Hypothetical--Receiving a windfall

[SirDuff]

Ditto. Except I'd be throwing those dividends right back in until it outpaced my current earnings by about 25% and would quit my job and retire.

DRIPs are your friend Or are those not an American thing?

 

[punkin]

Two million might find retirement...maybe. I might use $50k or so to update my house. That's it. No other plans.

 

[cluvsdisney]

I'd pay off and fix up the house. New windows, new kitchen, new flooring. I'd give some to other family members and some to charity. I'd buy a new car too mine is 14 years old.

A month or so ago when the lottery was super high I bought a few tickets, and started playing What If. That is the list I came up with, along with buying an rv and doing a bit of traveling. I would have to take my dogs along, so a rv seems the way to go.

Here I would go the private jet route.

 

[FairestOfThemAll37]

Two million might find retirement...maybe. I might use $50k or so to update my house. That's it. No other plans.

I don't think could retire with $2 million because I'm only in my 30s, but if that number were $4-$5, I would in a heartbeat!

 

[DawnM]

We are looking at moving to a HCOL area AND have kids start college, so it would ALL go to that!

 

[gemini2727]

I'd buy a ticket to Bermuda or maybe Turks and Caicos and lie in the sand while I planned how to spend my money.

 

[cleverclovers]

Pay off my kids' college loans. Save rest for retirement.

 

[Colleen27]

There's a business I would love to start in our town that I think would do really well. Money is the main obstacle. So that's what I'd do - buy a vacant building in our business district and start up my book/board game store, and end the "do we relocate for my career?" debate once and for all. I'd also put some money not a ton but maybe mid-five-figures into working on the house faster than the piecemeal approach we've taken over the 8 years we've lived here.

The rest would go into college and retirement funds. Boring, I know, but I'm generally content with what we have and wouldn't want to make any major changes.

 

[Colleen27]

ONe issue I can see is if you are in your 40's and quit your job, the social security payment in the future will drop significantly. I can also see the possibility of people getting into that principle even when they swear they won't.

The big problem I see with retiring on that too many years before normal retirement age is the big question mark of health insurance. Two million would be more than adequate for most people if you're just talking living expenses, but if you give up the job that provides your insurance there's really no way of knowing how much to budget for health insurance (or any guarantee you'll be able to get it, regardless of price) over an extended number of years. We saw our premiums triple and had a couple of pre-existing condition denials in the years DH was self-employed, and we were young and healthy then. I'm not sure there's any amount of money that would feel like "enough" to me if I were pondering retirement decades before medicare eligibility.

 

[FairestOfThemAll37]

The big problem I see with retiring on that too many years before normal retirement age is the big question mark of health insurance. Two million would be more than adequate for most people if you're just talking living expenses, but if you give up the job that provides your insurance there's really no way of knowing how much to budget for health insurance (or any guarantee you'll be able to get it, regardless of price) over an extended number of years. We saw our premiums triple and had a couple of pre-existing condition denials in the years DH was self-employed, and we were young and healthy then. I'm not sure there's any amount of money that would feel like "enough" to me if I were pondering retirement decades before medicare eligibility.

I've always figured that if you could live off 50-60% of your dividend income or interest that you could probably weather increases in keeping yourself insured.

 

[Colleen27]

I've always figured that if you could live off 50-60% of your dividend income or interest that you could probably weather increases in keeping yourself insured.

The question is whether you could keep the insurance at all... You could probably weather any price increase, but lifetime caps and pre-existing condition denials, should they return to the American health insurance landscape, are harder to handle no matter what your level of wealth (short of Bill Gates levels of prosperity, that is). Million dollar medical conditions aren't unheard of, and it wasn't all that long ago that a serious enough medical history could render a person uninsurable at any price on the individual market. With about half of our nation's leaders seeking a return to those days, it would take a lot more than a couple million in the bank for me to feel okay with retiring in middle age.

 

[NHdisneylover]

The big problem I see with retiring on that too many years before normal retirement age is the big question mark of health insurance. Two million would be more than adequate for most people if you're just talking living expenses, but if you give up the job that provides your insurance there's really no way of knowing how much to budget for health insurance (or any guarantee you'll be able to get it, regardless of price) over an extended number of years. We saw our premiums triple and had a couple of pre-existing condition denials in the years DH was self-employed, and we were young and healthy then. I'm not sure there's any amount of money that would feel like "enough" to me if I were pondering retirement decades before medicare eligibility.

My parents retired in their early/mid 40s. They have since both gone back to work (and divorced) but more out of boredom than economic need.
They retied to Mexico and have bought into public insurance there----you make an excellent point, but I wanted to als point out that a large number of American ex pats retire and move to other countries where this is not such an obstical (so many go to Mexico, infact, that there are more people from the US immigrating South to Mexico than Mexicans immigrating the the Us in the past decade or so)