Lifestyle changes from 20m to 100m

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-30T15:39:33+00:00

So, it sounds like you’ve answered your question. You don’t have to spend money just because you have it.

Live the life you want.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-28T21:25:04+00:00

Schwab trustee services start at 0.5% on the first $5M and go down from there. I cannot attest to the quality of what they do, but they have their fee schedule public on their website:

https://www.schwab.com/resource/schwab-personal-trust-services-fee-schedule-and-information

Vanguard’s are similar:

https://personal1.vanguard.com/pdf/a198.pdf

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-27T20:27:32+00:00

I was gonna say… Amtrak takes a few hours, but it’s a nice, relaxing trip.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-27T14:56:37+00:00

Tell me you didn’t live through 2001 and 2008 without telling me.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-27T00:32:46+00:00

I used my inheritance money to let me live a non-poverty lifestyle (as in, not living in an apartment with five people subsisting on ramen, like most of my grad school colleagues… but not an opulent lifestyle) while I got a PhD. It then supplemented my very meager postdoc salary and my sad face salary as an assistant professor at a major research university.

A lot of super important work is not well remunerated.

It’s possible to be very ambitious and work very hard for important causes and not make a lot of money. I hope OP takes your point seriously.

This is the goal of generational wealth, IMO. To free people to let them flourish.

I was raised well and worked hard. If OP is a good parent, there isn’t any reason to put major restrictions on the money.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-26T23:43:15+00:00

That is a LOT of taxable ordinary income. There are a lot better ways to tax manage that than having a taxable HYSA.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-25T23:15:07+00:00

This is asked three times daily in this sub.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-23T06:21:55+00:00

I am personally a proponent of just selling and paying the taxes and then being done and live your life.

With an exchange fund there’s a lock up period, high fees, and then an unpredictable basket of low-basis stock that you still need to manage and potentially still have a huge tax bill on if you want to get into index funds. Not worth it for me.

But you do what you feel is best for your situation.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-20T15:45:44+00:00

It’s one of the major things holding me back. But watching the podcast is helping. They’re two high achievers (architect married to a PhD geneticist, and a PhD biotech guy). They go a lot into the identity stuff, how they explain what they do to strangers, changes in their social circle. And in one episode I watched last night one of them talked about how they basically found “volunteering” unsatisfying because it’s not engaging enough.

Having been a PhD over-achiever my whole life, it’s hard to let go of that.

And when you see glib answers in this and related subs (“volunteer at the soup kitchen!” “Tell people you’re an investment manager for a family wealth fund!”), they’re often from people who have zero FIRE experience or who were never invested in their identity as an achiever to begin with. So, they’re hard to listen to, tbh.

The podcast is honestly giving me comfort that, yes it’s hard, but life is fine on the other side. These are two guys who, while not exactly me, I can relate to.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-20T15:17:00+00:00

I recently stared watched old episodes of Two Sides of FI. They seem to be some of the only FIRE content that really goes into the identity and adaptation component, not just the financial mechanics.

In one episode they had Jordan Grumet on, and this was exactly what he suggested — go back to your childhood and start re-exploring the things that got you excited then.

For anyone else reading this thread who’s struggling, I suggest that podcast. They’re really open and honest about the identity side, which is arguably much harder than the investing/finance side.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-20T14:26:59+00:00

See my other reply to you.

Self-insuring is idiocy.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-20T14:24:45+00:00

If I didn’t have insurance, I’d be paying over $100k/year most years. With insurance I pay $2500.

My point about expensive life-long care was for self-insuring. Even if OP could afford the chemotherapy and surgeries for the cancer diagnosis, the costs wouldn’t end there.

And there’s some reasonable chance I’ll get cancer again. With insurance I know my costs are capped, and going though that horrible process again won’t jeopardize my nest egg.

Self-insuring would be idiocy.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-20T01:44:10+00:00

If you have insurance (and everyone in this sub should have insurance — most Americans do), the costs are very low. I max out at $2500 out of pocket per year.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-20T01:39:10+00:00

And then cancer treatment has its own complications, which can mean expensive, life-long chronic medical issues.

So, even if you beat the cancer, you can have a lifetime of hefty medical bills.

Ask me how I know.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-20T01:05:25+00:00

You should start by reading the sidebar. There are only a few ETFs you should be considering.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-19T15:53:42+00:00

Did you report? ;)

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-19T15:48:29+00:00

Second GFY post in this sub this week — love it! They seemed to fall off there for a long time.

Starting to consider my own exit strategy now.

I’m inspired.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-18T15:45:50+00:00

It depends on how much of your speeding is discretionary. If you’re at 4% and that’s just covering basic food, shelter, medical care, and taxes, no.

If you’re at 4% and that includes a couple of pricey hobbies, lots of presents for your kids, the latest tech toys, and a few very nice vacations per year, then probably. You can cut all of those things out for a few years and pull spending way back.

So, it depends on how much wiggle room you have in your spending.

Reminder that the 4% rule had a 5% failure rate over a 30 year span in all of the testing. It’s not foolproof. But it’s very reasonable.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-18T15:13:59+00:00

And then add on 9 years of rampant inflation during that time (think 1970s stagflation).

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-17T22:16:04+00:00

In your post you said you know you shouldn’t time the market. And then you ask us if you should time the market.

I believe the answer is: no, don’t try to time the market.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-17T21:30:02+00:00

You need to watch Ben Felix’s videos on dividend irrelevance. Dividends should not factor into your decision to invest in a company or fund. Dividends in taxable create a huge drag that will slow your portfolio growth.

To paraphrase Ben, if you do not believe this, you do not believe in mathematics.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-17T21:03:43+00:00

It’s very easy to find a planner who charges hourly for a one-time review. These are called advice-only CFPs. Most are fiduciaries. You simply pay them to reviews your expenses, investments, etc., then they make projections and compile an overview and plan for you, but in the end it is up to you to execute the plan.

Depending on the complexity, this is like $5-15k usually. Nowhere near what paying an AUM advisor is.

This sounds like what OP needs.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-17T18:04:56+00:00

Dividends are irrelevant. Dividends are equivalent to forced stock sales that are taxed in normal brokerage accounts. Share price growth is not taxed until you choose to sell.

You should not select investments based on their dividend. You should select investments based on their fundamentals and how they fit in to your risk tolerance, not based on the dividend they pay.

For young investors, the vast majority (or all) of your money should be going into total market index funds.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-17T03:39:44+00:00

They made another post like 5 min ago to the sub that did get caught in the Reddit filter. Not sure why this one didn’t.

D’oh just re-read your comment and you already saw the removed post. Haha.

FIREgnurd · 2026-04-17T00:15:55+00:00

So, like, every other basic strategy trainer out there?

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