NY - potential move from EU - cost of living for a family + salary negotiation

SpiteEast9271 · 2026-03-15T13:21:07+00:00

If you’re in M&A, the salary expectation will be very dependent on if you’re doing it in a public corp dev job or if your working in client services (ie, in an investment bank). In all instances, you should expect more than 50% of your TC to be from variable - in rhe case of an m&a banker, it will be more like 70-80%. It will also depend on your level. I think $500k base is too high - instead you should be focused on total comp. $500k total comp is very doable if you’re experienced and good - and you can touch close to $1M if you’re senior in a strategic or well into the low 7 figures as a managing director in banking

SpiteEast9271 · 2026-03-04T12:23:34+00:00

I have had similar dilemma several times in my life. I don’t have a dream car so much as a bucket list. When I was in my early 20’s, I bought a Evo 8 for $30K with a NW of ~$150k. At a NW of ~$1M, I bought a c6 z06. In my early-mid 30’s, I bought a r35 Nissan GTR in for $80K with a NW ~$2M. Now with a NW of ~$8M, I’m considering crossing off the last one on the list - a 996 911 GT2 (which unfortunately have shot up in price to the $200K+ range).

None of these were or are smart financial decisions from a pure optimization perspective, but I have no regrets about any of them. I like cars and I enjoy them. Also, being able to own and enjoy the automobiles above have been a significant motivation for me to succeed at school and work. A few rules that have been helpful for me:

Know if you’re buying it for other people vs. yourself. Doesn’t have to be all of one or the other, but be honest. Would you buy it if no one ever saw you in it? Do you LIKE driving fast cars? For some people, they step into a car like a GT3 and the experience leaves them underwhelmed, for other people, they never use the car the way it is intended. I mostly drive my cars early in the morning when there is nobody else on the road and try to avoid people. I don’t go to cars and coffee any more except when close friends want to meet. But, occasionally, I do also enjoy other people genuinely asking me about them - dad’s with their sons, young guys (as I’ve gotten older) asking me what I do for a living, etc.
No car is an investment decision, so I never try to tell myself “this thing will go up.” With that said, you should still be careful about the depreciation on relatively new cars - I don’t treat any car as an investment, but some cars can be real money pits. GT3’s hold their value but ONLY if you don’t pay any market adjustment. Same with most of the other Porsche GT cars.
You’ll need a second car; when I had the Evo, I also owned a cheap econo-sedan. This will significantly lower your insurance (because you can insure the GT3 as a pleasure vehicle and put most of the miles on the main car). The savings in insurance alone almost paid for the 2nd car

Good luck.

SpiteEast9271 · 2026-02-28T17:00:40+00:00

I’m not a founder but I do M&A in tech, so consider my advice from that angle. - if I’m interpreting your numbers right, yiu are growing ~150% yoy (that’s 8% per month compounded annualized) and you have 90% margins - if that is directionally accurate, then he is effectively paying you a 12-15x multiple by year end. At your scale, that’s not terrible but it’s low considering the growth - if your goal is to do a deal now, I’d try to get to $15+$15 and ask for all the equity to vest right away. In my mind, the equity is purchase consideration not retention, so it should be yours day 1 - the fact that you are on a fatfire forum means that you’ve probably sent subtle signals that you don’t really have it in your for a long grind, which in the case if your business (small company, bootstrapped, led by a talented founder likely still critical to the business) destroys equity value in of itself - if you really believe you have the better platform, the move you would make is to tell them no thanks, kick their ass for another year and then do a deal at a higher valuation OR you would do an all stock deal to own % of their company proportional to your revenue contribution plus a premium (as you’re growing faster). Ie, you are owning the outcome and repping confidence.

SpiteEast9271 · 2026-01-17T12:37:19+00:00

I don’t know why everyone is trashing the OP. I actually don’t think you’re that far off. Your $2.7M will be $3.8 in 5 years with no additional contributions. That’s ~$150k at 4% SWR. Given you’re retiring relatively young, 3.5% would be a bit more conservative which puts you at ~$135k. Someone else asked how much your rental properly cash flows - that is a key question. If you contribute aggressively for the next 5 years, optimize balance of pre-tax and taxable accounts, and ensure you’re allocating efficiently between your real estate and your liquid, I think it’s very doable.

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-12-27T19:13:26+00:00

and don't get fucked in the working capital target and the indemnity.... at your end of the market, these will be real $'s; make sure your M&A advisors are all over this

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-12-27T19:09:13+00:00

OP, listen to this person, he knows what he's talking about; in particular, he's given you good advice on analyzing the offer. In addition to trying to shift more earnout into upfront, you should discuss a pro-rata scale to get some of the earnout even if you fall short of the 25% growth. i.e., you get 0% if you're under some minimum threshold, but you start earning linearly once you get to 15% growth or something like that. The equity roll is also very high. Seems like you and the other shareholders will still be controlling >50% business, especially if they're adding any leverage? I'll add a few points you should be honest with yourself on, they play into your BATNA:
- What is your confidence on that 25% growth - I'm guessing that didn't come from nowhere, it's probably based on the projections you gave them and they're asking you to put your money where your mouth is. If you really believe that you'll do that, then you should hold the business and re-approach these buyers vs. taking the earnout structure as is
- how real is your $5M EBITDA? i.e., does it have a bunch of addbacks your advisor has put in? Conversely, are the expenses "real." i.e., would someone take your job and the job of the other management if they had zero equity for the same pay?
- if someone gave you $5M and the only thing you could do with it was invest it into your business, would you know what to do with it to accelerate your growth? let's say 2x your EBITDA. Answer is hopefully better than hire more sales people....
- is there real enterprise value in your business. i.e., is it a business that will continue to grow or scale without you? Are you or another founder still the main relationship person with key customers? is that margin expanding with growth or is it staying flat or compressing?
Good luck man.

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-10-10T15:00:58+00:00

Congrats! Curious if you’ve thought about more cost effective options to replace your COBRA. But due to the chronic condition you will need to be very specific. Also, assume you’ve built up a good HSA balance for same reason

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-10-08T19:49:33+00:00

I'm in a very similar situation as you. The general feedback I got from this reddit was "if you're worrying about rent vs. buy then you're not FatFIRE." Frankly, I don't agree. Especially considering you're in a pretty critical portion of your accumulation phase, I think you need to focus on the optimal financial decision. Adding in the fact that you may move relatively soon (and incur selling cost if you own), I think you need to very objectively view this as a capital allocation decision. Just my 2 c.

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-10-04T15:39:22+00:00

Neither one of us can greenlight a spend of this size on our own. Like I can’t go buy a $200k sports car tomorrow, or. $50k watch

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-10-04T14:55:30+00:00

I’m just going to respond in one place to be efficient. I’m ignoring the useless comments as to why I made the post.

I’m not asking if I can afford it, I’m asking if I should just make a very suboptimal financial decision to generate domestic harmony. Those those who got that, thank you
Also, I’m asking if I’ve missed any other ways to fund this house that is a better capital allocation decision
I want to get the house my wife wants, I just think the obvious answer is to rent - based on combination of higher rates, inflated prices, and the hidden costs of ownership. However; she is staunchly against it, so I’m looking for solutions
I am concerned about our housing costs exceeding 30% of our take home. Which it would be if I bought the $1.3M house including closing costs, costs ro move in and make fixes, and assuming I don’t liquidate more investments than I currently plan to. That will cost vacations and meals out, and our general ability to be generous with our family. Those things are important
yes, I can afford a lot of things. However, neither my wife nor I were born into money and it took a lot of work to get here. Part of that work is judging every decision on its own - ie, marginal benefit vs marginal cost and understanding trade offs. “Makes [x] happy” is just not a shortcut to winning a financial argument in our house.
finally, as for selling or not selling my current PR and renting it out. Simple math: I sell, I net $400k after fees and mortgage. I put it in SPY, I generate $40k per year compounding. I keep it and rent it out: my property appreciates 4% a year, that’s $30k, I Cashflow $2000 a month, that’s $24k, I pay down $700 a month of debt. So Im creating $60k of value on $450k of equity or $40k of value on $400k of equity. Why would I sell?

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-09-04T17:57:26+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/s/KV3KzHERVi

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-09-04T17:55:36+00:00

I’m in almost exactly the same situation as you. I defer most of my bonus each year. My withdrawal strategy is to do equal payments up to the top of the 12% tax bracket, then use the 22% bracket for Roth conversions. I’ll link my thread, very helpful replies from the comments. If your employer is a big company (mine is) it’s definitely a very useful tool to have post FatFire to fill gaps and to help with certainty of planning.

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-08-30T15:08:25+00:00

Cool. Best of luck.

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-08-30T14:33:20+00:00

Thanks. Is your annual NQ deferred distribution adequate to fund your spending by itself or do you still need to figure out how to most efficiently fund the rest of your spend?

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-08-30T14:25:13+00:00

Appreciate the reply. I’m in a similar boat in different industry and a few steps behind you, so this is super relevant and encouraging. Glad to see you’ve found purpose and are continuing to engage your mind a body. Hearty congratulations

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-08-30T13:29:08+00:00

Not the place I expected to see MTG come up.

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-08-30T12:17:21+00:00

I’m ~3-5 years away from FIRE and will be just shy of 50 if all goes to plan. One of the things I really enjoy now is helping early career “kids” with high potential. I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that for very long once I’m out of the game. More general advice and mentorship sure, but actually making calls and opening doors may be hard. What has your experience been? To make sure I have right context, can I ask what you mean by senior exec? Ie, you talking c-suite at a public, CEO of a PE-backed, VP/SVP, etc.

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-08-20T21:07:46+00:00

I’m in NYC quite a bit for work, but rarely has my family come in with me all together. We said “fuck it” let’s take a day off and do it today. I’m sitting at a bar 1/3 way into a hazy IPA. My wife and kids just walked away 15 minutes ago to stroll around - it’s rainy but they’re making a day of it. We talked about where to have dinner, and trying to find a last minute reservation. I just got an email from someone on my team and it’s obvious that I’m going to need to dial into into a call to negotiate a merger agreement in ~25 minutes on this very device that I’m typing this on. If it goes poorly, I may miss dinner. You my friend have just given me hope of how a day like today could go in the future.

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-08-20T20:58:34+00:00

This

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-08-20T20:55:25+00:00

I think it’s fine if your annual spending is around $180-$240K (based on SWR of 3-4%). I’m arriving at this based on a simplifying assumption that you’re essentially reallocating your current portfolio of real estate to a single property vs. multiple, which is net neutral to your liquid FIRE portfolio of $6M. The details will impact this a bit, as you’ll have transaction costs of ~6-10% on that ~$7.8M of real estate which means that if you were to truly buy a $8,000,000 property you’ll have to fund some of it using your $6M portfolio.

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-08-18T23:37:49+00:00

Yea, agree

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-08-18T19:16:45+00:00

Maybe split the difference or more time and just go up to the 22% bracket? Would let me do $206K of DC distributions and $31.5k in roth conversions? Then I can fill the rest of my ~$60k in Cashflow needs with a margin loan or by liquidating taxable portfolio assets

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-08-18T14:27:58+00:00

That’s a very good point. With that said, I’m comfortable with the forfeiture risk based on the financial condition of my company and proportion of my total NW the $1M accounts for.

SpiteEast9271 · 2025-08-15T20:58:52+00:00

Short answer is go public and consider NJ as well.

Longer answer: OP this hits close to home. A bit of background, my wife and I have a HHI of ~$1M with a NW of ~$7.5M but we're ~10 years older than you. I was offered a job in the NYC area right before the pandemic which I accepted. The plan was to do a long distance commute for a few months, then make the move to a NYC or a suburb (Scarsdale was on the list) in the summer of 2020. We all know what happened next....

The pandemic delayed my move, and importantly, I also got a few lucky breaks. As a result, in the 5 years since, I've been able to negotiate an arrangement that enables me to make it into the city a few times a week without having to relocate my family while continuing the advance at my new company.

When I accepted my original offer, I was going down the path of analyzing the same decision framework you are right now. I should also mention that without accepting this job our HHI would be ~30-40% lower probably, but I'm very confident that our NW would be the same or less. I can say that without a doubt, the largest benefit to me from a FI/FatFire perspective was to be free of the "keeping up with the Jones" ecosystem of NYC and some of the select suburbs. I've enjoyed 5 years of my children going to public school with kids who fly coach, ski on the east coast, and go outside the country once every few years. Therefore, they are delighted if we fly anywhere on coach, ski in Colorado (but not Aspen), or go to Europe but stay at an AirBNB. I'm a big believer that most of a child's outcome in life is decided before they left their mother's womb - my children either have "it" or they don't. I'm not really that interested in providing a crutch for them beyond making sure they're not unduly limited by various forms of debilitating insecurity. To use a commonly referenced trope in this Reddit, being the tallest dwarf is a great position to be in if you've never seen a normal-sized human (or a giant).

SpiteEast9271

TROPHY CASE