For those of you that have or will FIRE, what are you/will you do with the sudden influx? More investments? Buying a yacht? Extra security? TRAVEL?! Just curious. :)
Like the conventional wisdom says, we're going to buy long-term care insurance policies.
But seriously, we're going to do pretty much the same things that we're doing now-- enjoying life and pursuing our interests. Frugality and "living green" are gamified challenges, no longer FI savings goals. Our interests are pretty cheap in terms of sunscreen & surf wax. We travel as much as we care to, and we prefer "living local" at our destinations instead of holing up in luxury air-conditioned boxes. We don't pay much attention to the budget unless the credit-card bills seem awful darn high that month, but we've pretty well wrestled our monthly expenses into submission. When we see something we like, we buy it... and it's usually from a Craigslist seller who's desperately raising cash to pay their own bills.
I've developed a habit of (*gasp*) paying extra for the upgraded legroom on United's airplane seats. Sometimes I even trade in frequent-flyer miles for first class.
We're going to pay big bucks on living accommodations for our daughter's college graduation. It's not for her benefit-- it's for us parents. Our own college graduations sucked and we want to avoid repeating those problems. One of the family members likely to be in attendance at our daughter's graduation is a little tough to live with, so we think it's a good idea to have
neutral corners a larger place to stay. Since we're the default hosts, we also like the idea of being able to have meals onsite instead of standing in line at restaurants with all the other graduation families. We're even thinking of hiring a limo to shuttle family members to/from the airport so that we don't have to. (Not that I'm bitter about it, 30+ years after my own college graduation.) Our daughter is working her assets off for her degree, just like we did, and we think that she'll appreciate a week of taking a victory lap before she returns to working her assets off for the Navy. I know that we parents will appreciate being able to kick back and enjoy the show.
Speaking of interests, I still work on our investments. They run pretty well in autopilot, but there are days where I still feel as though I'm strolling down a sidewalk that's ankle-deep in dollar bills. I can't resist bending over to sweep up a few dumpster-loads of them. I don't need to spend time selling put/call options or researching angel investments or digging into peer-to-peer lending prospectuses, but I'm curious. I'd rather learn about that stuff now (and maybe burn my fingers on it a little) than to be blissfully ignorant and then get cajoled into it (when I'm 82 years old) by a cute smooth-talking salesgirl.
I work on writing ~10 hours a week. I pay my own expenses and give the revenue to charity. I enjoy it.
I suspect that we'll end up with more money than we need. I doubt our daughter will want it-- she'll make her own money, and by the time we die she'll be facing her own "What do we do with the sudden influx?" questions. I guess we could fund grandchild educations (assuming we have grandchildren), but we'll probably find a way to give most of our assets to charity while we're alive to enjoy the accomplishment.
I guess this is why billionaires keep working: money becomes a scorecard, not just a tool. Unlike billionaires, we plan to stop keeping score while we're still several orders of magnitude short of that level.
If you're left with a bunch, you worked a lot longer than necessary (special cases aside - like pensions needing X number of years minimum which may push you from the "not enough" past "way too much".)
You may have wanted to do so, and that's fine, but you could have FIRE'd earlier, in general, IMO.
Some people like the idea that they'll have a huge surplus as a safety net. It all depends on how comfortable you feel with your risk tolerance re: investments, ability to earn money if necessary, ability to adjust spending downward if necessary, etc. etc.
But... but... but FIRECalc said I had a
95% success rate 5% chance of failure!!!
