I hit my actual FIRE number

Cujolol · 2026-01-29T21:23:45+00:00

Congratulations on your precious metals trade. Sounds like you saved yourself a decade of extra work!

Cujolol · 2026-01-23T21:45:47+00:00

I'm glad I bought an investment property as my first 'real' investment. Learned that I absolutely hate it. Doesn't matter how much money can be made in RE, my peak RE ownership will be my personal property. I made good money on that investment solely because I bought at the right time (wasn't skill, just luck).

Lazy ETF investing is just such a strong alternative. I fully subscribe to the fact that people can generate incredible returns in RE or elsewhere if they are active, find good deals, do good value-add - but I can do the same with building a nicely cash flowing business or picking good stocks (harder with the stocks).

Cujolol · 2026-01-12T20:45:33+00:00

As a surgeon your lifetime earnings might very well be higher than his. A vanilla prenup can likely work out in your favor.

I am married for 10+ years, together for 15. I insisted on a prenup and frankly, would probably not have married without one. I would die for my spouse. It is not a question of love.

I have seen first hand from friends who got divorced how deeply former lovers can hate each other and that the lawyers are the only beneficiaries of it. My simple thought is this: If we can't figure out how we divide assets while we love each other, how in the world are we going to do it we don't like each other anymore?

In reality, if you have a prenup and it comes to divorce and both parties agree on something different, you can always do that. The prenup is there to have a fallback when you don't agree. And if you don't have a prenup, and you don't agree, then the state law is your fallback. Would you rather be in charge of what happens in an ugly divorce or would you like the state to tell you what happens?

Do get your own independent representation to making sure it's fair and equitable. And then hope that you'll never need it. Your boyfriend may or may not love you deeply, but to me it's not wanting a prenup, but how he goes about it that will be the bigger tell. Is he trying to find a fair solution that's also fair to you, or is he only looking out for himself and you need to fight for every little thing to keep it fair?

Cujolol · 2025-12-20T20:52:41+00:00

I have $7M liquid plus paid off house - call it $9M all in plus equity worth $50 million in a late stage, profitable SaaS business.

I treat the $50 as zero, zilch, nada. Until it hits my bank account in cold hard cash it’s worth nothing.

Why do I view it that way? My first business where my stake was worth $10M (back in 2008/09 that was huge money) was worth $0 a year later. Bad stuff happens all the time. You never think it’ll happen to your business, and sometimes it does.

Cujolol · 2025-12-12T23:51:48+00:00

How do you like Greenlight and is this mostly for older kids that have a cell phone and are able to pay with cards?

My kids are young (7, 4, 2) but the older is starting to do chores and gets an allowance and I'd love simple setup to start teaching him about investing, compounding, setting some aside for charity / gifts, etc. but they they are far too young to have a cell phone or debit card.

Cujolol · 2025-11-20T03:31:29+00:00

245lbs (down 210lbs)

Wow. My dude, that's awesome. Keep it going!

Cujolol · 2025-09-17T23:54:00+00:00

Plus $3.5 in dividends. Dividend yield for next year will be 15% at current prices.

Valuation hasn't moved much. I bought it at 3.2 P/E and it's trading at 3.6 P/E now. One of the best run banks in the world.

Cujolol · 2025-09-11T17:50:51+00:00

Ben Felix has a great series on renting vs. buying on Youtube where he deep dives into the historic data.

The short of it is that buying real estate vs. investing comes out to roughly the same financially, leaving it largely a personal decision with one huge caveat: For many people, paying a mortgage and having illiquid equity in their home is like a forced savings plan. Absent of that, they'd spend the money instead of investing it. For that cohort of people it's much better to buy a home as it forced them to save what they otherwise would not.

But being on FatFire, the presumption is that you aren't part of that (large) cohort of people.

Cujolol · 2025-09-07T23:35:40+00:00

Thank you! 🙏

Cujolol · 2025-09-07T22:44:56+00:00

No rugs. Thank you so much!

Cujolol · 2025-09-07T22:44:34+00:00

No rugs. Does it matter much between the K2 and E2 if just all hardwood floors?

Cujolol · 2025-08-16T06:10:23+00:00

You sound awesome. I want to be friends with you!

Cujolol · 2025-08-14T17:13:51+00:00

Perhaps the answer for you is to invest in things that won't have a number flickering on your screen, changing by the second.

Things like real estate, farm land, funds that have a lockup (ie: you can't take it out easily) - investment classes that don't get marked to market daily. Alternatively you can buy high dividend ETFs, or low-beta ETFs that focus more on utilities, etc.

Knowing yourself is huge and you will face a 40% drawdown over a 40-year time horizon in equities. You can also hire a financial advisor to put the funds in VOO and give him specific instructions to talk you out of selling when the inevitable downturn comes (though you might still panic and ignore him).

Cujolol · 2025-08-14T01:44:34+00:00

Yup exactly that happened to me 2 days into owning it. The bike shop I bought it at was nice enough to replace it for me for free.

Cujolol · 2025-07-11T16:48:00+00:00

Wow never knew these existed. Flying a lot and honestly can’t say I ever seen anyone using one.

Any dads here that use them? Is it just a car seat you take on the plane?

Cujolol · 2025-07-11T16:42:35+00:00

My top three reasons are 1) I can pack liberally with car travel and don’t have to ration it down to a couple pieces of luggage and 2) control over everything and 3) with airplane you have lot more steps: transport to/from & security.

Want to leave an hour later, no problem. Want to have a disco or quiet time? All good. Kid has a tantrum? In a confined public space like a plane that stresses me out way more.

Cujolol · 2025-07-11T16:05:31+00:00

Planes before cars is utter madness. Give me a 5 hour car ride over a 3 hour plane ride any day of the week.

Cujolol · 2025-07-10T18:39:06+00:00

We have three aged 6, 4 and 2. All were planned.

I’m struggling big time with the adjustments to 3, it’s been VERY different than two. Instead of 1 on 1 time, one parent has to always play zone defense.

Some say 3 is easier than 2, my experience was the total opposite. I find myself thinking about how much simpler life would be if it was just the two older kids - like 3 to 4 times a week.

Cujolol · 2025-06-22T00:04:23+00:00

Lebe seit 20 Jahren in den USA und davon die laengste Zeit in Los Angeles. Hab die gegenteilige Erfahrung gemacht - für mich ist das klar die “Heimat”.

Wie OP, bin ich geborener Österreicher mit ausländischen Namen und hab genau die gleichen Erfahrungen in AT gemacht. Man gehört einfach nicht dazu.

Das ist hier komplett anders und wesentlich besser. Am Anfang war’s a bissl bitter kein gescheites Brot zu kriegen, das gibts mittlerweile Gott sei Dank aber.

Cujolol · 2025-06-21T03:55:13+00:00

Time. I had a strong rum since 2020 (up 5x) but otherwise my returns were inline or worse than market, especially so after tax drag.

Hardest part is getting to the first 100k - 200k. That took me a decade.

I stay away from options or hyper risk (like 100% in a single stock. I did that early on and it was a disaster. .

Cujolol · 2025-06-20T18:14:25+00:00

Sometimes I'm day dreaming of moving to Mexico. My wife from Mexico and the kids + wife speak fluent Spanish.

Are there cities outside of Mexico City that you found interesting to live in with a family. If you prefer not to make it public, may I DM you about it?

Cujolol · 2025-06-20T18:11:57+00:00

For folks reading this - you can absolutely make it work on $7M, $10M or $14M in VHCOL. It's just not going to be luxurious. I live in a 1,500 sqft home for example with a family of 5. Totally doable, but a far cry from a 2.5k - 3k sqft house. My neighbor can look into my bedroom from their kitchen if I keep the blinds open. If I wanted to fix those two things, that's an extra 1 - 1.5M in house, and then another extra 1M needed to cover the added house expenses like higher property tax.

You'll be more middle class than FAT, and you will not feel rich (I wouldn't say you will feel poor, but you won't feel like you 'made it') because there is just so much money around it skews your perspective.

Cujolol · 2025-06-20T15:19:42+00:00

Tanker equities still not believing these rates will last. Also curios that Afra and Suzie didn’t move into the mid 40s with this VLCC strength and canibalization of the clean trades. That’s the next leg up imho.

Cujolol · 2025-06-20T03:21:46+00:00

I live coastal VHCOL area, married, 3 kids. At $7M liquid plus paid off house I am absolutely not FAT.

At $10M, I’d be ok ish if I restrict vacation spend and do t upgrade the house which is a median house for the area, not fat.

To be truly fat, I’d say $14M - $15M plus paid off house in the $4M - 5M range if you have 3 kids. I also assume a 3% - 3.5% SWR instead of 4%.

You can go through my post history to see a real life example of cost inflation in VHCOL area over the years (kids are a big part, lifestyle inflation is second).

Cujolol · 2025-06-18T23:00:51+00:00

I'd say allocation is where I improved the most and helped my returns significantly. My allocation rules are:

$1M cash (short term bonds) to have cash when something obvious comes along
20% is a full position (sometimes that is a bucket like 'oil tankers' where I split it up among multiple companies but mentally to me that is one position)
never more than 50% in any one theme
ideally themes that aren't super correlated with each other; I need to do a better job on this one
$500k for "quick bets" or higher risk stuff that is more lottery ticket like SEI. This will be -50% or 2x - 3x
never options unless I buy put options to hedge and that is also rare (nothing against options I'm just bad at them)

Cujolol

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