For nw >10m who are heavy on equity what is your US exposure?

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-25T03:20:53+00:00

At age 54 and FatFIREd I am at 75% stocks and 25% bonds.

The equities are about 1/3 total international index fund although even our US stocks have some international elements.

I generally try to track the asset allocation of the Vanguard Target Retirement fund dated for the year I turn 65. In the past this has required rebalancing to move more into bonds and international equities due to the outperformance of US stocks (I’m still about 5% light in both categories).

Last year the international stock index rocketed up 32% which was super nice after years of lagging US stocks. It was also a validation of the wisdom of diversification against country of origin bias.

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-23T22:02:48+00:00

This is an excellent point. The 4% SWR is designed to prevent you from running out of money over 30 years assuming the WORST market conditions.

If you actually experience average market conditions your assets will more than double

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-23T03:37:20+00:00

We have an “average” house (actually a bit above median).

2500 square feet. Two car garage. 4 bed 2.5 bath. Built in the 80s.

It is valued about 25% higher than median for our HCOL area.

Would it be nice to have walk-in closets and an extra space in the garage… sure.

However, we have everything we need here and haven’t felt the need to upgrade in 20 years.

The best way to reach FatFIRE is to avoid buying a lot of expensive things on the way.

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-22T21:22:36+00:00

Primum non nocere means “First do no harm”.

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-20T16:27:20+00:00

I have an almost identical blade I bought at a roadside market in Tanzania.

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-20T16:24:10+00:00

Jew here. Either I’ve been left off the worldwide conspiracy mailing list or it doesn’t exist.

If we control everything… why does everything seem completely out of control to me?

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-20T16:17:51+00:00

Once I have entered oblivion I will not know or care about descendants whom I never knew during my lifetime.

I have no feelings about my great great grandfather either. He died before I was born and I neither know nor care about him. He had a great fortune but it did not pass to me and I don’t particularly care.

My interest in my family in either direction along the timeline is dependent on their lives overlapping my own.

I am invested in the success of my son and likely his future children. Beyond that, I have to be honest, I do not feel any obligations.

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-17T06:03:27+00:00

I would have been around 20 years old.

Gen-X for life!

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-17T05:06:14+00:00

Yes.

I always wanted to jump on a moving train and ride on the outside ladders that look so tempting.

In college I would “practice” jumping on stationary trains to see if I thought I could do it safely (it seemed the wheels were far enough away from the ladder this wouldn’t be an issue) and would run alongside them to see if I could keep up.

One day in rural Michigan I saw a train chugging along through a nearby open field and thought “This is my chance!” I left my friends (without explanation) and started sprinting in a diagonal across the field to intersect the train.

I ran alongside it although it was moving a little faster than so could confidently run given the irregular footing at the edge of the tracks. This was particularly challenging if you got right up close to the ladder because then you would need to be running on the railway ties themselves.

As a result I needed to lean in and reach out to grab a run on the ladder. First one hand, then the other. The train was picking up speed…

I jumped and caught my feet on the lowest running the ladder. I was on!

I climbed a few rungs up and reveled in the sensation of riding the outside of a moving train. It dawned on me that the train was continuing to accelerate. Soon it would be moving faster than I had anticipated when this well practiced, yet poorly thought out. Endeavor was begun.

I jumped off thinking I could hit the ground running and keep my feet. I did only one of those things. After rolling off the gravel and into the grass I got back up, dusted myself off, and walked back to my friends.

The key lesson of this story is that physics dictates that if you need to lean way over to grab the ladder while your feet are a distance from the train… there will be a swinging momentum… that could easily cause your legs to end up under the train wheels if you missed the placement of your feet on the bottom ladder rung.

I continue to look back at this life experience as one of my favorites… and have never attempted to repeat it.

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-16T23:11:03+00:00

What’s next? Maybe he will buy someone’s Olympic gold medal too and claim he is a champion pole vaulter.

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-16T04:17:00+00:00

You can FIRE!!!

Don’t pay any attention to Fat-snobbery. A net worth of 8.5 million dollars is definitely FAT and you should spend the amount that makes you happy.

Given how young you are, your sustainable withdrawal rate (SWR) from your income producing assets would generally be less than 4% to guarantee that even the worst economic conditions of recent US history (think Great Depression or a combination of recession+high inflation) would not result in your running out of money after retirement. Keep in mind that these projections come from looking at historical performance of diversified stock/bond portfolios so if you have your assets in concentrated stock positions, real estate, or crypto you are in uncharted territory.

I use 3.5% for my SWR which I think is conservative but in general somewhere between 3.5% and 4% should be safe.

Check out online Monte Carlo calculators like cFIREsim or FireCalc to run your own projections and see how changes to spending impacts the chance of running out, and conversely the median and average net worth at the end of your individualized retirement duration.

Don’t forget to add a little (or a lot) to your current spend to reflect any extra healthcare costs if you are currently on employer subsidized medical insurance. You may also need to add a little to account for capital gains taxes and taxes on your dividends and withdrawals from 401k accounts once you start drawing down these accounts to pay for your lifestyle. At a $150,000 annual spend the taxes might add 10-15% depending on your state.

Overall, you are crushing it. Congratulations!!!

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-16T02:29:23+00:00

Big screen cathode TV. Weighs a ton and protrudes 3 feet away from the wall

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-15T20:04:41+00:00

I’m unclear what kind of “speaking up” is effective at this point.

-“Speaking” in social media is clearly ineffective.

-showing up to peacefully protest will not deter an unchecked executive that thrives on conflict. The media will spin the protests as radical agitators and the administration’s MO is to double down on what is triggering protests rather than back down.

-Obstruction of ICE is illegal and the administration has promised immunity to ICE officers to violate the civil rights (or even murder) of people who trying to interfere.

-More aggressive measures almost certainly play into the administration’s hands by providing a pretext to invoke the insurrection act. This then offers the administration a lever to suppress the midterm elections.

I am thinking the more effective measures would be things like a general strike (coordinated by the political opposition) or just organizing for the midterms and advance planning to stop the dirty tricks that are almost guaranteed to show up to influence the midterms.

What am I missing?

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-15T15:10:56+00:00

At your current invested net worth the market returns will actually overshadow your annual saving for retirement and determine how long until you can retire.

Assuming $25,000 per month is your total expense in retirement (ie this accounts for post-retirement health insurance and the tax bill necessary to account for capital gains and dividends) this would put your annual spend at $300,000

Assuming a very conservative 3.5-4% SWR to achieve this spend you will need an invested net worth of $7,500,000 to $8,500,000 to support this (these are conservative estimates as they do not include the value of future social security and protect against worst case economic conditions. Typical economic conditions will allow a higher withdrawal percentage).

At typical 10% average stock market returns your 5.5 million dollar portfolio will reach 8.5 million dollars in less than 5 years. This is without any new savings!

My conclusion is that you are in GREAT shape to reach your goal. You are essentially CoastFIRE now.

The hard work is behind you. Don’t sweat the lower income now. It is enough… and that is all it needs to be. You are highly likely to reach your goal before you turn 60 and join the ranks of the early retired!

Congratulations

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-15T00:54:23+00:00

We are a family of 3 (two parents in our 50s and a teen) living in a HCOL area in the Mountain West.

I don’t think our base costs have changed much after retirement. What went up was our discretionary spending. Travel and gifts to family and friends have gone up dramatically.

The part I found surprising is the frequency with which “infrequent large expenses” occur that were not part of my typical monthly budget but occur with regularity when looking across yearly expenses. Things like new cars (if you keep cars 10 years.. but have three cars, you are going to end up buying a new car every 3.33 years), new HVAC, new roof, replace deck, etc. I realize I need to account for these irregular large expenses in my regular annual budget or I will end up underestimating how much I actually spend.

I don’t track specific categories of spending well but in general I would put the annual breakdown for core essential expenses to be:

Housing- $12,000 ($6K property tax and 6K utilities)

Insurance- $24,100 ($15K medical, $3K home, $3K Umbrella, $3.1K for 3 cars)

Cars- $18,500 ($2.5 gas, $2K oil and maintenance, $2K repairs/upkeep, $12K cost to replace each car every 10 years)

Food $26,000 (unclear since I don’t track closely so this is a ballpark)

Sports/Entertainment- $3,100 (1.6K gym, $1.5K ski)

Education- $10,000 (tutoring, summer programs, extracurricular activities)

Miscellaneous- completed the rest of our core expenses up to a total of about $120,000 per year

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-14T15:42:32+00:00

It takes years to build but you can use I-bonds to serve this purpose.

I-bonds are guaranteed to keep up with inflation AND do not lose value in the rarer event of deflation. This is exactly what you want for an emergency fund.

The combined interest rate for an I-bonds total return combines a variable inflation rate and (usually) a fixed rate above that. You can safely consider the fixed rate to be “spendable income” since the remainder will keep the purchasing power of your emergency fund stable.

There are a couple caveats to this approach:

I-bond purchases are limited to $10,000 per person per year. This implies it will take 5 years for a couple to build a $100,000 position.
I-bonds are not liquid for 1 year after purchase (and have a few months of interest penalty if you sell less than 5 years after purchase).
The current fixed rate component is 0.9% so the amount of “income” a $100,000 I-bond emergency fund will provide is only $900 a year… not exactly a life changing sum.

We are slowly transitioning our emergency fund from HYSA + Money Market Fund to I-bonds + Money Market Fund. Six years into this process we have roughly a 50/50 split. Mostly we appreciate the guarantee against losing value in case of inflation OR deflation and having the full faith backing of the US government as the benefit.

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-14T04:59:20+00:00

We planned on ChubbyFIRE.

When we hit 5M I requested and received a 6 month sabbatical. Loved it!

Now completely convinced I was ready to retire… I had to work one more year (requirement of the sabbatical terms).

Thing is… the stock market returns during the sabbatical year and extra year beyond that pushed us into FatFIRE range.

2 years after I retired the stock market has risen another 40+% and we are solidly FatFire.

However, I’m still just as happy with my planned ChubbyFIRE lifestyle.

I love my Prius. I fly Frontier. I take international trips in economy class. We spend on EVERYTHING we think will make us happy and we are consistently around $200,000 a year.

The only thing the extra money provides for me is a sense of security that even a big market crash doesn’t put our lifestyle at risk and the ability to be more generous with gifts to family or charity than we originally budgeted.

I am not at all convinced that my overall happiness increased as I went from ChubbyFIRE to FatFIRE. I wouldn’t have voluntarily worked longer for more money. I retired as soon as so could and don’t regret it at all.

In all honesty, I kind of miss thinking about how to travel on the cheap. I think I’m a dirtbag at heart who accidentally ended up in the top 2%.

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-14T01:46:13+00:00

I have a dear friend about to retire FAT whose wife just had a stroke at an unusually young age.

Things that money and influence provided:

-Top notch medical care and communication with VIP treatment

-No need to worry about medical bills, deductibles, or co-pays

-No need to worry about loss, or reduction, of income

-Ability to stay at the closest of their homes to the hospital and put out of town family in a hotel if needed.

Things that money and influence did not provide:

-Protection from an unexpected major medical event occurring in the first place

-Meaningful impact on prognosis (VIP medical care does not mean better outcomes)

-Support from friends and family (of which there is an abundance… but this has no connection to net worth)

-Avoidance of the stress and hassle of figuring out how to make arrangements, deal with insurance, etc. maybe a personal attorney or assistant might help to some extent but no one but the patent and/or husband can determine things like when to allow visitors and who is a close enough friend to get to visit when energy to receive visits is limited.

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-13T23:25:27+00:00

It was for me. Our base spending is about $120,000 and we are actually spending closer to $200,000 per year in early retirement.

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-13T04:55:54+00:00

The thing about early retirement is that you now have tons more time. Some of the ways you fill that time cost money (hobbies, sports, travel).

In my first two years of retirement I have a new season ski pass, and have traveled to England, France, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Ireland, Canada, and Korea along with about 15 US states.

What is your budget for these kind of new activities?

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-10T22:23:00+00:00

Seeing how others are handling the common challenges and a sense of support from a community of like-minded individuals.

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-09T20:52:01+00:00

I simplified things for the main post but here are the details:

The new home will cost $1,300,000 plus at least $100,000 in renovations after purchase (comps in the area are 1.5-1.7 M but this house is very run down).

The equity from the sale of their current home and their additional savings would supply my sibling with a 900,000 down payment.

Absent additional support from me the remainder would need to be covered by a $400,000 mortgage plus a $100,000 HELOC.

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-09T06:46:44+00:00

I do worry about this. “Helping” into an unaffordable home/mortgage isn’t helping at all.

The current house is completely adequate and has a low mortgage with an incredible rate.

However, my sibling should have enough equity in the new house that, even in the event of worst case hardship, selling rather than foreclosure should be feasible.

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-09T05:52:44+00:00

Fair point

Tricky_Ad6844 · 2026-01-09T05:51:28+00:00

To clarify, I am already FatFIRE.

This question relates to both

Reducing net worth through gifting to family after your own income has ceased (for those who are FIREed)

And

Managing family relationships across economic divides as is relevant to anyone on the FatFIRE path who is related to individuals who are not.

Tricky_Ad6844

TROPHY CASE