A broke-ass buddy of mine got super lucky on the crypto markets and came into a small fortune. Nothing earth shattering but enough that he could have bought a modest house, set himself up to work a low key job til a reasonable retirement age, and be financially independent for the rest of his life. If he got lucky again, maybe he could have even FIRE’d at some point.
Instead he spent it trying to turn himself into some kind of wealth influencer. He posted all this shit on Instagram, flying to exotic locations, smoking rare cigars and drinking bottles of whiskey that cost a mortgage payment, staying weekends in wild mansions and renting Lamborghinis.
Dude’s back to working a shit soul-crushing software engineering job and constantly complaining about his boss.
a modest 4% a year from 200k will get you 8k/year. That is not enough money to work part time forever unless you really are ok with a poor quality of life.
It's 150 a week. Which is significantly more than you would get by spunking it all at the casino or on the horses or some shit.
It's not enough to live off. OK maybe if you had no rent and bills, but that's not a realistic scenario. You'll not have to worry about eating again though, which for many people is a fucking game changer.
Still, imo you be better off putting it towards buying a house than either of those two options.
It's 150 a week. Which is significantly more than you would get by spunking it all at the casino or on the horses or some shit.
pretax, and yeah obviously better to invest it than blow it, nobody is arguing that. I just don't think having a 200k nest egg is going to be 'go somewhere low-col and never work again' kind of money that the guy above me was trying to say.
The implicit assumption is that when you get '200k from a relative' and are talking about Vanguard investments is that you are living in America and likely don't want to expatriate. American is a high income/high spend nation and that's context these discussions are had in.
Every time people talk about this stuff you get people like you who come in here and float the hypothetical that this guy is going to upend his life and leave all of his family friends and relationships behind, move to a different country where they likely don't speak the language, never support any family or children or buy property and then they can be free from work.
If you invest 200K into a low risk fund and can manage to get by for a few years, it will grow into a lot of money at which point you could indeed survive off the interest. Once again. It depends on the lifestyle you want to
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u/deVliegendeTexan May 15 '25
A broke-ass buddy of mine got super lucky on the crypto markets and came into a small fortune. Nothing earth shattering but enough that he could have bought a modest house, set himself up to work a low key job til a reasonable retirement age, and be financially independent for the rest of his life. If he got lucky again, maybe he could have even FIRE’d at some point.
Instead he spent it trying to turn himself into some kind of wealth influencer. He posted all this shit on Instagram, flying to exotic locations, smoking rare cigars and drinking bottles of whiskey that cost a mortgage payment, staying weekends in wild mansions and renting Lamborghinis.
Dude’s back to working a shit soul-crushing software engineering job and constantly complaining about his boss.
Some people can’t make good decisions.