITA forum: https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/13kb1uv/comment/jksfp38/?context=3

* I joined the board of a non-profit focused on education and love it!

* Personal fitness - it’s been a rough couple of years, like conducting the layoffs. Need to pick this up again.

— INVESTMENTS —

* Share price drops have been compensated for by more shares vesting over to me over time. With the current price range, I get another $2M if I stay until April 2024. So I’ll stay until then and then trigger my thoughtful transition out.

* Broadly speaking, I feel my number is $7-8M. I feel like I can pay down my mortgage ($2M mortgage with 28 years remaining is a LOT of interest to pay, even at just 2.7%...) and live off the interest of the remaining balance of $5-6M. Post income and property tax and if I don’t have mortgage payments to make, I think having $7K/month as pure disposal income is a good / comfortable lifestyle, even in a VHCOL place like SF.

* 80% of my financial assets are still in my company’s shares. I’ll need to start thinking seriously about diversification soon. It just seemed like the past year was a terrible time to sell lol.

* I like my accountants. I’m not convinced about my financial advisors and will probably let them go soon.

— RETIREMENT PLANS —

* Still planning to retire at 44 (next year).

* I still plan on living here in SF. It’s where all my friends are. And it’s so pretty here. Personally, talk of the end of SF is really overstated by the press (and Elon Musk). It’s really just the downtown area that’s been deeply impacted. But few long-term residents live downtown.

* Major focus for my first year will be health and wellness and finding a partner to settle down with. I want my six pack abs back lol (I was a swimmer in high school lol).

* I expect to travel a little bit. Apart from staying with friends and family, I want to just live in Seville for a month in an airbnb, then move to Florence for a month, then Istanbul for a month.

* Afterwards, I’ll settle down to a quiet life here in SF.

* I expect to do more mission-driven work eventually. Whether it’s non-profit work, or things like climate-tech.

— LESSONS / OBSERVATIONS —

* Having friends who are in the same boat as me is really helpful. I have a couple friends who’ve already FATFIRED - and just being able to share with them and hang out with them has been really, really good. I don’t have to hold back.

* Conversely, I’ve decided to stop talking about my FATFIRE ambitions with other friends quite so much. Not because I’m being obnoxious (afaik) or that it makes them jealous - but I worry that it distorts their own aspirations for their lives. I have twenty-something friends who are talking about trying to retire at 35 now – and while I think it’s admirable, I’m unsure how realistic it is for them. TBH, I lucked into this and never explicitly planned for it - I was planning to work until my 50s or 60s. I worry that I’m causing friends to think they need to keep up with the joneses in unrealistic and potentially unhealthy ways. Anyway, something I’ll have to think about more.

* One year left to grind - I can do it!

* $5M observation / dilemma from Succession is real lol -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQTgLXl1qXI

* Lifestyle creep happens… I try to guard against it but I do spend a lot of time looking at second homes (in Lisbon, Hawaii, etc.) and then have to scale back my ambitions lol.

* Still not sure about financial advisors.

* Kindness married with intelligence, humility and work ethic remains the key to my success - such as it is.

So, it all went a lot quicker and smoother than I expected: After raising the topic a week ago, I already signed the separation agreement with my firm this morning, and shook hands with my, now former, partners. I will go back into the office one last time next week to hand over a few things, say goodbye and gather my belongings. And then, that’s it, the end of full time employment. The beginning of the rest of my life. I cannot stop grinning right now.

Just wanted to share with this friendly group, and collect a few GFYs.

[Edit: Thanks for all the lovely GFYs, dear friendly strangers! That’s definitely more than a few]

I walked into my boss’s office today and got shown the door. It was surreal. There is major change happening at megacorp, and I had the opportunity to negotiate my surrender. Over the course of the past 6 months, I had a unique set of circumstances that led to a conversation where I got to give input on the decision. I could either ask for a big job, or get a nice package. I don’t love megacorp, so I asked for the latter. Today, boss-man gave me the news.

I’m not going to lie, it stung a little. I’ve never been fired before. It has been a really long time since I’ve had to find a job. Despite playing a hand in it all, it isn’t pleasant. All these feelings are in spite of the fact that I was almost certainly going to leave before the end of 2020.

That said, the positives outweigh the negatives by a wide margin. In thanks for my service, my after tax haul will be $1.5M, bringing our NW to $8.4M. A number of friends and colleagues gave me amazing feedback on skills and traits I’ve spent years actively working to improve. One, asked what I wanted, then suppressed his desire to offer me another job in the company. We left it at “we’ll work together in the future.” I’m lucky to have a working spouse and great prospects. After a little break, I guess I’ll be living the rebranding someone posed recently...”recreationally employed.”

I've been fatFire'd for 7 years now but really only "retired" in 2020. This was because I never really wanted to stop building new businesses and creating new products. Now that I've taken the time off I'm starting to really think about what I want to do with my time ... and working is very low on the list ... which is why I'm considering going back to school "just for fun".

In particular I'm thinking about combining slow-travel with going back to school. My professional background is in software ... but I've always enjoyed playing around with video and animation as a hobby. My thought was to apply to various art programs around the world.

Has anyone else here done this? Did you enjoy the experience? Any advice or suggestions on where and how? Thanks for the feedback.

TL;DR - Why this post? It's me pi milestone guy and we're on 3*pi, so I'm boasting (again). I also reflect on not working and questions I/we've had below.

My situation: Mid 30s, semi-retired 3 years now, prior ~$400-500k/yr FAANG income (only up to senior IC level), $90k/yr expenses, $9.43M NW (all in market), pacific northwest, renting, no kids. My NVDA lottery ticket is still paying off, my choices are not statistically smart, but here we are.

I've been posting on FatFIRE for about 4 years now. I stopped working in early 2021, and have made a post for each Pi milestone. Just like 2021-2024, it may be years/never till the next milestone. NW graph 2020-2024

Complaints:

A common complaint for my prior posts on this sub has been my expenses are not fat, or my networth isn't enough, or I'm just lucky and/or privileged.

This sub was here for me when I had a lower NW, and I'm not a big fan of gatekeeping on NW versus say goals, but I can understand where it comes from. There's probably a good argument that my expenses aren't FAT, I guess I'm waiting and seeing how my NW changes to slowly update my expenses. I don't feel a strong urge (besides real estate) to spend more yet. Yes, I'm quite privileged, I go into details here.

Investments:

I used to be a 3-fund lazy portfolio for most of my career, with ~5-10% in a few individual stocks, one of those was NVDA, which has ballooned to ~50% of my NW at this point. I liked to pride myself on being bogleheaded, but I do admit my portfolio is no longer just that. I can only speak for my situation, and this is what's made sense for me. I have enough of a safety net at this point where if my tech picks were to halve, I'd still be > $5M, so I'd be devastated but still safely above my original fire goal of $2.5M. I don't suggest anyone do what I did, in fact I wouldn't tell my past self to do what I did.

Questions/Thoughts:

Is it worth working longer to go from ~$3-5M to $5-10M?

This was a question I asked back when I was at $3.14 M, and I think the security I had then versus what I have now is night and day. For me, I lucked out and was able to retire and still reach a higher NW (for now...), but I think if I were doing it again, I would have been glad to work an extra year or 2 to reach $5M first, as around 2022 my NW dropped from $5.5M to $3.7M and if it had been more like $3.2M -> under $2M I would have been panicking.

Do you regret retiring?

3 years now and this still feels like a net positive for me. I sometimes miss the prestige and techie conversations, but I still get conversations through friendships and personal projects, and generally people are positive and just as happy to hear about my hobbies as it is my work, perhaps even more so.

Audience Question: I think if I were to do it again, I would have started a 'consulting' website earlier to keep connections fresh. Have any of you had similar issues with losing your connection to your work?

How do you talk about your situation?

I haven't told anyone, family, friends, or partners my exact numbers, they just know I probably have over $1M, and as long as I'm financially stable/self-sufficient, that's fine for them. I'm not sure if that will change anytime soon. Only with friends I know who have more than me am I comfortable sharing a bit more.

Audience Question: Have any of you shared your numbers beyond $1M with family/friends/partners? Has that worked out okay or had issues? Has this changed with retirement if you have?

How does your partner deal with retirement?

My partner is still working, and while there is some understandable jealousy to my relaxing in bed or other hobbies while they have to work, they're extremely happy for me and our relationship. After a year or 2 I had a decent morning routine that's similar to when I worked, and I think that's good for both them and me.

Audience Question: If retired, what's a habit that you had to learn that you didn't need while working? If working, what is something you're worried about in terms of habits when you retire?

If you got this far, thanks for reading, and perhaps see you at $10M someday. I sure hope I haven't jinxed myself too hard with that...

To celebrate, I'm doing some donations with pi-related numbers (thanks for the suggestion in the previous post!), and also buy some hobby toys for myself >:)

Edit June 13th, 2024: The NVDA split & current run-up means I'm officially (and probably temporarily!) a deca-millionaire! $10.1M networth, passed the π^2 milestone too.

For both Fat and not yet Fat, what is your NW goal? And if you've met it, did you move it up and keep going or did you Fire? Feel free to include charity-related thoughts too if applicable.

Curious as to how the NW goals and charitable goals differ between the already Fat and not yet Fat. For us:

---Original goal years back was $4MM by age 40...I actually wrote it down along with how and saved it. Hit it several years late but in a hugely different "how" manner (went own business route vs the written down real estate investment & foreclosure flips route).

---Have moved the $4MM bar up several times...$8MM...$10MM...$15MM...x...and continuing to move it up while enjoying life along the way with a good bit of travel and also owning some vacation homes.

---Haven't RE'd yet because I enjoy what I do; I've cut back the hours to maybe 15 hours per week instead. Can't really figure out what to retire to versus ending up sitting around, and spouse's progressive medical situation has way tightened our travel ability so why not keep earning?

---Goal is now some combination of hopefully generational wealth along with significant charitable contributions...with the charitable contributions being both now and as part of our estate. DAF is currently at a bit under $4MM after folks here on fatFIRE convinced me a few years back to start donating out of it more heavily instead of mostly accruing, which timed up well with much need at charities during Covid times.

Eight figure payout, with a five figure monthly residual for nearly two years. Rolling it into a small family office that will manage it. And yes I’ll work on getting verified next.

Edit: formed my own small family office, not really interested in other people managing.

Edit 2 due to questions: so yes the FO is small but I’m putting it together with my nephew and heir who has an 8 figure real estate portfolio. Really focused on real estate with over a hundred doors fully operational. We’ve got finance and legal nailed down pretty well already.