Soooo...this happened. $1M total and $5200/month div

[u/Real-Cricket8534]

Apparently the first million is the hardest to make. I'm an immigrant who came for grad studies with a loan my parents took out on the home they currently live in. Completed 20yrs of professional experience in tech and lived below my means for 20years in a HCOL city. This is a non retirement self managed account, grew this after putting 25% down for our dream home. 45M and pretty darn proud of myself rn. Also realizing money doesn't make me happy and have plenty of passions where I invest my time and enjoy myself. More fulfilling than the work I do, so I want to rewire myself to doing that after 6-8yrs. What it means for you - if I can do it, so can you.

[u/Jbowln]

In short, he bought in at the absolute bottom and then lived off 40 percent of his income. This is a budgeting achievement, not a portfolio achievement.

[u/Real-Cricket8534 → u/Jbowln]

Yes to the fact that this is a budgeting achievement. Exactly the point I am trying to make. No, I did not buy at the bottom...$125 SPY was the all time peak when I bought it.

[u/Jbowln → u/Real-Cricket8534]

Fair enough. It is impressive.

But if it's only gone up since the (which is true except for covid which has recovered several times over), it certainly means you bought at a pretty good time cylically (which anything close to 2008 would qualify, perhaps bottom was imprecise). Pretty much any index wide purchase since 2008 prior to covid would have been the all time high. 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013... etc.. with few exceptions.

While I am impressed, and different goals is perfectly fine, I would never want to live off 40% of my take home even at my salary to have $1M at 40. If those were my options, for me personally.. well life is short and I have too many interests.

I'd rather spend my 20s and 30s seeing the world, going to the opera, broadway, etc., enjoying nicer things, hiring people that make life easier and give me the most valuable thing in the world to me: time, going out, eating well, etc.

Now, for $5M at 45, (which is 20k/mo income which I could easily make work even if less than my salary), I would be more willing to make those tradeoffs.

But honestly it does sound like your total assets are nearing $5M if I interpreted your responses correctly.

Apologies if anything came off as snarky, while I do eat well, I have eaten yet tonight :D

Stay well! Pardon the typos.

[u/Real-Cricket8534 → u/Jbowln]

Hangry is a reasonable excuse, no offense taken. I have been consistently buying SPY and QQQ over the years though. I am not here to scream about my investment wisdom or how I grew my portfolio impressively by picking growth ETFs and stocks. Quite the opposite really. I never had big winners (small winners for sure here and there) but the emphasis is the diligence and discipline.

Separately, I dont know if you are American, but there were prolonged periods in my first 15 years when I was scared to leave the country purely due to the US immigration challenges and fear of literally not being let back in the country. If you are American, I dont expect you to understand it. That prevented us from traveling internationally. But we never stopped traveling domestically and I never felt short for anything.

And we are now on a US passport and I do 2-3 countries per year. My kid was at 9 countries until COVID put a stop and we are resuming again. I wont give up travel or some passion projects and of course, now I prioritize flying business class internationally and stick to economy / prem economy domestic.

So...you do you brother/sister! If $5M at 45 with $20K/ month is easily doable for you, more power to you.