I guess if my wife and I kept slogging away at our well paying but soul destroying jobs for the next 20 years we could retire at 50 with multi-millions. I don't think we could bear it.
I don't think you should. Your souls are worth more than millions. Had we known about Trinity at the end of 1998, which is as close as I can tell the first time the portfolio hit $1m, we might have bailed there and then. I am prone to analysis paralysis, so it might have been another couple of years anyway and most everything would have paid off in any case.
So, if the first mil is hard, how did you make the following ones so quickly? Just investment income starting to snowballl?
Some of it, yes. I knew nothing about investing until the late 90s. I screwed around, thinking I was smart, buying this, selling that, making basically nothing. If I had had even two neurons earlier, we could have passively ridden the bull market and made tons more before I got religion. We made nothing in the Internet runup but we lost nothing in the collapse. Since 2000, about $1m.
The rest was just a bunch of things that all paid off around the same time.
- We know zip about houses and we are not handy but we lucked into buying at two dead times in two different locales, hired competent people to reno them to our taste, and then had both markets get hot and vindicate both our choice of location and taste. Pure dumb luck. $700k.
- Both of our employers wanted to turn DB pensions into DC pensions at a time when interest rates were low. $250k.
- Employer got into hot water by buying another company which was (my opinion, y'unnerstan, cuz I worked in a different division) a borderline fraud. Nobody went to jail but the stock price went down 60% in a rocketing bull market. Owned stock, owned options, and we were sick to our stomachs. The great thing about a lower stock price is that, next time bonus time comes around, the stock and option grants have to be a lot bigger. If you can ride it out, you get to cash in. $250k.
- Education plus experience plus continuing ed plus doing what's required and on time gets noticed eventually. Our joint AGI grew 10x in 20 years. Our spending roughly doubled. We banked the difference. $500k.
- We maxed out 401ks and took the employer matches. Both of our employers had stock purchase plans, mine capped at 15% of gross, hers at 10%. We maxed those. We both worked with people who spent next January's bonus this September. We waited until January and banked it all. $400k.
- At most employers, you lose your stock and option awards when you leave. Ours both had provisions that awards survived being laid off, plus you got severance. A combo of luck (a recession) and engineering (quietly holding up your hand) and we were both laid off. $250k so far, another $50-100 still possible.
I don't know where the rest is from. I suppose it's things like washing Ziploc bags instead of tossing them, hanging clothes to dry on the cherry tree, using frequent flier miles to book business class tickets and then bunking with friends temporarily posted to Rome, having no or one car, telling the youngest that she should get a job if she wants a car, mowing my own lawn, contentedly using 5 year old computers and 10 year old software.
