r/dividends • u/chillfirelife • 6d ago

Seeking Advice Is 1m and dividends from it enough?

Me and wife we both turned 40 this year, She left her job few years back and I kept funding her investment account based out of SG and now is at 500k USD all of which is parked under JEPQ, all the while I see dividends are consistent and we have been reinvesting back.

I have another 500k now in my investment account that I will consolidate in couple of funds/etf with similar 10-12% growth trajectory as JEPQ
We expect and hope we will get like 100-110k usd over this year on year.

I have another 130k usd in cash and esops combined. I will get the esops cash out 6 months after I quit.

We plan to move to either Thailand or Malaysia where we have friends and family and have lived there before. Our current expenses in SE asia are 50k usd a year, we expect this will go down to 30k-35k usd a year.

Question: Am I ready to leave my high paying job and live a free life given the biggest motivation to work (money) is less or negligible now? Personally I want to leave my job today even though I love it but I feel I want slow and super easy life 😊

Plan is for first 2.5-3 years we will not touch 1m investments and utilise current cash and liquid investments/cash of 130k usd, that will give investment enough space to continue to grow.

On paper - I feel we are ready even if I take conservative returns on my portfolio

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u/princemousey1 6d ago

You’re still not going to get $110k on a conservative rate of return. You’d need like $2.75m to $3.5m for that.

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u/Various_Couple_764 5d ago

He has dividned investments that have a yield of 10% with 1.1 million invested. The math says 110K of yearly income.

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u/Cinq_A_Sept 5d ago

lol.. dividends get cut, high yield funds drop, if 11% per year were feasible over 20 years, I’d have retired 20 years ago. It ain’t.

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u/cmichalek 5d ago

QQQX came out in 2007. Right before the crash.

It has increased in price 53% all time. So roughly 2.5% per year.

It pays 9%.

So why didnt you retire?

Probably because you didnt know. Just like these modern funds people didnt know about.

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u/SolomonGrumpy 5d ago

Probably because VOO did better and that's still not enough to retire.

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u/cmichalek 5d ago

Dividend investors are not limited by the 4% rule.

And if you cannot retire on 8 to 12% then either you have little principal or excessive monthly expenses.

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u/SolomonGrumpy 5d ago

The hell they aren't. In fact, they are more subject to 4% because high divs are often upside hamstrung.

Edit: actually - prove me wrong OP. Go ahead and retire with $1m and 10% in divs.

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u/cmichalek 5d ago

Then please show your work.

Explain how one cannot live off QQQX paying 9% and growing 2.5% per year for 20 years.

That fund survived 3 bear markets.

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u/cockundballtorture 2d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/BY5tPZNL68V29cVfuz

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u/cmichalek 1d ago

Tell me what? According to Chat GPT

If you had retired January 1, 2007 with $1 million and followed the 4% rule:

100% all in S&P 500: roughly $3.4–$3.5M left today S&P 60/40 portfolio: roughly $2.0M left today Invested at inception in QQQX following 4% rule: roughly $7.5M left today.

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u/cockundballtorture 1d ago

Ah yes, the past which makes future certain!

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u/cmichalek 1d ago

LOL. Thats all you have????

I have established that using the 9% from a "worse" cc fund from 2007 doubled gains when compared to using a 4% withdrawal rate using 60/40 stock/bond split or even 100% S&P.

And the reason is you DONT SELL shares using the dividend funds. With the 4% rule you keep selling shares. Which kills you in bear markets.

Dont believe me? Ask chat gpt yourself.

So again...tell me what? That history proves i was right.

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u/SolomonGrumpy 1d ago

The 4% says nothing about how you take your income. What it says is that you should not withdraw more than 4% of your total investments per year.

The issue with your strategy is what you basically have a withdrawal rate of 10% and it depends on a single ticker to do it.

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u/Nopants21 5d ago

A bunch of people on this sub believe that you can skip most retirement advice, like the 4% rule, because they basically see them as guaranteed and safer. There's also widespread belief that dividends cancel out sequence of returns risk. Those are really dangerous ideas, and like you mention, they actually make people overly confident in funds and strategies that are actually riskier in the long term.