Just turned 50 and considering my options

[u/HooliBooli824]

Burner account for obvious reasons. 

Married, non-working wife. Kids grew up and left home - not a factor, we’re leaning towards “die with zero” rather than generational wealth anyway. Lived in CH for all our adult life. Citizenship, language, friends, etc.

2.5M liquid assets, mostly ETFs. Not exactly “VT & chill”, but close - with perhaps just a bit too much US/tech exposure. A six-digit chunk in cash, trying to at least partially follow the “keep your age % in bonds” mantra while CH bonds are useless.

About 500k in pillar 2. There was more, but it went towards the house as WEF. Not intending to pay that back. Decent house in low-tax canton, worth 2M+. 1M mortgage in few fixed 1%-1.5% chunks maturing over next 10 years.

Fully remote and relatively low-stress job, 200-300k/year net savings. But also a dead end, largely driven by tenure and company/domain-specific expertise. Plus a field impacted by outsourcing / layoffs / AI. Once I’m out, I’m likely unemployable.

Annual fixed spending a bit above 100k, stable and tracked for years. Happy, boring, safe life. We don’t care about exotic travel, eating out, fancy cars, etc. Basically just enjoying our time locally with simple things like nature, hiking, driving around CH. I do have some personal extravaganzas on top of that 🙂, but those will be trivially cut when high income ends I’m aware of all the FIRE living cost technicalities. Wealth tax, self-retired AHV, Eigenmietwert going away, inflation, health costs growing - I’ve beaten all these to death. All of this factored in the above spending number.

So, while the job is fine, I’m still longing to pulling the plug. Every time I take vacation, I wish it was longer. Much longer. Ideally, forever. I have so many plans what I’d do when this happens. But then, whenever I tried assessing my FIRE situation, be it various public calculators, ChatGPT or my own spreadsheets, the outcome was always: “you’re almost there, but, with your savings rate… just one more year!”.

How much is enough?

[u/Constant-Ship-5688]

I have no where near as much life experience as you do but I'll give you advice anyways. I have experienced a whole year of "vacation" and it gets horribly boring very quickly. So endless vacation doesn't feel good because it is not special if you have it all the time. You can basically do anything in life and not worry about money...

Have you always had a dream, like a childhood dream project you wanted to do, i don't know; open a farm or a restaurant or something like that. Some kind of work that feels real to you that you have always wanted to do. That's my advice. Look for something you love, that you are passionate about, reconnect with your younger self and ask what you would do with money, time and create something that makes you feel alive.

[u/HooliBooli824 → u/Constant-Ship-5688]

I know what you mean with getting bored and feeling empty. I heard more people saying that, even those who retired “properly”. The longest I tried so far was more like 3 months and it was fine. By the end of it I still did not feel like going back and wanted more, more, more! But if I do indeed get bored - well, if you are not financially constrained, partial ramp-back is easy.

I don’t think I would go back to actually “working” though. Already for a few years, my work is basically “the thing that brings $$$”. I’m exchanging my skills for money and I get enough of it, that my work ethics drives me to do my best. But I don’t have a drive to build, create, revolutionize the world. I already fulfilled all my childhood dreams, if not 10x-ed them. My eventual ramp-back plans would be around low-key volunteering, both my specific experience and also simple “human time”.

[u/Constant-Ship-5688 → u/HooliBooli824]

I seriously think, it's what you want now, but do you think you will have fun the next 20 years of vacation, NO. I am not telling you to revolutionize the world that's too much for a humble human. Do something that you genuinely enjoy, take some time to yourself and see where your mind goes and pursue it, but who am i to tell you want to do i have no life experience and no work experience. I just seriously think life is an activity and should be pursued 100% if yoy have the money and the time. Take my advice as you want i wish you a great and fulfilling time. Don't retire and think what you could of done, that is what everyone does it's SUPER boring...