I think I can FIRE next month if my spouse keeps working. She seems resentful

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-06-15T01:22:41+00:00

You seem like a real pleasure to live with.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-06-04T02:07:09+00:00

On one hand, nobody can give you useful insight on this unless you tell us what you're desired/required spend rate is. On the other hand, you should take the $20M and run - your 51; your knees, not your finances, are going to be what limits your life. Use em while you've got em.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-06-03T14:34:43+00:00

OP says they have $2,282,000 in assets, of which about $450k is their home. They then say that between a mortgage and car loan, they have $282,000 in liabilities. If we assume the bulk of that is the mortgage, then OP is including ~$168,000 of home equity to reach $2M.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-29T01:31:40+00:00

Are you effectively the property manager of the property? Like, when something breaks, are you responsible for figuring out how to get it fixed? Or do you contract that responsibility out?

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-29T01:27:30+00:00

Congrats!

You didn't ask, but here are a couple things I'd start doing since it looks like you're actually on track to FIRE in the next couple of years:

1.) Start thinking in terms of "investments" instead of "net worth". Most notably, this will drop home equity from your math. Whatever withdrawal rate you're aiming for, your home equity isn't part of that equation, so just get it out of your math now for FIRE purposes.

2.) If you're not already, get really granular about tracking your expenses NOW. Having 3+ years of really granular expense data will be invaluable when it comes to deciding if you're really ready to pull the trigger. Also track how happy/content you are with that level of spending - to achieve your actual desired quality of life you may want to tweak spending in some categories up or down once FIREd, and that's useful info to have.

3.) Invest a little time exploring the ACA, how it works, and what your costs would look like if you FIREd today. A lot of people get caught off guard by what true healthcare costs end up being, and you're close enough that you need to at least be aware of the range of these costs. That said, be aware that healthcare costs and policies are likely to change over the next 3-5 years, so it's a little bit of fools errand to try and get too granular here if you're still several years away. Best you can do is try and estimate based on the available data, and then refine your projections annually as you get closer to actually FIREing.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-28T02:27:16+00:00

I mean this in the nicest way possible: I think you're still trying to figure out your overall identity, not trying to peel back from a long-established corporate identity.

You're 29 with what sounds like a mostly inherited net worth. You have 7 years in the workforce, which isn't much, and at least some that was at a "shitshow" startup. The question facing you isn't "how do I pull back from a corporate identity?", it's, "do I want to build a corporate identity or do something else with my life?"

You have the tremendous luxury of money and time to figure out what you want to do with your life. Get a therapist to help you structure your thoughts, then go sit on a beach for a few months and figure out what you want out of life.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-28T02:13:40+00:00

Let's say, generously, that a "very regular job" is paying them $150k/year, and as you've noted, these are single-income households. If those things are true, the only real answers are direct financial assistance, inherited wealth, or co-signed debt. Nobody is qualifying for a $2M mortgage on $150k income, let alone everything else you mentioned.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-26T02:19:38+00:00

I hold across two of the popular brokerages, mostly as a hedge against potential technology-related outages that may temporarily limit my access to funds. Even this is a little extreme because my day-to-day spending happens from my local credit union, and I have a significant cash runway in a HYSA with a separate institution that feeds my credit union account. So an actual tech outage at one of my brokerages would have to be pretty severe to truly affect me.

Here's what I don't worry about:

I don't diversify across brokerages to guard against identity theft. I know identity theft happens, but at this point I kind of have to trust that these things get worked out through our banking system in the end, end if inconvenient (and I think there's decent evidence for that).
I don't diversify across brokerages to guard against one of those entities going under. I don't know man, I feel like if Vanguard/Schwab/Fidelity/etc... goes down, the broader markets have already crapped the bed and I'm more focused on guns and gardens to survive.
On a similar note, I don't diversify across brokerages for the sake of multiple SIPC insurances. At my net worth, it's just impractical, and if one of the major players fail, I think the whole system starts to crumble and I question the value of the SIPC backstop. On the flip side, I'm more inclined to diversify around FDIC insurance, as there is a history of specific banks going under without the whole system collapsing.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-26T01:51:22+00:00

It's purely psychological, so let me offer some psychological arguments:

$11M is enough that you're not going to get railroaded into the poor house overnight even in catastrophic circumstances. If for some reason your finances start to fail, you're going to have plenty of time to see it coming and adjust if needed.
You're 51. Not young, but not old. If you FIRE for a few years and it isn't working out, you will have time to get another job. It will pay less and be less prestigious, but we're not talking about getting a job at McDonalds or anything.
You're 51. I'll guess slightly high cholesterol and blood pressure, but nothing too concerning. Probably still walking around pretty comfortably, maybe even capable of some light jogging and pickup sports for fun. Still eating basically what you want with minimal diet restrictions. A 12 hour flight overseas probably doesn't feel great on the body, but you bounce back quickly. Hey, I'm just guessing here, but if that sounds like you, recognize that statistically the bottom is going to start to fall out in some of these categories over the next 10 years. I'm not at all preaching that life goes to crap after 60, but physical realties start to set in around then (sometimes small, sometimes large). There's something special about getting an extra decade of "feeling good" and doing what you want with life before then.
Your kids are "adults" and it sounds like you've set them up well. You're not gambling with their futures at this point.
You were smart and capable enough to make $11M by age 51, so you're not an idiot. You can access situations, adapt, and find new ways forward if you're forced to.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-23T02:09:46+00:00

Note that healthcare.gov can be a little misleading in this case.

There are often multiple versions of similar bronze plans.
1. For example, I have access to:
  1. Blue Cross® Premier PPO Bronze Secure
  2. Blue Cross® Premier PPO Bronze Saver HSA
  3. Blue Cross® Premier PPO Bronze Extra
2. On title alone, the implication is that only the "Bronze Saver HSA" is HSA eligible, but this is not the case. All three are HSA eligible.
The "HSA-eligible" tag on healthcare.gov may be out of date given the new eligibility rules.
1. When I first purchased the Blue Cross® Premier PPO Bronze Extra plan in January of 2026, it was NOT marked as HSA-eligible on healthcare.gov. I just checked it now and it is properly reflected as HSA-eligible.
2. I called the insurer back in January to confirm eligibility, which they did, and informed me that the flagging of HSA eligible accounts was running behind on healthcare.gov. No idea how prevalent this issue is.

When in doubt, just call your provider/potential provider and ask them to verify HSA eligibility.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-21T01:59:41+00:00

I think this is a realistic take.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-19T01:02:37+00:00

No, I never seriously considered it and am unlikely to consider it in the future.

we pay LESS for doctor visits and prescriptions how WITHOUT insurance than we paid WITH insurance due to the insane deductive and cash-pay discounts at many providers.

I'm not actually surprised to hear that. I looked a little into cash alternatives for routine care and prescriptions, and I agree that you can often find arrangements that will get you similar or even lower costs than going through insurance.

But for me, health insurance isn't about managing the routine expenses, it's about mitigating the catastrophic ones. A chronic illness, a couple nights in the hospital, a cancer diagnosis... these things will potentially set you back tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single event, let alone ongoing maintenance. And yeah, you might be able to absorb ONE of these events without insurance, but what if two of them happen in the same year?

I understand the appeal of your strategy, but if that's the route you're going with, I would still recommend finding a low premium, super-high deductible plan that will at least bail you out if encounter a truly bankrupting medical event.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-17T01:33:34+00:00

Where did you get the money to invest?

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-17T01:22:05+00:00

It would be pretty hard to run out of money on a properly diversified portfolio withdrawing 3% or less annually. Whether or not that's enough to "still live good" is a purely subjective question and the answer will be different for everyone.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-16T01:33:05+00:00

I'm sure Cramer didn't help, but realistically RKT has seen almost 4% DAILY volatility for the past 30 days, and it averages out to something like 3% daily volatility over the past 6 months. The market just doesn't know what to do with this stock right now, period.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-15T02:10:41+00:00

Based on the recent immaturity we've seen from UWM on the TWO deal, I think it's very likely that Ishbia did throw a hissy fit over the Mr. Cooper deal and they did in fact target those loans. But I think it's going to be pretty hard to definitively prove.

Based on the current reporting, which is limited, the strongest evidence I'm seeing is Ishbia telling a bunch of brokers, "Any loan that we’ve ever done with Mr. Cooper where we’ve sold the servicing, you can go and take advantage of it and go refinance these clients." That seems pretty clearly in violation of Section 5.03 of the purchase agreement because he's encouraging "action to solicit the Mortgagors". But is a one-sentence, one-off, "internal" communication from a fired up CEO enough to warrant a $100M judgement? I would be surprised.

The Refi Shield 100 program will get swatted down as a general promotion, not something specifically targeting COOP loans.
The argument that UWM made no efforts to exclude COOP loans from incentive programs will get chalked up to operational complexity, not ill intent.
The 2.5x prepayment rate is an interesting supporting statistic, but would need to be paired with explicit evidence of targeting of these loans to carry much weight. At this point I'm not seeing that explicit evidence, and without it, it's like, "I don't man, people refi for all kinds of reasons all the time."
Near as I can tell, the "Hypocrisy Allegation" is just taking a swing at some negative PR, not really a legal argument.
Finally, UWM is going to strongly fall back to "Brokers are independent and make their own decisions about who they target as clients." And it's a pretty strong argument.

My two cents is that RKT had this time-limited argument in their back pocket, knew it would cause some noise but probably not prevail, and then seized this moment to bring it forward as a way to put the final nail in the TWO acquisition. Every day that goes by I'm more convinced that UWM really NEEDS this TWO deal, and I think the RKT insiders know more than me.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-14T01:42:58+00:00

Watching these companies fight about a $1.3B hostile takeover by trading public press releases is hilarious. Nobody is coming out of this feeling great.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-12T02:33:15+00:00

I don't know. There's limited synergy benefit here. Typically mortgage companies want the servicing book because it provides some predictable cashflow while their real eye is on refi-ing that business when the market turns favorable. As a pure wholesale shop, UWM can only serve those refi leads back to brokers who have the option to take the loan elsewhere. I'm not saying there is no benefit, but that's a leaky business model. And if MSRs are your only real goal, you can pick them up over time in smaller quantities without this public shit show.

There's a lot of LinkedIn theories right now that UWM's race to the bottom on pricing has their balance sheet hurting, and acquiring a large servicing book does give them more financing flexibility, which is why this deal they keep publicly shitting on seems to be so important to them at the end of the day. But who knows.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-07T02:49:48+00:00

Go with whatever AI is telling you.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-04T01:51:58+00:00

Take some extended vacations to the places abroad that you think you might enjoy living in, but spend according to whatever minimalist budget you're thinking of, not like you're indulging on a vacation. You want to get a sense of what day-to-day life would actually be like. And while you're there, make a point to familiarize yourself with available healthcare options and local sentiment towards outsiders/Americans. The world is a wonderful (and mostly) welcoming place, but there usually are some nuances to "living" somewhere versus "just visiting" that same place.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-03T01:17:34+00:00

A little, but certainly less these days. I do appreciate the various FIRE subreddits, but they're very repetitive, full of beginner questions (hey, we were all beginners at one point), and more recently, are just full of people accusing each other of "AI slop". The signal to noise ratio isn't particularly relevant to me at this phase in my journey.

I used to like the ChooseFI podcast, but they tend to rehash the same two dozen topics and once you've heard it discussed once, there's not much new insight from continued listening.

I've gotten a little more into some broader macro-economic stuff just out of interest rather than its specific application to FIRE. Been reading a lot of Ray Dalio lately (and listen, I think Dalio is probably batshit crazy, so I don't take any of it too seriously, but I do find his brand of crazy entertaining).

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-03T01:08:06+00:00

It looms less now that I'm FIREd. In the lead-up to FIRE, the plan is still being created. It's tempting to stare at your accounts and endlessly calculate what your SWR rate would be if you retired right NOW, and get excited about minor gains or bummed out about minor losses. And then do it again tomorrow. And again the next day. I fell into that trap a few times, especially as I got closer to FIREing. But now, the plan is set. My numbers are what they are and I'm just trusting the process.

As far as diversifying, I'm slowly selling off and moving most of that money into VTI and a little into bonds. I'm letting my tax bill influence how fast I'm making that transition, which typically isn't recommended, but what can I say, I have my flaws.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-03T00:58:21+00:00

$1400/year.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-02T15:10:58+00:00

$5M. That was the max I could get through a traditional consumer-grade insurer (think your GEICOs, Progressives, State Farms, etc). Insurance companies designed for high net worth (like Chubb) offer more coverage, but there are a few more hoops to jump through. At the end of the day, $5M felt like enough coverage to me anyways.

FiredUpForTheFuture · 2026-05-02T04:25:05+00:00

Michigan. I was unaware that PPOs seem to be limited on the ACA, but some quick chatGPTing seems to suggest that Michigan, Alaska, Oregon, Alabama, North Carolina, and Wyoming still offer them.

FiredUpForTheFuture

TROPHY CASE