Recently came across the 3% rule when listening to Sam Parr’s new podcast Money Wise. Went digging a little further but I have a question for those of you who already observe this rule. If you sell off 3% per year, and that was to return $X, do you only ever spend max $X or do you still use credit for large purchases like cars etc?

Ive got a business that does mid 7 figures a year, it’s ran by just 3 of us with no employees. My current CPA and his firm I thought were going to be much more helpful but instead i feel like we’ve complicated a lot of our processes. How do you guys go about finding actual good firms to work with? I don’t have really any one else I know in my circle that would have any experience in this. So hoping can get some answers here

I have fully funded 529s for my kids. However, my family recently offered to pay for my children's education.

I have some 529 money with no gains, thus no penalty for non-qualified withdrawals. Would it make more sense to withdraw the money or keep the 529 for grandchildren?

Withdrawing would give me more flexibility on how to use the money. Keeping it in 529 for grandchildren provides tax-free growth, but at the risk of overfunding.

I'm about 75% retired and pretty close to being fully retired and just working on forecasting the future as well as anyone can, three young kids which I'm assuming everyone here in the same boat can agree are so much more expensive than I imagined. For those that have gone through it, how much did you see your annual expenses drop once they were out of the house? Did the added travel that came with freedom pick up the slack or did you find there was a pretty decent drop off. Not accounting for the actual costs of college I am dealing with that separately. Thanks!

Edit: Thanks for the responses so far - I guess I’ll modify to ask whether it drops off once they are fully done with college and on their own, although the feeling I’m getting so far is that it never actually drops off!

I have a three year retention agreement, but am finding the new company is integrating us faster than anticipated and many decisions are quickly being transitioned to corporate.

I needed to relocate to their HQ to stay on with them in a larger role and opted out.

Did anyone have a long-ish retention and did you opt out sooner or did they exit you sooner? My other CEO friends are telling me a year is standard, even if they offer a longer agreement. Feeling ready to move on.

Searching past posts, so many of them are littered with SVB, First Republic, Brex (which for some reason stopped catering to small business). For my fatFIRE folks, where do you bank for small business? Trying to avoid places like Chase that aren't really optimal/modernized. I do use Mercury for eCommerce and enjoy the experience, but curious if there are others I should consider for other businesses.

Are there any other banks at which it is worth parking a chunk a money to access additional benefits? For example, parking $100k in Merrill Edge gets you the Platinum Honors rewards on BOA credit cards. A similar thing if you have $25k-100k at Truist or $100k at FifthThird. It doesn’t have to be just credit card rewards though, open to additional benefits you think are worth it.

We are beginning the process of purchasing and then renovating a new home (the recent posts on house renos here were super helpful).

Wanted people’s advice / experience in buying a new home under a Delaware LLC. Primary motivator for us is the privacy afforded under such a structure. For example, there are local media organisations where we are buying that like to trawl local property records and report on transactions.

Looking to FatFire in about 5-7 years but final roles in my firm can be high profile.

What are pros / cons of this approach? (Property value roughly 6m usd).

Thank you in advance for thoughts.

I’ve lurked on this Reddit for over 10 years, I’ve been running at 100% for maybe 15, and 7 years ago I started a company with 4 others, but 2 years ago while it was growing rapidly I had a conflict with the other partners of the startup and they bought me out, I derisked their bad decisions, but after griefing a bit and traveling and having a lot of fun, I’m itching to build something again, and I feel that I tied my self worth to being productive, on the other hand I know that I don’t need to do more, i just get this fomo sometimes and feel like after all these years only now do I have the most experience and tolerance for risk and the network, to do something much bigger.

I grew up in a low-mid income and have a paid off house, I’m not married, my father is still paying off his mortgage but I help my family in a lot of ways.

On one hand I enjoy the no commitment life, and my freedom to fly whenever and wherever and sleep and wake up without alarms and ignore all calls and emails without worry, but I can’t stop feeling guilty that I’m not productive? Should I run again?

I'm looking to switch to a new financial advisor to manage ~$17M. Looking at the private wealth groups at the larger banks like Morgan Stanley, GS, JP Morgan, along with a few other boutique firms. My current strategy is to share my recent brokerage statements with a few that I like and see what they would recommend that's different than my current strategy.

Thoughts on this strategy? Also, is it ok/safe to share brokerage statements with these folks?

I’m 42M, business owner for 14 years, 6 mil NW, 1 mil+ income in the Midwest. I live in an upper middle class suburb where the avg house is 500-800k, married with 2 small kids.

I have a good amount of long-term friends, unfortunately few live near me anymore. However meeting new neighbors, parents, wife’s friends, etc, I often feel I run into a few issues:

I feel people can be intimidated that I own my own business and live a higher spending lifestyle than they do (I travel a lot, have nice things, multiple properties, nice car, etc). I don’t talk about money or wealth, but sometimes when people ask what I do and I say I own my own company, they shut down and don’t ask questions.

My passion is my work, closing deals, business strategy and I find a lot of everyday suburb issues really boring and perhaps that shows.

I don’t know whether I should be more open about my success. Personally, I always love talking to successful people to find out more about them, but I don’t want to come off as pompous either.

What I try to do is just ask people questions about them and talk about sports, which I do love. I’ve also thought about moving to higher end neighborhoods nearby to perhaps fit in better, network more, etc. However, my wife doesn’t like the keeping up with the jones attitude. So maybe I need a new wife. Jk

Has anyone found the best way to talk about their success without coming off as arrogant or making people feel inadequate?

Hi all,

Looking to buy an apartment in Cannes for occasional weekend use.

Does anyone have any experience buying in France? Exploring company ownership structures as well as personal (based in UK).

Any considerations / advice that anyone can give?

Thanks in advance

Hi! I am posting in the hopes of getting insight into my situation from others that have gone before me. I am either at or quickly approaching FI as a partner in a mid sized law firm. I have been at the firm for almost two decades and I am struggling with feelings as I stop striving as much as I did earlier in my career. I work in patent law and I am at a boutique firm.

I am ~40, married, and have 2 children in grade school. I maintain my own docket and I manage/provide work to 3 associates. I earn around 550k-600k annually and work around 50 hours a week with minimal travel.

I'd love to be able to slow down at work but that is extremely challenging in a client service business. I could bill 400 hours less a year at work and only have a minimal drop in annual compensation. This is something that I want to be doing but I have been unable to ease up so far.

My clients are becoming more demanding than ever and I am concerned about being able to continue to service these demanding clients if I disconnect more from work.

My wife works part-time and earns around 75k annually. She does not get any benefits but maxes out her 401k. In the event I needed to stop working, she said that she'd go back full-time and we expect that she'd earn around 160k annually if she were to make the change.

Assets:
Savings: 2650k
Taxable: 4.6M
Retirement (401k, HSA): 2.3M
Business Equity: 250k
Total Liquid Assets: 7.4M

Total Debt: Mortgage: 328k at 2.625% on 1.3M home

529s are set to pay for children's college expenses.

I would like your advice regarding how to view my next few years of work and how I should be thinking of my exact FIRE number.

We spend around 200k a year (including private school tuition - 32k/year). I’ve let our regular spending increase as of late but we could cut things down with more conscious spending. In retirement, I want to be conservative and estimate that we will spend the same as we will need to pay for health insurance. I am going to assume medical insurance will cost $25k a year.

Spending 225k a year requires $7.4M ... so ... I guess that means that I am at my number. I am not ready to pull the plug yet but how would you approach work going forward.

I would like your advice regarding how to view my next few years of work and how I should be thinking of my exact FIRE number. I'd like to hear from lawyers as they approached their FIRE goal.

Should I continue to try to slow down at work and become more comfortable being less busy?? Should I feel more relaxed with our current situation knowing that my wife could go back to a full time position if easing up causes an issue with my job?

I'm trying to maximize my current level of happiness and I don't want to mess up a good situation. Thanks in advance for your comments and feedback.

Mentor Monday is your place to discuss relevant early-stage topics, including career advice questions, 'rate my plan' posts, and more numbers-based topics such as 'can I afford XYZ?'. The thread is posted on a once-a-week basis but comments may be left at any time.

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My son managed to strike out across the board in recruiting after attending a top MBA program. Think the top 7 in the US (M7) or the top 2 for those in the EU (INSEAD/LBS). He's no slouch by any means, and has had a high achieving career prior to his MBA.
He now wants to start his own search fund and has started to “seek” investments from the family. He’s looking to get $3M total with $1-2M from us, and an additional $1M from other “friends and other family members”.
He’s looking at deal sizes of around ~$10M therefore he will be leveraging about 60-70% which I think is incredibly stupid with the current interest rate environment. But alas he claims he has found businesses that are able to generate the cashflow to cover interest costs.
The dilemma here is 1.5M is about 10% of my total NW. I’m 62 and retired and if this doesn’t work out I’ll have lost a decent chunk of my NW. Not to mention it would be incredibly unfair to my other 2 children who have never asked for anything.
I’d like some perspective from other parents on whether they would trust their children with running a search fund. How involved should I be to ensure he doesn’t fuck this up?
Alternatively, would it be wise to discourage him and ask him to be more pragmatic and pursue a more stable career?
Lastly, as a parent what sort of assurances should I ask for from my son as a LP investor?

We recently hit our 4% number at $3M as 34yo couple. Thanks to the American economy and a little luck. 🙏

We can never share this joy with anyone in real life. So wanted to share it here with the community that's been a real motivation for me.

No way close to being fat or retirement, but this is a milestone for us. 🥂 And yeah fuck it, not gonna quit until we have that fat stash.

Edit: How did you guys celebrate this? Appreciate suggestions (in my modest means).

I am trying to figure out whether it makes sense for us to take an interest only mortgage to finance a renovation. Would appreciate pressure testing from this group.

No current mortgage on home (longtime family home). House worth appx. $4m (VHCOL). Married high earners (assume mid 40% marginal rate).

Planning on taking $750k-1m mortgage to max out deduction. Renovation will cost $1m+ so all mortgage proceeds would go toward home improvement.

Interest only would enable us continue to deduct max interest indefinitely to take advantage of deduction.

Thinking about 5/7 year mortgage since interest rates are relatively higher right now vs expected cuts in the next few years.

We have access to enough liquid assets if needed to pay off entirely at any time if rates really skyrocket.

I’d plan to use the cash I’d otherwise sink into the house into investing into index funds.

Thoughts? Any recommendation on best mortgage product? Which bank to approach and how to do so? We have high family liquid NW so would leverage that for rate reduction. Have talked to Schwab already.

Wanting to see the monthly rate for a personal/private chef. Doesn’t have to be in-house, but meal preps 2-3 meals per day.

Thanks.

For context- We are a couple in our mid-50s with a net worth just around 10m. About 5.3m is in retirement accounts and other is in investments (stocks and HYSA). No real estate investment other than primary residence which is fully paid off. Kids done with college. Will likely retire in 2026.

Our household income is approx 500k from corporate jobs (W-2). Rest of the income (in addition) is from capital gains, interest and dividends. This can vary year to year significantly based on investment performance and activity obviously.

Every year, when we finalize our tax return, I feel like we are very naive in that area since we have no deductions to offset this income and reading many other articles and posts, I feel like we need to be more creative and find the right way to be tax savvy and efficient. We have a huge tax bill coming when we are forced to take RMDs from retirement accounts, most of which is pre-tax. Only in the last few years we changed to Roth 401ks.

With that background, I am interested in learning from others in USA what their favorite tax deduction is? Any tips for someone like me? I have thought about real estate investments but somehow not done it yet (mainly due to fear of effort involved).

Thanks.

I'm planning a gift to myself in a few years. Wondering if anyone here runs a midsize to large yacht and what their yearly operating costs are. I'm looking at sunseeker 80+, princess 82, Galeon 800, etc. all in the $3-5M range depending on model year. I have owned many boats but captain them myself and so my operating costs fall quite short of the 10% quoted cost. With this boat I would need a crew. I would probably use the boat 3-4 months of the year.

Sold my startup at the end of 2020 to a PE backed firm and stayed on for the last three years largely doing what I was previously doing and growing the team I had built. I disagreed with the direction they wanted to take things and put in my resignation with 30+ day notice and executed the good reason clause in my contract. Difficult as I loved the team. Last day was Friday!

39M married no kids with 18M net worth and ~14M liquid, portions managed by myself and a few firms to get me access to higher levels of service. Dividends alone cover our needs and potential could step up spending for more lavish travel or charity.

I have 2 years left on my non compete and original plan was to take 6 months and figure out next steps. About to finish our dream home remodel that we have been working on for 3 years, have many trips planned in the next few months between my wife’s time off/WFH.

My customer base was largely FAANG or adjacent and have reached out about possible director+ positions, I’ve always be on the other side so working for one of my customers seems intriguing and would not violate my non compete and give me better perspective if I do decide to do it all again.

I’ve been working nonstop since I started the company 13 years ago, never more than 10 days off and always had laptop and phone, for the folks that have fired how did you go from 100% to 0? I have things to keep me busy and a few hobbies, and I was looking to get involved in incubators locally.

I hit my number and tried to FATfire once before, but only made it for a summer before getting bored and deciding to go back to work. That was five years ago.

Now, instead of slowing down, I’m about to start a new project which will take at least two years of intensive time commitment to see through to its conclusion. To be honest, this is way more fun (for me) than being retired.

Anyone else prefer being in the game to being out of it?

44M. Thinking of pulling the trigger. Grew up on welfare, section 8 housing and food stamps. only child. Im tired of the rat race. Been working like a dog since age 14. Non stop. Im afraid I’m going to have a heart attack from the stress. My business mostly caters to younger adults, some of them are highly dysfunctional where if I don’t keep them on track they will fail and it will hurt my business. I started the business in 2018 from zero. grosses $3.5M/year and nets me$1.5M. I can sell now and will have about $10M liquid. I can easily live off the interest. My wife makes $250k per year on top of my income. She intends to keep working. She encourages me to call it quits and retire because she knows the story. 3 months ago I hired a consultant and realized I should become the lender to the customers of my service based business. It’s going to take 24 months to get there but I can make $50-100M over the next 5 years. We deal with younger adults in my business so it’s a lot of lack of discipline and accountability. This is stressful to deal with. I’m torn. Stick around for 5 more years and retire with $50-100M, or quit and take my $10M and avoid a heart attack. It’s not that I can’t live off 10, it’s that I’m afraid that won’t be enough to keep me and my family safe till I die. I have zero debt. WWYD

56 yo, Bay area, Palo Alto area. Does that still count as FIRE? 11M liquid NW. Wife works part time and will quit too. House paid off, worth about $3.5M. No plans to move.

Expenditure for the past year was $496k - but about $225k of that was taxes because of payoff from startup being acquired. The major other expenses are kids college (one graduating, other has 2 years). Enough money in 529 to cover all but the last year for the younger. In addition travel was at 50k, rest are long tail related. (Stayed in the expensive part of Europe for 5 weeks last year). Empower (ex personal capital) does a nice job of capturing expenditure, and have been doing so for a decade.

11M @ 3% gives me 330k, which is well within our range to live comfortably and splurge on travel once or twice a year depending on stock market performance. Have moved to 70-20-10 stock/bond/cash - I think it is a tad conservative which I might change up a little. I expect the major expenses to be property tax (~22k), healthcare (~30k) insurance (home+auto+umbrella) ~7k, paying for my excellent financial advisor (~12k)

I doubt if I will sit back - will likely see if I can do a 'lifestyle' software business. I am hoping to avoid raising money and getting back in the game. I just love writing code, though I don't think I am great at it. But have spent the past decade leading large teams where writing code was a luxury I did not have.

I’m close to getting a pilot’s license but don’t see any real world utility in flying Cessnas that go 120 mph while having to constantly be paranoid of engine failures.

What’s a safe NW and annual budget to own a jet assuming I’m going to be flying it myself? I’ve been looking into personal-use jets such as the VisionJet and possibly an older Citation/Phenom as the VisionJet doesn’t seem much better than propeller planes in terms of speed and safety (single-engine) The price from what I’ve seen would be anywhere from $1.5M-$3M for acquisition.

Current NW is $12M with ~$500k annual spend (personal and business) but I travel a lot and love aviation so the value to me would be priceless. Obviously it would be much more convenient to rent a plane hourly, but from what I’ve seen charter companies supply their own pilots and don’t allow you to fly it.

I’m sure since this is a RE sub a lot of people have gotten into aviation and have experience in the subject, even if it meant being let down.

Any insights are appreciated. Thanks!

Ok, here it goes.

I am 52YO, have never earned more than $350K yr, wife was part time teacher, her highest annual income was $35K.

I have invested since my mid 20's, been aggressive savers and worked for companies that have equity related incentive comp plans and have benefitted form that. I have been employed almost 30 years and never had a gap in pay-have weathered uncertainly and several layoffs but always landed on my feet. Currently pivoted to a better quality of life company with a (small) pension that vests in 3 years. I received a small inheritance (250K that helped, but was incidental to the big picture)

2 college age children-Undergraduate tuition is fully funded.

Home is 1-1.2M and totally paid for. We have 5 cars, also paid cash for them.

Our only expenses are emergencies, insurance and normal incidentals like vacation and travel, some yard care, home maintenance. Etc...

We take 1-2 pretty dull vacations a year (Cruise or Beach) we live pretty frugally. Just like normal middle class people. I am not a "second home" person. We have dogs and enjoy our home life.

I plan on retiring when youngest child gets their own health insurance (5-7 years) but possibly as early as 55 1/2.

Here is what we have

401K with 2.1Mil

self directed IRA with 2.4 mil

Investment account with CFP 3.5 mil

Alt investment account (private equity) managed with big brokerage $800K

cash of 150K

House 1.2 Mil

I have a CFP working on a strategy for me right now since most everything we have is tied up in equities (90%).

I have never bought real estate, crypto or anything really outside of the NASDAQ stock market :)

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What will the future bring? I am getting ready to figure that out.

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here are my anxieties

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Healthcare

Having a steady income stream

Finding happiness with the uncertainty that fatfire brings

What is the best way to manage these feelings?

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I see lot of FAT fire people here talk about doing fractional CXO jobs (CTO, CFO etc) after FATFire. How do you all find those roles? Is it again a connection based game?

I am specifically interesting in fractional CTO coming from tech executive background. What is the right path to pursue that without lot of connections? Any platform which help in that?

I'm currently mid-30s with a liquid NW of ~$3MM. I (my company) earn around $2m/year, which I expect to continue for the foreseeable future. My aim is to (fat)FIRE in 5-10 years.

The catch is that I'm Scandinavian, which means I'm facing a tax rate in excess of 50%. This does not include the Capital Gains Tax when I invest the NW. I'm not fundamentally against taxes, but it does feel excessive.

My company is just me. I could pack a bag and work from anywhere. I've been considering buying a vacation home overseas. More recently, I've been leaning toward reincorporating elsewhere and emigrating instead. Depending on where I end up, my nest egg could end up twice as large as if I stayed.

I've repeatedly heard the recommendation not to relocate because of taxes. And I'm not sure if it's worth moving just to see my money pile grow faster. At the same time, I often feel I'm not taking advantage of my situation. I'm young-ish and single. Moving somewhere more tailored to my situation than my small hometown might be a lot of fun.

I was curious about this community's view on the topic. Has anyone here done something similar? E.g. relocating permanently/for a few years because of an opportunity/job/other financial reasons. Was it worth it, all said and done? Or would you have stayed back home, even if it meant delaying/downsizing the FIRE?

I'm a FinTech executive about six months away from pulling the trigger. I've been carefully planning this for years and am genuinely excited to put the grind down and focus on my family.

That said, I like what I do professionally, or more specifically, I like using the skills that have made me successful. It feels good to be good at something, and I don't want to completely abandon that in "retirement".

I started my career as a software engineer and still very much enjoy coding. I have no doubt I could leverage that skillset to dabble as much as I choose to in retirement.

But being an engineer isn't what made me FatFIRE; being in leadership, eventually executive leadership, is what did it, and that's what I've been doing for the past decade. At peak I was leading a team of about 300 engineers (and other technical roles), and that provides so many unique and fulfilling challenges along the lines of vision setting, effective communication, budget management, project management, coaching, and most importantly, execution at a significant level.

I love the skillset I've developed to be good leading at this level, but that's a hard thing to "dabble" in. Nobody is looking for someone to come lead their team of 300 engineers for 3 months and then take the next 9 months off screwing around at a Florida beach house with the family, nor should they.

If you're legit FatFIRE, you probably got there by doing some pretty big and intense things that don't "scale down" very well. Curious if any of you have found a way to scratch the kind of itch in retirement.

I have a bachelor's degree and a masters. I'm strongly considering the pursuit of another advanced degree in my post-FIRE life, just for fun: art history? architecture? computer science? Not sure. I have an interest in a lot of things.

This would be purely for personal curiosity & enjoyment, not to pursue a second career (although I enjoy building things, so who knows...)

Pre-pandemic, my options would probably be limited to the local universities OR the limited handful of remote learning opportunities scattered about the country/world. After the pandemic, there must be significantly more options available.

I know that there are "adult learning" options offered by a number of outlets where you can take a class or two around a given topic, but I am more interested in the pursuit of a degree vs a sample offer at the buffet, if that makes any sense.

Bonus points for "good value". A $100,000 remote art history degree from Brown would probably be a bridge too far. A $10,000 "degree" from Bob's Technical Institute wouldn't quite hit the target either.

I am curious to know if anyone has gone down this rabbit hole, and if so, can you share what you have learned? (No pun intended there.) Many thanks for considering my request.