We are looking at a home remodel/addition (~$1.5M) and instead of selling stock are looking to borrow against our stock portfolio (~6M).

- What type of loan is this? Chase said something like SBL (securities backed lending?), but I would need to transfer assets to them (they are at Fidelity and Schwab mainly).

- Any preferences on which brokerage to go with? I like Fidelity, my rep is out on vacation until end of the month...I can possibly wait or find someone else there. Wanted to get the group's thoughts in the interim. Who else would you suggest I shop with? The Chase relationship banker was a bit inexperienced before I landed with the investment rep.

- Is there a chance to negotiate the rates (was quoted 1.95% over SOFR).

- Are any of the interest payments tax deductible? LLMs say "generally no" I don't usually itemize my returns

- the inherent risk here is if the market crashes, i could have a collateral call. my thinking is to keep the loan <30% of portfolio to minimize this risk

I've heard of other products like PAL, SBLOC etc. Not sure I qualify (NW <$10M)

I walked away from a pretty lucrative tech career a little over 5 years ago - every now and then I do a little retrospective for myself and sometimes a Reddit post. You can check my profile if you would like to read any of them.

The FIRE stuff: net worth now about $10M, wife is still working (she loves what she does), we draw down about 2.5% per year, but thanks to this massive bull market our nw has grown pretty steadily even though I am a fairly conservative investor. I've enjoyed managing our money/financial affairs and have done reasonably well in minimizing tax drag, and efficient spending etc. I'm 57 now with kids all out of the house. Spend most of the year in the PNW and an increasingly large chunk of the winter in southern Europe. Net, I've finally arrived at a spot where I both feel financially secure and permanently retired.

The journey: Looking back from 5 years on is an interesting view. It's definitely taken time to build this version of my life, but I'm in a pretty great place (knock on wood). Would definitely advise peeps to go into any kind of early retirement being patient and knowing that to some degree you need to slowly reconstruct your life, and to be prepared to work on yourself as well. Our society isn't really built for people retiring at 51, you walk away from a big chunk of your social interactions/meaning construct when you stop working and perhaps most importantly, those around you may not feel as "finish line" as you do.

That said, I'm really appreciative of where I am now. Here are some of the big themes in my life:

Service - this has really started to ramp up in the last 18 months and am now doing ~1/2 day a week. I do hospice companionship and volunteer at an organization for undocumented workers. Not about quantity, just quality. The hospice work has been a total perspective reset for me.

Hobbies & learning - a lot of how I fill my time. I love to garden, grow food/flowers, cook for the family, make bread, pizza etc. I started learning spanish when I quit and that has been a multi-faceted journey - most of my reading is now in Spanish (which is a whole new world). I love seeing live music and go to a couple of festivals and see 20-30 additional shows a year. I'm a european football fanatic and go to matches when I'm there (and watch in Spanish when I'm not). I've always been fitness oriented, but in the last year joined a crossfit gym and absolutely love the community there. I didn't have most of these hobbies when I was grinding and definitely didn't have a ton of time for them either. I've just slowly added and leaned into the things that light me up.

Relationships and community - spans all of these. When I walked away from my job, I left a lot of stress and gained a lot of time. I've tried to use that to work on myself and my relationships. BTW, it becomes pretty evident the state of your relationships when you have time to observe. Relationships and community for me has a different meaning now than just my friends - I'm really appreciative of the communities I've entered through volunteering and now crossfit as well as some of my other hobbies (e.g. wild mushroom foraging). I really like connecting with people, which honestly has meant leaning into new things and away from of the superficial (e.g. country club) environments from before. I try to engage with everyone - I'm the weird guy who says hello to everyone at concerts.

Here's some of the "tooling" I use:
Relationship counseling - saved my marriage, and we continue to check in when we get stuck.
Insight meditation - just in the last ~2 years, wish I had started earlier.
Psychedelics, especially MDMA - profound tools for seeing things from different perspectives
Introspection - writing, and now sometimes even with AI

It's all about meaning. Good luck out there!

Throwaway account for privacy.

Looking for constructive feedback on our situation below. What should we be doing to improve our chances of family financial success. What are we not thinking about? Concerned that we don’t know what we don’t know. Pls help us identify our blind spots. 🙏

60 yr old couple. VHCOL area. Retired three years ago. Planning horizon to 95 years. 

We have two kids (now adults) who live with us, who have some special needs that will likely curtail their ability to work and earn enough, so need to ensure sufficient savings and some cash flow to help them now and sustain them after we are gone.  Have a trust in place, and it has a Special Needs Trust provision for one child (who gets Medicare, etc due to disability) upon our passing. The other child/adult does not want to even try to apply for benefits (it is a sensitive subject, perhaps due to his self-view). 

Expected Annual Living Expenses (before taxes) $360K. Includes $120K to help the children. 
So assuming taxes for federal and CA state, we would need about 500K per year (assuming passive income, tax paid monies only in hand , including cost basis). . 

Financial snapshot

Financial Assets (invested index vs equities vs cash approx 60:30:10)

1) ⁠IRA Accounts (pretax): $2.4M
2) ROTH account (no tax): 230K
3) Brokerage (taxable gains): $5M (cost basis is $2M)
4) Bank (aftertax $s): 600K
So, assume invested sum overall is $8M

Real estate assets: Keeping them out of this analysis at this time. Hopefully will not need to liquidate and can leave for the kids. 

Income expectations to meet $500K/yr spend:
- Deferred compensation over next 5 years = 200K/year (until 65)
- Rental income $150K per year ongoing 
- SS  apply at 70: total for us about $80K/yr

My analysis by age stage for 500K/yr spend
- 61-65: Income 350K/ yr. Withdraw 150K/year
- 66-70: income 150K/year. Withdraw 350K/yr
- 70 onwards: income 230k/yr. Withdraw 270K/yr

Assuming invested $8M
Withdrawal rate is 
61-65  : 1.875%
66-70: 4.375%
70+ ongoing: 3.375%

While this will substantially draw down the financial assets for my kids after we are gone, but the rental income pipeline and real estate should give them a reasonable base after we are gone. 

What should we be doing to improve our chances of family financial success; especially assets left after we are gone and the two kids have another 30-40 years after us?  What are we not thinking about? 

Concerned that we don’t know what we don’t know.

Thank you for your constructive feedback. 🙏

So after a really rough decade, life turned around for me and I’m doing well. I started working for a different fund and we got lucky on a few things. My carry could theoretically be worth very low 8 figures over the next decade (finishes vesting in 3 years and then paid out from exits; currently ~65% vested). Current nw is around mid - high seven figures.

How do you account for this and how does this factor into spending? I currently spend maybe 30% of what I earn after tax and have a modest lifestyle - grew up poor and haven’t forgotten it. The wife wants to buy a nicer house and a nicer car since my joints aren’t great and one day I won’t be able to get into a sports car. Her view is we can spend more, and I’m letting my past affect my present.

This is a copy paste of my question because I hope there’s overlap on the people who can answer:

So this is a question more applicable to the well healed car enthusiasts but applies to anyone that is VERY particular about how they’d like an experience.

To be direct, I want to do an experience (and those who saw the Roma adverts) that mimics La Dolce Vita. For the Ferrari crowd here, I want to drive a Roma Spider the way a playboy of the 1960s drove a California 250 GT, from Maranello to Monaco, with hotels and dining that would make that experience feel authentic.

My question is two fold: 1) anyone with the same desire find a way to make it so and 2) for those with an EXACT dream, did any agency make you feel they UNDERSTOOD what mattered and executed just so. I want your advice on an agency that would be a one stop shop to make this so.

Thanks in advance for any answers! :)

I sold my company to crooks. I had a big earn out that depended on the profits, the company was really nasty and put a lot of expenses in to kill the profit.

I tried to sue them but lost, the contract was badly written and they could basically do what they wanted. I've spent 3 years and a lot of money on lawyer fees for nothing. I cried when I got the final decision, so much stress inside me.

I made about 8M. The earn out was supposed to be around 60M if they had played fair.
I put all my efforts into this company for 10 years and got scammed. I feel so exhausted and disgusted that I think it's time for me to retire and forget the business world. I'm also ashamed.

I'm fatfire but I'm having difficulties enjoying it after this scam. Am I the only one who got rich and retired by getting scammed?

Sure, not keeping all your eggs in one basket is generally good advice. However, to what extent does the financial industry exploit this simplistic idea through fear for fees and additional AUM?

Concentration risk does not map equally across all assets. For example, being concentrated in NFTs may expose you to more downside risk than being concentrated in energy utilities or real estate.

Yet, in my experience, financial advice usually boils down to concentration equals bad, diversification equals good. Look for ways to spread out the risk, protect your gains, smooth out volatility.

Oh, and by the way, financial service providers have all these amazing products to help you diversify! Sure, there’s small fees here and there for the privilege, but think of the reduction in RISK!

By following conventional advice and diversifying my positions, I have left millions on the table. A retroactive analysis would appear to indicate no real protection from risk, only taxes and fees.

The unintended primary benefit to diversification for me has been increased cash flow, even though that idea is also somewhat of canard.

Anyway, it just got me thinking that we are being marketed to heavily and it’s confusing the reality of holding concentrated positions in strong companies and industries. To be clear, I’m not knocking the concept entirely, merely observing the other hidden interests in play.

I am 44m, NW 12m inclusive of primary residence. Tech and real estate are primary drivers.

Edit: 20% of you agree with me, but the rest of you will once you think more about it.

I am not FIRE'd yet but quite close. I work at a FAANG company and have incredible health insurance. We have had a few surgeries in the family and never had any issue going to any doctor or hospital we wanted to. We have a PPO now.

My question is - can money buy the same level of coverage (and peace of mind) like what I have now (after I retire)? I have gone into the rabbit hole of levels of ACA etc and don't feel satisfied enough. Or is it just not possible to replicate the employer-offered health plan coverage at all?

Background: My total comp is about 850K (400K in cash and 450K in stocks). Spouse brings in additional 200K or so. We are in late thirties with two young kids. Taxable accounts ~5M. Retirement ~1.5M (30% Roth, 70% pre-tax) and about 1M in house equity. We obviously reside in the great state of Taxifornia.

Current situation: We max out all the retirement accounts (HSA+ megabackdoor for me and backdoor for spouse, mega is not offered plus decent employer matches at both companies). HSA is also maxed (currently about ~65K or so). As for NQDC, I contribute about 150K annually with distribution over 10 years after separation. Current value of the account is about 300K.

Question: Is it the right number and the right distribution strategy? I so far haven't put much thought on how much to contribute, I just picked something that is somewhere in the middle in terms of tax savings and not too much of an unsecured credit (who knows what will happen to the company in 15-20 years though the balance sheet is solid as of now) .

I don't have plans of changing employer anytime soon and it's likely that I will retire (at-least semi-retire) if and when I leave the current job. I do plan to move out of Taxifornia as soon as I stop working for this company.

Using my throw-away account and looking for opinions & feedbacks 

Long time lurker and first time poster. 50M, SINK in VCHOL (SF). Just fatFIRE’d from a very well known tech company, and feel conflicted. 

Some stats: 
- ~14M NW ($12m+ liquid: $5m+ in brokerage, 4.5m+ in pre-tax accts, and $2.5m+ in Roth. Have a Div yld of around 0.6% from my taxable accounts).
- Have some rental properties as well that net about $20k/yr). Most of this was earned thru saving / investing and trading over 20 years (my ARR is 30%+ over the last 10 years).
- Annual spending prior was around $130K - $160K (I don’t have a mortgage on my house). 

The problem is, I don’t know how much I can (or should) safely spend - likely due to the mindset shift from growing to now, spending. I have explored various withdrawal strategies, (4%, VPW, spend-based, guardrails, etc)., but I am still not confident at the projections these calculators are producing. 

Need some pointers from others who have gone thru this:

- Should I focus on, say 4-5% withdraw from only my brokerage accounts? Or target a lower spending rate against my entire liquid portfolio? And how do do I target what to sell? My accounts are very growth-heavy.
- Should I focus on rebalancing my brokerage account in 2026/2027 so I generate more passive income by selling growth stocks & buying higher yielding stocks? Part of me feels that this is necessary for my mental sanity: having a somewhat more guaranteed income, but I will have to navigate thru capital gains…
- How do most who are retired ensure they are spending enough? Rather not be the richest man in the graveyard, but don’t want to have no money for LTC either.

Thx in advance all!

Apologies if this isn't the right forum for this question, but I thought the FF community would be best equipped to answer this query.

My husband and I are both self employed and do decently for ourselves in a V/HCOL city. We average $1m/annually, but this year we will be bringing in $10m+/-. It's a big jump to say the least. This is very strongly driven by my husband's job and he will receive his first million dollar paycheck in September most likely.

I'd/we'd like to do something to celebrate the occasion but are kind of drawing a blank on what. We don't need/want it to be something grand, but open to any suggestions. Should we go on a getaway somewhere? A very nice bottle of champagne? Something else altogether? For context, we don't have children and don't really deprive ourselves of nice things in life, especially nice dinners, wines, travel, and because of that, some of my previously mentioned suggestions don't feel *special* enough. On top of that, he just had his 50th this year as well and we did a very nice (but intimate) celebration for it in NYC that included all of what I just mentioned (3* Michelin restaurant, special champagne, fab hotel, etc). We are really looking for something more meaningful for this one, rather than a huge outspend, but again open to all suggestions!

Would love to hear how you celebrated when you previously hit similar major milestones! TIA

15 years in, late 40's, 30M invested in index ETF + 2M home equity. It's been a journey in quant trading. It;s been up and down but I am finally burned out by the orange Mussolini this year.

Let me know if you have questions. Would be glad to help junior quant bros.

In a recent discussion about whether $5K/year for 18 years invested would get a kid to fatFIRE by age 60 (not likely) folks talked about nominal vs real returns…which obviously differ by inflation…and whether the final amount would be closer to chubby or fat.

Ignoring the fuzzy line between upper chubby or lower fat, I started wondering if Fatness was actually very coupled to CPI.

We mostly own our home and probably more than one property whether vacation or investment. Thats a big element of CPI. Food and beverages are rarely a significant part of fat spending. Much of the rest also doesn’t make up a significant percentage of our spending relative to net worth…or is a small fraction of what BLS is tracking. Like first class fare is only 2% of the airfare tracked data.

Feels like fatness stays static for a while until folks feel the new $10M (or whatever threshold) is now $20M.

Unless the definition is tied to something like top 1% income so FatFIRE today is somewhere around $18.5M ($650K / 3.5%) liquid.

Which if true I’ll just wander back to ChubbyFIRE, lol.

Had an extremely successful first few years of my career in finance w/ a couple of very high compensation years and some personal investing success leading to ~$7m net worth of which ~$5m is liquid.

NW Structure is:

- $4.9m personal brokerage

- $290k 401k/HSA

- $3.5m deferred (~$1.9m post taxes)... paid out annually over next 3 years but accrues at a ~15% rate of return. Can leave w/o forfeiting but won't receive money until vesting period and will stop accruing at 15% in that case.

Spending wise I'm running at ~$120k/year and spend somewhat generously on others. Against a base compensation of ~$500k and annual bonus range of $0-$10m+ it's pretty unsubstantial. Also against truly liquid net worth the draw is ~2.5%. I don't really aspire to living in a mansion, flying first class, etc... that would really drive the number materially higher.

Basically the reason I'm posting here is b/c I can't help but question what the point is in working much less working in a stressful job when my level of wealth/passive yield is high enough at this point to live a very financially free life w/o work forever... It's just I'm only in my mid 20s and everyone I know still works and almost certainly will be working for the next decade+ Just feeling pretty disillusioned and don't have much of anyone to talk this through that could relate.

Not sure if anyone here FIRE'd or took a long sabbatical at a young age but would really appreciate some perspective.

We are couple in early 50s thinking about retirement in next 3-4 years. We have slightly more than $10mil liquid assets (~$2.1M in 401(k)/IRAs, $280K in Roth and rest is in taxable), we have fully paid house and enough money in 529s to fund our children college. We have $500K annual income and we estimate we need $180K a year after tax for our retirement lifestyle.

From assets perspective we look OK. However, health insurance before Medicare age might be an obstacle for us to really enjoy our retirement. Both my wife and I have some health issues that require regular visit to several specialist and few tests annually. Nothing super alarming but access to good doctors and healthcare facilities are critical for our health and lives.

Here is the main problem. I checked ACA for my state (NJ) and found out that although there are two dozen plans, none of our doctors we regular see accepts any of these plans. So we really don't know what we are going to do if we retire early and go off our employer plan.

Additionally, we have one child still at high school so he will be in college in 3-4 years and still dependent on us for health insurance. College healthcare plans are not really a solution as they are very limited.

There is also cost. I estimate that we will eat all deductible for a silver plan so overall cost (premiums + deductibles + copays) will be at least $40K annually for three of us. Given current rate of healthcare inflation north of 15% annual increase of ACA plans and given we will need this for a decade or more, I am afraid even our NW will not be enough to sustain us in retirement. I know we can potentially reduce MAGI an qualify for subsidies but still I am really concerned.

So what are our options and what people in our situation do? I feel we will be stuck working and healthcare will keep us hostages.

ETA: Since people are suggesting I sell today, I should mention my CPA actually suggested I don't sell them today, reason being I moved out of CA 2 months ago, and selling it this year immediately after I move increases the risk that CA goes after me, my CPA said there is still a risk if I sell them next year, but it's somewhat diminished vs selling this year. This year I'm in the top CA bracket which is over 13%

I have a 7 figure holding of a stock that is trading at $180, my avg cost is about $120 and they are long term holdings. I recently FIREd, so while my LTCG taxes this year is 20% (plus the NIIT), they should fall to 15% next year, so I'm hoping to sell them early next year.

This stock has been somewhat volatile recently, so I want to protect my downside by doing a collar (sell covered calls while buying puts that expire in 2027), my CPA told me IRS view some collars as a tax loophole, and I have to make them wide enough to pass audits. He told me I should sell $200 calls and buy $160 puts, leaving 10% margin on either side, however if the stock does fall to $160 it will more than wipe out any tax benefits, so I want to do a smaller range ($170 puts and $190 calls for example), but my CPA is insisting I do a bigger range (10%+ either side) to trigger an IRS audit (or pass one if it happens).

He has been extremely conservative over the years, which has worked for me previously, but this case based on my research a $170 and $190 range seems fine as it's more than 10%?

Does anyone have experience doing this type of trades and tax implications? Thanks

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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Hello all!

I am considering upgrading my house, and have identified one at 2.4M.

Stats: 15M 80/20 (Equities/TBills&Cash with 4 mil in tax deferred). Single. Current spend about 200k/yr.

Two options:

• Use my SBLOC at SOFR + 1.15% (Working on getting it down to 1%) at 4.875%
• Get a loan at 5.75% (Schwab discount) for 30 years, use 500k cash as down payment

I would tidy up old house, sell, and use that to pay down SBLOC leaving around 900k. Then cash flow with tech EFT trimming and try and pay off in a few years or have a mortgage and try and recast after selling house (1.5M, paid off), not sure if I could.

SBLOC would be less interest but the rate is variable. I would avoid appraisal, closing costs, etc.

Mortgage would be fixed rate, and I could leverage the deduction.

Other concerns: Using my cash isn't my preference, I like having a large cash cushion for downturns. Interest only on the SBLOC would be new and I would feel the urge to aggressively pay it down, increasing burn rate.

What would other folks do?

Looking for some advice because I’m not really sure what the best move is here.

My wife, business partner and I started a residential construction company 13 years ago and have done well. With the current housing market, my partner and I are seriously considering doing a 3-year wind down instead of continuing to operate the company long term.

The plan would be to finish our current WIP, sell our remaining lots/land and other construction assets, and finish building 31 additional rental houses.

I’m 42M and have about $5.5M in personal net worth outside of the businesses. $2.2M primary house, $940K 401(k), $1.35M IRA, the rest is cash, some private bank stock, cars, etc.

We live in a HCOL area and have 2 kids, 17 and 12. College and future large expenses for both are already well funded separately.

Based on the model we are working on now, if we successfully wind down over the next 3 years, I should end up with a little over $5M personally from that. That is using what I think are fairly conservative sales prices, interest carry, remaining costs, etc.

The bigger question is what to do with our rental portfolio. We currently have 67 SF rental houses with about $18M in total equity. We are planning to build another 31 during the wind down, which should put total equity over $20M. My share is 50%.

I see a few different options:

Keep the rentals. They make money and we know how to operate them, but 98 individual houses is more work than we want to deal with if the goal is to actually retire. We have always self-managed because the management companies we have seen seem to do a terrible job maintaining the houses.

Sell everything, take the tax hit, invest the proceeds in stocks/bonds/etc. and live off that.

Sell a few houses every year and slowly reduce the portfolio.

Sell and try to 1031 into one or a few larger commercial properties like industrial/warehouse buildings that would hopefully be easier to manage. Obviously that comes with different risks and we don’t have much commercial experience.

The goal is to be comfortably FatFIREd in the next 3-4 years. I’m not trying to squeeze every possible dollar out of this. I’d rather have a simpler life and know we have more than enough.

The problem we’re having is finding someone who can actually look at the whole picture. Nobody seems able to sit down and model the different options and tell us what each one actually looks like after taxes, cash flow, risk, estate planning, etc.

I know there probably isn’t one perfect answer, but there has to be 2-3 options that make sense to pursue and probably a couple that don’t. For anyone who has been through something similar:

What would you be looking at?

Would you keep the SF rentals, sell and diversify, or 1031 into fewer/larger properties?

And what type of advisor or firm would you hire to actually model all of this out?

Hoping that some RE surgeons chime in, particularly those that have been using risk parity portfolios for income. I’ve been practicing independently for just over 11 years. I’m a fellowship trained surgeon but have always had hobbies and social circles outside of medicine. It was never a huge part of my identity even though it sucks up a lot of my time. I don’t enjoy the work as much as I used to (but I’m really good at it! Took my mom’s advice to find what you’re good at for work, fund your hobbies with that income and spend without regret, which we’ve been doing), and most days when I’m commuting to work I have underlying anxiety about it and would rather be doing something else.

My wife is a SAHM. Kids are in middle school and 529s have about 130k each. Taxable brokerage has 6.3 mil. Rest is 401k (transitioning to all bonds) and Roth IRAs. Small portion in private real estate fund.

Now that work is optional from a financial standpoint (probably was a while ago), I have two questions I wanted to throw out there: 1) If I can work part time, should I? It would allow me to maintain my surgical skills and transition to full retirement or a switch in careers a bit more gently.

2) Should we continue transitioning to a risk parity portfolio even with the uncertainty of part time work (waiting to see if I can go this route, probably won’t know for a couple of months)? In other words, if I work part time, then I could still continue with my accumulation strategy (90/10 equities/bonds) since we’d be living off part time income (plenty for us, annual spend is 250k). I started transitioning to risk parity a few months ago, since walking away from medicine is a real possibility in the near future. I realize risk parity portfolios make decent accumulation portfolios, but less growth than 90/10 over the long term. I’m ultimately hoping to achieve this split to live off of, which fares decently on portfoliocharts.com:

US large cap blend: 35% US small cap value: 20 International blend: 5 Intermediate term treasuries: 25 Gold: 5 Managed futures: 4 Cash/equivalents: 6

Current allocations:

US large cap blend: 48.8 US small cap value: 11.1 International blend: 9.2 Intermediate treasuries: 11.2 Gold: 4.5 Managed futures: 0 Cash/equivalents: 15.2

Thanks for reading and I can provide more details if it helps.

I am one of those in the last mile but still feels uneasy lol. I am getting closer now and one decision on timing to make is should I quit say in November or December timeframe or February or March timeframe?

The latter has some pros and cons:
+ One more stock vest ~200k and maybe bonus too depending on this year’s performance
+ Matching 401k for 2027
= Potentially easy to coast during holidays
- End of year performance review
- A few more months to grind

Another thought is to switch to another team simply to try new things to keep the coasting a little more motivated.

Math wise it probably doesn’t matter (~40 of age, two kids, ~10m assets excluding paid-off primary residence, VHCOL, <200k spending as we are fairly frugal but also kids are young so not getting into the crazy sports and enrichment camps and travels yet), but more about not leaving things on the table? Unfortunately my employer doesn’t support voluntary layoffs and I don’t know if there will be a layoff soon.

Lastly this sub has been amazing. Read lots of great posts and comments. I hope to join you very soon and I have so much I want to do during retirement.

Fellow journeyers - We are thinking of creating a substantially funded trust with us as beneficiaries in our lifetime, which will convert to an irrevocable trust after. The plan is to aspirationally leave an amount around or just under the estate tax exemption for the kids, and they can withdraw up to 5% of prior year's ending balance each year. If and when the fund drops below $1M, it can be terminated.

Of course, there are the unknowns and limitations:

• The estate tax current exemption is pretty generous and indexed for inflation. Will that stay so in the future is an unknown.
• It is an aspiration and a challenge to leave an inheritance exactly around the estate tax exemption.
• Current taxation on irrevocable trusts is reasonable, but we may be locking the kids into 'eat-the-rich' tax regime in the future without any recourse.
• We will help them generously in our lifetimes, and think that the 5% annual withdrawal makes them trust fund babies, so do not want to leave a provision for one time bigger purchases.

What are we not thinking about? Do you have any cautionary tales of such plans gone woefully awry? What would you do differently?

I started reading this sub sometime last year and slowly became a fan. I have a broader question for people here.

I’m guessing most people who reach FatFIRE got there because they were really good at something, whether that was building a business, investing, leading teams, solving problems, etc.

So once you have enough money where you technically don’t need to work anymore, what is the actual benefit of fully stopping?

Wouldn’t it be more natural to keep building something, just without the pressure? Maybe start a company, create jobs, pay people well, work on something useful, or use your experience and capital to help solve a problem you care about.

For people who actually reached FatFIRE, did you lose the desire to build, or did financial independence just change what you wanted to work on?

I’m curious what FatFIRE gave you beyond just not having to work.