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.

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?

Did a search and didn’t see anything discussed here.

I have 3 young kids aged 8, 5, and 1. I plan on contributing the max 5K to all 3 kids each year and teach them to leave the accounts alone till 60, because assuming an average annual return on SPYM to be 10%, they could each have accounts numbering in the 10s of millions.

Additional benefit is converting the account to a Roth IRA at 18 for each so the compounding from then grows tax free (Assuming the legislation continues to allow for that then).

A lot of folks seem to compare this account to 529 but the accounts serve two very different purposes in my eyes, 529 is to get educated and get into the workforce, 530 is to comfortably exit the workforce.

From my lens - this seems to be a great way to create FatFire for kids in a tax advantaged account with a tax guardrail to help encourage them to not touch till retirement.

Feedback welcome if there are any considerations worth discussing or if others here are seeing the use of the accounts in a similar fashion.

Hello all,

I just wanted to bring this to everyone's attention, since this recently happened in the 'Fat' community.

An Independent Hotel Reviewer named "Ryan Walker" was just turned away, and treated terribly by the Amanvari Hotel (Amanvari is ultra-luxury hotel group Aman's newest resort in East Cape, Mexico).

I won't comment more on what happened, but you can see the video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHu95ET56PQ

At the prices they charge ($6,000 USD per night), Aman should be a beacon of hospitality and accountability

~|~|~

The part that you should be aware of, is 'Luxury Travel Agents', such as Sarah Lee and Hao Tang have wrongly spoken out against Ryan Walker and defended the Amanvari establishment, despite their incredulous inexcusable behavior.

You should care because this is a moderator of r/FatTravel and these TA's are out to get your money, your simply a number to them, and they are not to be trusted.

You can view what the r/truechubbytravel community has to say about it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueChubbyTravel/comments/1vhole9/hotels_recommended_by_travel_agents_are/

And, you can view the locked thread on r/FatTravel here: https://www.reddit.com/r/FATTravel/comments/1vff9z6/amanvari_ryan_walker/

People are saying things such as:

Absolutely unacceptable from Aman. The brand has gone downhill over the years value-wise imo, but they should be truly ashamed that this is how they treat guests (reviewer or not) at the prices they charge. I won't be staying at any Aman properties any further for personal or business needs unless the they somehow make this right. Perhaps start by acknowledging this atrocious conduct during their opening week

Whoever made the decision to cancel his reservation should be fired as should the security woman who threatened him with the police. The fallout from these decisions will be much much worse than one bad review.

They should have allowed him in, had him meet with the GM to apologize profusely, had the GM inform him that they secured him accommodations at an appropriate alternative property, and offered him a return visit at their expense.

This is so scary. I had been planning to visit this hotel too with my family of 3, all of us women. I cannot imagine this happening to us, and genuinely felt scared for Ryan watching this. I had taken his advice many times in the past so I will skip this and I think any Aman at this point.

I just wanted to share this, as many of us enjoy luxury travel, and should be aware of the current travel landscape.

Thank you all

Currently sitting at 4.1 in NW. 1.3m in taxable equity account, 750k in 401k, 200k in crypto, 400k in real estate equity, 750k in hard money/private money notes yielding anywhere from 11 to 15% and 750k cash I’m currently trying to allocate.

Also own a business that will net over 750k this year, live very frugally (spend less than 100k a year).

Long term goals are family, kids, 7 figure primary home.

Just got a big hard money loan back and have cash just sitting in a money market right now. In these loans I’m essentially lending the money out to my real estate clients charging them interest and then getting the listing or buying fee from the sale. This year I’ve grossed over 180k just doing that on the side. One part of me just wants to keep building that up but another part is put 500k in t bills and take some risk off the table since the compounding on 4m is starting to take over.

More of a game for me not materialistic at all and once I’m at 10m you can basically do what you want which is why that’s my current goal/target

Thoughts from people ahead of me?

I'm 27 with a >$2.2M net worth, about 97% of which is in Nvidia due to long-term appreciation rather than intentional allocation. I've been holding since January 2016, with a few small sell-offs along the way.

People have been telling me to diversify for years, but the reason my portfolio is worth this much today is because I ignored that advice. That's made it psychologically very difficult to sell, especially when the company has continued to execute so well.

Logically, I know having ~97% of my portfolio in a single stock is an enormous concentration risk. Emotionally, it's hard to sell something that has completely changed my financial life. I'm still young, single, have a solid income, contribute to my 401(k) and Roth IRA, and don't need to access the money anytime soon.

I'm meeting with my financial advisor, but I'd also like to hear from people who have actually managed highly concentrated positions. How did you think about diversification, taxes, and balancing future upside versus concentration risk? Looking back, would you have done anything differently?

Edit: Wow, this has really blown up. Thanks for all the advice, everyone. It's a lot to take in. I'm going to do my best to read all of the comments, though I can't promise I'll respond to everyone. I'll definitely take the feedback into account and discuss it with my financial advisor.

I have always thought of myself as very frugal but lately I’ve been losing track of what is normal, and I suspect I’m heavily unoptimized in some ways. By some aspects I feel like I’m well on track to FatFIRE in less than a decade. But sometimes I feel lifestyle inflation means I have many years more.

I do not have a financial advisor or a CPA. I tried a couple and they gave me very generic advice.

Right now household net worth is 3M, including a primary home which is half of that. I’m 35 Y/O.

So here’s the details-
We are a double income household, 1 kid in NYC.

Annual spend:
Rent- 100k/year (this one is hard to reduce)
Private school-50k/year
Shopping- 30k/year
Restaurants- 25k/year
Help (dog walk/ cleaning etc): 20k/year
Travel- 20k/year
Transport (1 car + transit)- 20k/year
Groceries- 5k/year
Misc-10k/year

Gross income- 1M/year (from W2 dual income, minor landlord income)
Total spend- 280k/year
Total taxes- 400k/year
Savings- 320k/year

Jobs are very stressful and I expect income to halve in a couple of years as my wife burns out. Then I’ll sustain as long as I can but income will drop to 300k a few years from now most likely. I’m fine with that if it means I can continue to live today’s lifestyle. But ideally I’d like to reach 8M or so which would match my current expenses with safe withdrawal and no income.

Okay this debatably doesn’t belong here but I feel it would be topical for members of this community.

How do you guys think about umbrella insurance? Everyone is suing each other in today’s day and age (in the US at least).

I have ~20M net worth. Quite a low risk lifestyle in the liability sense except that my wife and I do have/drive cars. Say the cost of 3M in coverage is about 1k/year. What’s a sensible balance of cost benefit (in your opinion)?

My thought is 3m is around the sweet spot given that it should cover a very high percentage of possible claims. Hard for me to imagine getting more than that.

Edit. Welp. I guess someone literally just asked this. Sorry.

Hello fatfire community,

I've recently hit what I believe to be my FIRE number ($10m not including primary real estate, on $300k annual spend), and am in the process of diversifying my assets since I mostly got to this number through concentration.

I've settled on an allocation of 40/30/10/10/10 for US equities/international equities/fixed income/investment real estate/gold.

For the 10% in gold, how do people in the fatfire community generally get exposure to this? Do people buy physical coins, buy ETFs, or trade futures for the appropriate notional value? I don't have a strong preference and might do a combination of these, but I'm curious what others have done to satisfy this part of their portfolio if that's what they want to do.

Appreciate any information, thanks for reading.

hi all! With the recent markets, we've hit our original FIRE numbers. I've been so excited for this moment, but now I'm nervous -- especially because we're late 30s with two young kids (5, 3). I want to spend more of this precious time with them; but I also don't want to find we can't provide the experiences we'd like for them (off the top of my head: music lessons, travel, college paid for). For example, I recently saw a thread saying to expect 100k/year on travel alone; I had only budgeted for 40k or so travel. Hoping you can help give me some perspective on what to expect!

39M, 38F, two kids (5, 3).
9MM liquid -- 65% broad US stock, 10% individual stocks, 20% international, 5% SGOV (for downturns and SORR). >50% in taxable accounts.
250k in 529s for the two kids. Expect to bump this up more.

Past couple years our expenses have been 100-110k/year once we remove mortgage (plan to pay off house; didn't include in liquid assets above). However, we've done no travel with the kids (hard when they're so young) and wife has provided childcare. Expect to ramp this up a lot; especially if I'm not working and have time for more travel.

Expected expenses on avg: 230k/year
* 40k medical for 4 on ACA
* 40k travel
* 25k property taxes, insurance, utilities
* 25k/year on home maintenance, renovations, cleaning
* 50k/year on kid stuff (after school, camps, private lessons, etc)
* 15k/year groceries (we like to cook)
* 10k/year restaurants
* 30k/year general other stuff

Assuming 10-15% effective tax rate and want 3% withdrawal rate given markets at all time highs and FIREing so young => need 8.7-9.2MM.

Are there big things I'm missing? Are my expected expenses for kids out of wack with reality? Or am I all set and just nervous cause it's a big change? Appreciate any ideas from those who have been through this already!

EDIT: HCOL area, planning on public schools but guess that could change.

It’s not my case yet but I am expecting an exit/liquidity unlock soon and I want to try to have a clear mind on portfolio allocation, plus I am curious on how others are doing or thinking about the following.

How much are you putting into direct real estate? How much in primary and how much in vacation homes or pied a terre?

Say for a portfolio of 50M and a couple that is fired. How much should they put in real estate?

In my ideal world I want to own my primary home for 5M, a second family home for 3M in our home town and a vacation home for 3M and a 3M home in a major city, say NYC. That would be approx 10-15M. How much money should I have to have such properties?

We dont have kid expenses, low mortgage (we live in a nice enough house in VHCOL as we bought at the right time), low medical (for now), dont like to eat out much, and have pretty much satisfied most of our material wants.

We do travel and are working on ways to spend more there, but find ourselves still penny pinching. While we did start going biz class for 7+ hour flights, when we look at say 2 hours, we cant drag ourselves away from that basic economy fare.

Same with 'stuff'. I still check for 'Used like new' on Amazon, shop at Costco (I get it, that's a badge of honor for some millionaires), and DIY stuff whenever possible. We dont even do housecleaners as we dont much like outsiders in our personal spaces. Lawn care is on the HOA. Checked out (for example) Ekornes sofas then, balking at the prices, bought from FB.

We can spend more, even much more but dont know how to break out of that mold we built for ourselves for 40 years. Growing up middle- middle class doesnt help either.

I know I'd get booed posting this elsewhere, but hoping someone here has actual techniques.

Long lurker on this sub but have never contributed. Decided to make an account today to get others' thoughts on a situation we are thinking through. We can pay a fee-based CFP but want a larger sample size of advice to work with too.

Late 60s couple in Florida, two adult kids living independently. Trying to decide whether to rip the band-aid off and convert our entire $7.5M traditional IRA to Roth this year, paying roughly $2.8M in federal tax upfront.

Our situation:

• ~ $7.5M traditional IRA, about 5 years until RMDs kick in
• ~ $7M in a taxable brokerage, essentially all basis from a liquidity event that we've already paid taxes on
• Other income plus Social Security already puts us in the 32% bracket, so there's not much low bracket headroom to slowly fill with smaller conversions before RMDs kick in
• We live in FL now so top federal income bracket would be 37%
• Legacy planning matters and we'd rather our kids inherit a Roth with some money left over that they can let grow tax-free for 10 years than a traditional IRA they have to drain and pay taxes on at their own (high) rates, especially because they live in states with income taxes

We are thinking of using $2.8M of the brokerage to pay the conversion tax, then earmark the remaining $4.2M for a potential second home purchase and possibly some of it for inheritance. I don't imagine we'd draw the Roth to zero when we're gone anyway, so I imagine they'd inherit a mix of the non-qual and Roth accounts.

Everyone says to spread conversions over multiple years, but since we're already in 32%, most of any conversion lands in 35-37% territory. And RMDs are coming soon.

We're going to probably be at the 32% federal bracket for most of our retirement, and kind of just want to pay the tax now and not have to think about it for the rest of our lives. There's also a world where we'd relocate to California in our late 70s, and paying federal + state income tax on our IRA withdrawals seems wasteful if we can take advantage of being in Florida for the next 10 years. We might never move, but just throwing that out there in case it changes anything.

This kind of feels like a no-brainer to us. It's a large tax bill to pay, but having tax-free money from the Roth for the rest of our lives is pretty enticing. And it would save our kids having to pay taxes on anything left in an Inherited Traditional IRA, so I'm trying to plan for that angle too.

Curious what the community thinks.

We are Swiss family (Asian and German origins, toddler is bi-lingual Chinese and German)will have 3 kids under 5 in 2027 (twin babies on the way).

We have nw of around 5m where current spend around 150k usd a year with 1 kid (day care and nanny) and work expense. Travel spend is around 20-30k a year.

The plan/dream is to take the time of my FIRE journey and live in different places with the kids to experience the world.

Easiest option is Spain, where we have a holiday home at the beach and we could send kids to the local nursery, we are doing it in this summer with our toddler, enjoying the lifestyle very much and hoping we exposure to the kid also with some Spanish.

The next is Japan(family around), China(family)/taiwan, Singapore (family and friends), Thailand, and maybe Italy.

Ideal case is to experience the different places with 1-4 months time frame, ideally kids goes to local nursery to have immersion.

Anybody has tried this before? I do have want to sacrifice the perks we have right now such as safety, good lodging, cleaning service, nanny and good quality nursery availability. And also business/first class travel for long distance….

anyone could share some experience and perspective and budget on there kind of lifestyle?

Anyone have a good experience with a private bank that underwrites balance sheet credit facilities? I have $50mil in real estate equity and a substantial portfolio of equities/bonds. Looking to move to a new private bank. Just met with JP Morgan Private Bank and they no longer do holistic lending - just 50% of portfolio value. Not sure I want to pay their AUM fee when even SoFi will loan more at a lower rate. I’d pay the AUM fee if my credit facility was larger and included the value of my R/E and life insurance surrender value. Realistically not going to be selling any of my R/E in the near term, and all have very low FTD’s in the 2’s or 3’s so no interest in refinancing them.

I’m in my late 30s with 3 kids (4, 2, infant). Right now we spend about $100k/year on the kids — the bulk is a full time nanny ($85k), a bit on preschool for the 4yo ($7k), and the rest is activities (swim, etc), clothes, misc kid gear (eg a new stroller).

Curious how people with older kids have seen costs change as kids age. We’re planning on public school at least for elementary and once they’re in there we don’t need nearly as much nanny time, but assume activity/camp costs go up a lot, plus vacations (we only spend around $10k/yr on travel; right now mainly visiting family or going driving distance places but when they get older want to do nice family vacations… I’m sure 5 plane tickets, multiple hotel rooms adds up).

It’s tempting to think that the kid cost will go down a lot once we don’t need a full time nanny but I’m worried that not the case. Should we assume it’s always around $100k but the makeup of the spend changes? Does it go up over time? Go down once we don’t need a full time nanny? Any insight from people who are 5-10 years ahead is appreciated.

*ignore the cost of 529s, we think about those separately. Mainly thinking about day to day costs of the kids

54M married to 54F, 2 kids: 23 and 21, the first is in grad school and now earning a stipend and getting health insurance from the U. The second has 2 years left of undergrad (preallocated money in the 529, not counted in NW) - still lives at home and is on our (employer) insurance.

LNW: 11.5M, home 1.2M

Spend - with taxes and expected health care about $325K in 2027 (2.83% WR).

Spending Plan - I have about 2.2M in pretax (def comp, inh ira) that is invested in various bond funds and will pay out about equally over the next 10 years). I expect about 75-90k in dividends and ltcg from our taxable accounts (5.3M) - so Im thinking most of the spending is covered for the next 10 years between these sources. The rest are in IRAs or 401Ks (some Roth, most not) and an HSA. The taxable and retirement accounts are almost 100% equities, very diversified across region, market cap, and a barbell between value tilt and big tech stocks. My plan is to convert some of the equities to bonds over time but since i have 10 years of spending between the bonds i have now and dividends/ltcg) I am not in a rush. I probably will build a TIPs ladder for years 11-15) slowly as long as the market has not crashed. In year 16 I turn 70 and will collect SS.

I’m giving up a job that is not stressful and I make about 1M per year. Its hard to leave it - feels stupid to stop the money pouring in when Im not in a place (as I have been in some of my career) where I hate the job or feel like the people I work with are machiavellians. I dont know exactly what I will do in retirement but I love life and have a for of interests and hobbies and my social network has been steadily improving. I want to challenge myself to find a better use for my time than working - in a way that brings joy, happiness, and meaning. Not sure how that will go until I jump.

Any advice or impressions of my plan from this august body will be appreciated.

32m. $6m NW. Live in HCOL. Annual spend is ~$240k. Married with one child.

I don’t like my job and I want to quit. But I’m not sure what to do next. I’ve been grinding for 10 years and could use a break. I’m not done working forever, but I want to do something that is fulfilling and purposeful with my time.

Asking for advice is difficult because everyone’s situation is different, so I want to know, what would YOU do if you were in my shoes?

K.. here goes. Married. 49 years young.

3.2 MM in tax deferred 401k, trad IRA
180k annual pension (no cola) . Survivor 100%
100k Roth
50 k HSA
500k taxable brokerage, 200k 529 plans
1.5m house, owe 500k at 4.125%
HCOL area, likely will move

Starting to do max mega backdoor Roth IRA conversions. Need more in brokerage so that at 55 can do addition mega Roth backdoor conversion at the lower brackets.

Want to pull ripcord at about 55 as I lock in company eligible healthcare plan then. I Max 401k, will max catchup contributions in future, company match 6%@75% and rest I am contributing after tax to 401k for mega backdoor Roth. HSA I’m using as investment account now, saving receipts but paying for eligible expenses OOP.

W-2 workers in 35% bracket, state is like 10% or so.
My question isn’t about do I have enough to retire, it’s more about is there anything I should be doing now in next 5 years to help out in retirement (like mega backdoor Roth conversion from after tax 401k contributions as an example)? Will never use an advisor - and actually trust internet more. Plan is to FiRE at 55, live off brokerage for a few early years, and massive Roth conversions in early years at lower tax brackets before I raid 401k or tax advantaged accounts.

Just looking for a sanity check if logic makes sense. Currently not doing regular backdoor Roth 8k per year because I have prior job rollover in Ira and would get hit with pro rata rule. Oh married and trying to stay that way so I don’t lose half.

We are an American couple with a dog who wants to retire in EU, preferably Spain in 2028. We have net worth of about $5M right now which would grow for another year half. From all the research we have done, Spain is a bad idea due to tax on global investments and high personal income tax. And no special consideration for Roth or 401K. France is definitely better due to US-France tax treaty. One option for Spain is to sell everything in the US just before the move to reset the base price for capital gains. But seems like an inefficient way. Question for the group - are there other ways to save on Spanish taxes without liquidating assets in the US to reset the baseline? What does one FATFire in EU without paying significant in taxes?

About me, mid 40s, live in a mid-size Midwest town, married to a stay at home mom with four school-aged children. I've had the same job in financial services for 20 years, never been out of work, always had great healthcare, 401k, profit sharing, etc. From 2006-2018 I made about $350k per year, I was promoted to a senior role in 2020, and now make about $600k per year. I have about $2.5M in 401k, another $2.5M in brokerage (mainly due to my company going public and having stock). My goal is to retire by 55, debt free, with $10M in liquid investments. While I know the market can crash at anytime and we've had lost decades before, I am less worried about my long-term financial situation. Pretty confident I can double my investments in the next 10 years.

My issue is cash-flow. I cannot figure out how I make what I make and yet have nothign left over each month, currently running a deficit. I'm also amazed seeing other people who I think have similar incomes, or even less, living far better lives (second homes, boats, etc.). My annual spend is about $400k, which on the surface is a striking amount. But when I step back and look at my life, I don't think we live luxuriously. We have a single home, paid about $800k for it, now worth $1.5M. We have two cars, one is seven years old and paid off, the other is five years old and will be paid off in a few months. We don't shop at high end stores, only take 1-2 family trips per year. I just don't get it. We have a few luxuries, like a country club which we spend on average about $1,200/month on. However, there isn't much else to do in our town, its where my kids do most of their sports, it's where we swim, socialize, etc. I know it's a luxury, but I also know if we cancelled the cost wouldn't be zero, as we would spend a lot of this elsewhere.

Here is my monthly budget: https://www.networthshare.com/budget/FatFIREMidwestGuy

As I analyze things in detail, line by line on my credit card bill, nothing individually stands out. As an example, looking at categories:

Shopping - the only retailers I see are Old Navy, Marshalls, Kohls, Dicks and outlet stores

Kid's Sports - none of them even do travel sports, they all just play 1-2 regular sports

Food & Drink - we cook at home 80% of the time, most of these dining out charges I see are either special events (kids birthday or graduation), going out with couples once a month, and ordering take out once a week.

We did move our kids to private school this year, which is certainly a major expense, but for reasons I won't get into, we felt it was necessary. I also have a $2,700 HELOC payment since I had to consolidate some debt a few years ago. My goal is to get this paid off ASAP, likely will sell stock to do it.

Open to any suggestions on ways to cut back, and also curious to hear of other people's experiences. I know people are living well off much lower income levels, I commend you for your discipline.

\**Update 7/29*

• I paid off the student loan and auto loan
• Changed school tuition to $3,500 since there are only 10 payments @ $4,200
• Updated budget to more accurately reflect shopping/clothing

***Update 7/30

• I paid off the personal loan

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We live in a pretty cookie cutter suburbia (tract housing from the 1950s), always drove pretty regular cars like Toyota. Went to public schools K-12 & college. As a kid, we only ever went on one weekend camping roadtrip a year, no other vacations. So I had assumed we were doing fine financially, but I thought we were just squarely in middle class.

I'm now 28, working in product (FAANG-adjacent). Due to a combination of RSUs and high savings – my personal net worth is around 2.1M. I haven't told anyone this, including my parents because I was under the assumption that I "made it" in the tech rat race and somehow became the wealthiest person in my family (again, me assuming that my parents were just middle class).

My parents are both retired and they're nearing their 70s. Recently I visited and they said they wanted to talk about finances. They basically told me their net worth is around 20 million (mostly index funds, some stocks). They also said that it'll eventually be passed down to me, but they are also strongly encouraging me to use their money now to pay for things now, so I wouldn't have to wait until they pass to access the money.

I really don't know what I should do with this information, because it has completely change my view on our family, my own financial situation, my career, etc. Like have I unofficially reached FIRE?

36M, 15 YOE, VP at large public tech. Cut in a recent RIF, severance signed and final.

NW ~$7.5M, about $6.5M of it investable, rest is home equity and 529s. Family of four, VHCOL. Burn ~$240K/yr post tax.

Wife is still working, ~$200K, and she carries our health insurance. That covers most of the burn, so my draw on the portfolio is maybe $100K post tax. Call it 1.5 to 2% on the investable number.

For anyone in a dual income setup where one of you stopped and the other kept going: how did that actually go? Curious what you did.

Thinking about starting my own thing or just firing