NW and of $5M, early 50s, two government jobs seems really high. Their savings rate is probably extremely high. I don’t see how NW is low relative to incomeYour financial success is commendable, but your ratio of accumulated portfolio to gross annual income isn't that high. Imagine for a moment that you had the same or even higher net-worth, but earned maybe only a fourth or a fifth of your current earnings. How would that affect your decisions?So why wouldn't we continue to pack away nearly $225K a year whilst it also increases our pensions. Well we have about $5M in assets already and our pensions together will be $100K covering easily our retirement expenses.
We have a spate of high-earners on this forum, for whom indeed, the pecuniary and the psychic effect of walking away from such lucrative employment, would be... problematic. On such matters I really have no opinion, not being a high earner myself. But for the rest of us, who for argument's sake are doing just as well in portfolio-terms, but far more modestly in income-terms, what is to be done? Some months ago, I posed the hypothetical question of a waitress at Waffle House, who earns $8/hour (assume a state with weak minimum wage laws) but has $20M at Fidelity. Should she quit? Assume that like the OP, she's in her 50s, but unlike the OP, she doesn't find her job to be particularly pleasant or rewarding.
Where I'm going here, is that besides money-insecurity (a euphemism for parsimony), we have the imperative of the work ethic. Speaking bluntly, if I quit too soon, I'm a bad person. I'm lazy, shiftless, dissolute. Psychologically, I don't want to be a bad person... and would do nearly anything to avoid deserving such label... even if that means waitressing at Waffle House. This "bad person dynamic" is juxtaposed with money-hunger (another handy euphemism) that forestalls the RE even if we're well beyond FI. At the OP's earnings level, the matter is even thornier.
Statistics: Posted by Nathan Drake — Thu Apr 04, 2024 1:27 am — Replies 65 — Views 4285