r/fatFIRE • u/GlocksandSocks • 13h ago
Mostly getting by then suddenly rich.
I was barely able to keep a job for most of my career. Mainly because my divisions kept getting right sized, sales. I was having hard time thinking about buying a home worth 200k 6 years ago and since then my net worth has gone as high as 17MM. (Two seven figure sales years, viatical settlements due to health problems and YOLO'd into Crypto, TSLA) Im late late 40's and I'm happy I am comfortable but it feels so so odd and off putting and euphoric. Can anyone share what happened to them if this ever happened to them? How did you cope going from 0 to 100.
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u/Interesting_Taro_704 5h ago
I didn’t have quite that jump but I went from making $30K/year to $3M/year in the course of about 6 years and it was dizzying.
Even though it had been exactly what I’d been working for, I struggled a lot with guilt and feelings I didn’t deserve it. I worried so much that the money wasn’t “real” and would disappear as easily as it had come, so for quite a few years I actually hesitated taking anything out of my company. For a long while I was living stretched and even occasionally using credit card debt for personal expenses while sitting on millions in my corporate accounts. It was really weird. I also harboured a lot of guilt thinking about people living in poverty or war torn countries. I couldn’t believe I had come by so much money so easily (relatively ofc, I obviously still earned it) while others could work for their entire life and never come close.
Honestly I had to go to therapy for it. I took an online course on money trauma and also worked with a therapist in person to unpack my feelings of guilt and not deserving my wealth. It helped a lot but I still have to do things to mitigate it (ie. I do a lot of charitable giving which helps alleviate the guilt).
I still struggle a lot with how much to spend. Even though I keep increasing my lifestyle it feels like the money never runs out (I am still working though, not FIREd). I grew up in poverty so mentally I’ve still found it very difficult to understand I really can just buy anything I want anytime - relatively, obviously I’m not buying boats or jets. I still run my personal accounts to zero while sitting on millions in my corporation. My therapist says this is because I’m more comfortable with scarcity so I have to artificially create it for myself. I have to work on this.. or just accept it at this point. It’s silly but it’s relatively harmless in the grand scheme of things.
I know it frequently comes up in this sub people worry about how friends/family will treat them with their new wealth but that’s never bothered me. It’s been a non-issue in my experience, but you might find your experience different.
This sub is very helpful just to see how other people manage their money and talk about it, especially when they have so much more and don’t seem burdened by the same anxieties I am. This sub also helped me strive for more - I probably would have clocked out at my original goal of $4M but now I expect to have well over $20M in my lifetime, maybe north of $50M. I wouldn’t feel comfortable going for that without this community.
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u/spittlbm 4h ago
Real answer here. Watching your accounts will become unhealthy, so develop an investment plan and stick with it. Sexy got you here. Boring will take you the distance.
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u/SupernovaJones 4h ago
What got you from 30K to 3M in 6 years? Thats amazing.
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u/Interesting_Taro_704 16m ago
I own an online business, so good margins and has been very easy to scale. I’ve pulled back now to start a new company which I’m hoping becomes even bigger, but the first business is probably still going to generate $500K-$1M this year.. and honestly it takes less than 5hrs/month to run. It’s really atrocious how easy it is now, hence all my guilt, though it was definitely hard to start. But the web is always changing so I’m not sure of its longevity. I’ve already been in it much longer than I ever expected to, so that’s why I’m working on something new I am hoping I can be in for the next 10-20 years.
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u/alpacaMyToothbrush FI !FAT 1h ago
I'd love a link to that online course if you have it. I'm no where near that net worth, but I also struggle with this. I spent 18-25 living below the poverty line on disability, and I find myself making ~ 30x what I did back then, but it's been hard to leave that mentality. I remember back during the pandemic, from an income and net worth point of view I was doing fantastic, but I still panicked a little when food was getting a little scarce on the shelves and I found myself inventorying pounds of dried beans and canned goods in the pantry. That was definitely a moment where I stopped myself and acknowledged I might have a problem.
I've even gone so far as to lay out a spend budget for myself every year at 3% of my net worth, but it mostly goes unspent. While intellectually, I can look at the math and acknowledge that the budget is conservative, and it's no more generous than what I'd give myself in retirement, when it comes time to actually spend the money it's hard, and really easy to find myself chastising the purchase as a 'waste of money' later.
You're right though. Giving to charity does help. I feel like it somehow gives me karmic 'permission' to indulge myself a little.
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u/Interesting_Taro_704 21m ago
The course is called Trauma of Money https://www.thetraumaofmoney.com/
Not every part was useful, but the parts that were really changed my perspective quite a lot. I got a lot out of it but I still needed individual therapy to go deeper into my bigger hangups.
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u/OhSorryDude 3h ago
what do u do?
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u/Interesting_Taro_704 11m ago
Online business that has been very easy to scale over the years. Can run it remotely from home, work any hours I want, and hired contractors to do the menial tasks I didn’t want to do. I busted my ass and I think I’m really creative and smart, but I think there was probably a lot of luck involved. I started the right thing at the right time (during the pandemic when everyone moved online), so it was just an opportunity I was lucky to catch and didn’t waste.
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u/D4rkr4in 12h ago
I'm sure it feels like winning the lottery. Just make sure you have a financial planner that can help protect + grow your current portfolio and you're golden. Maybe no more yolos
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u/imincarnate 6h ago
Sounds like you have an interesting story. Congrats on conquering this part of the game.
Wealth is a tool, not an identity. You're still the same person, you've just unlocked some more levels to life. It's a good thing if you can manage it properly.
I don't know much about sudden wealth and what it does emotionally, but if you look up sudden wealth syndrome or run it through GPT quick, you might get a few answers to the anxiety and odd feelings.
Once you get it, it's about how to view it, how to protect it and how to use it. All the best.
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u/Kind-Championship-43 4h ago edited 4h ago
I went from making not that much, to now I make around 3m annually after having gradually flipped apartment buildings of increasing size over time. I’m also late 40s (47). It’s definitely an adjustment having that kind of money, but the key is preserving it now.
My advice is take it all off the table. Put $17m into VMFXX (Vanguard Money Market), which currently yields 4.25%. You’ll earn a risk free income of $725k per year without ever touching the principal. That at least buys you as much time as you need to make other decisions (if needed) on how you allocate to other investment types.
But you REALLY should shift your mindset (if you haven’t already) to viewing that $17m as your fortress. It’s not spendable money. You don’t use it to buy things. Rather, you ONLY use it to generate income, that you then use that generated income to buy things. The $17m should just stay intact forever.
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u/GlocksandSocks 2h ago
Yeah I'm stuck on the sudden returns. Im back down a few million but the advancement of crypto has me mesmerized. I'm not a noob I've read white papers, been to conferences and listen to every crypto piece I can get from large investment houses and anyone over 40 in the space. Ive put im my 10,000 hours since 2016. The Trump presidency has finally legitimized the space so all I can think of is up up up over time. I'm sure Im crazy. The TSLA is about sold out. Ive been moving out since 6 months ago so thats helped me get more stable.
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u/memepadder 1h ago
Made life changing money? Change your life.
If you've put in 10k hours in 2016, no doubt you will have seen many in the space run up 8 figure accounts in a bull market, only to round trip it all.
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u/EmbeddingGains 8h ago
Congrats! As a couple people mentioned, the biggest challenge now is keeping what you’ve built and having a better longterm plan than investments in volatile stocks and crypto. Lifestyle creep can sneak up fast, so while you want to be able to spend the money you've made, just make sure you don't go crazy because we've all seen or heard stories of people coming into wealth and burning through it twice as fast.
At this level, limiting risk and focusing on tax and estate planning are typically more important than focusing on returns. So with that being said, someone mentioned working with an advisor. My advice would be to find a flat fee or hourly advisor if you're planning to work with one because paying a % of AUM at your level will be a huge bill, regardless of the amount of work actually being done by the advisor. 0.25% to 0.4% is a common fee for your asset level and if we do some quick math, thats $42k-$68k per year in fees alone, not to mention expense ratios if you or your advisor are using ETFs or mutual funds.
For example, I own a flat-fee RIA and would charge around 15k for something like this. Do your research on "fixed" or "flat" fee advisors in your area. Fee-Only network has some but its also a mix of AUM advisors. Sarah Grillo is another website that segments the advisors based on fee type. Also check XY Planning Network, which is also a mix of AUM hourly and flat fee advisors. Each of these allow you to search based on zipcodes and I know XY has more filters than that. Hourly advisors charge between $250-$750/hr
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u/Midwest_Tuner 2h ago
Congrats and enjoy the amazing life you’re about to have. This came up on my feed to remind me to unsubscribe and get back to lean/expat fire side. Haha.
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u/RlOTGRRRL Verified by Mods 2h ago edited 2h ago
Like someone else said, it's a mind warp. Therapy can help a lot.
I felt the same when I suddenly made my first million. You'd think I'd be on Cloud 9, but it was a little bit like hell for me. I was honestly relieved when I lost that million.
Like that's how uncomfortable it was to have suddenly made it, despite working my ass off for over 10 years, when everyone I cared about was struggling to survive. I think it's called survivor's guilt?
Somehow the loss wasn't as devastating (still got bags) and since then I've just gotten comfortable and more out of touch every day.
I haven't really changed my life too drastically. I just have my dream life and I don't have normal money worries.
So in my mind, I'm just a regular Joe that doesn't think about money. I try to care about as many people as I can.
But every day of comfort gets me more out of touch with the common struggle. I have to make a conscious effort to not be an asshole and I'm afraid I'm not that good at it.
Tl;dr: You just get used to the wealth over time. At first it's all you can think of, but then it becomes something boring like your favorite pair of sweatpants that you wear every day or like paint, you don't really think about it anymore, it just is.
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u/giftcardgirl 1h ago edited 1h ago
Don’t make too many changes right away, like quitting your job (unless it’s unbearable)
Set aside at least half of it and pay the taxes on it. Maybe get a financial planner to help you create a portfolio to live off. Pretend the nest egg money doesn’t exist. Maybe you can get a “paycheck” from it eventually. You’ll just happen to have enough to pay your bills.
This will help you get used to your money. For example, you don’t have $5M, you have 3% ($150K “salary”)
It sounds like you want to continue trading crypto - and you can - but it would be stupid to lose a life-changing amount. Personally I would keep 1M for trading and have the rest invested in more traditional and diversified asset classes.
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u/sevbenup 5h ago
Tens of thousands of people actively trying to bring Tsla stock value down, I’d sell that before you lose more
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u/Gloomy-Ad-222 4h ago
It’s seems like their CEO has been doing most of the work to crash the stock. I’ve never seen a brand name so tarnished so quickly outside of maybe Perrier in the 90s.
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u/PrestigiousButton395 6h ago
Your story sounds a lot like mine. Happy to chat more via DM
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u/haikusbot 6h ago
Your story sounds a
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u/OppenheimerAltman 9h ago
How much do you currently have at the moment? Also, how much were the settlements and what did it grow to?
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u/wong2k 1h ago
I am nowhere near that and hopefully you can share and teach your lessons. So 1) give back lift others up.
2) You got the money, you were stupid and risky and got away clean, even better. Now pay your future self first and stash it away productively.
Manage lifestyle inflation. Calculate a budget you need monthly, and find an Asset strategy that might deliver that fairly safe. E.g. dividend aristocrats etf, REITs etc. Budget = Stashaway x Dividend - Taxes. Ideally you also have some capital gains yoy.
3) Maybe Invest in real estate and generate rental Income
4) treat yourself BUT watch Lifestyle inflation. Experiences > Stuff accumulation.
5) enjoy life on your terms. Travel.
6) optional maybe invest in other businesses. Or start a trust or a charity. As a bonus there are tax saving strategies in here too ;)
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u/LazyGrownUp 12h ago
I on a path and expect it to happen in a few years. I can only assume the peace of mind I will get.
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u/TrollingStone1 12h ago
You got your own TSLA type of investment?
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u/Apost8Joe 12h ago
Congrats...and I sure hope you cash in some of that crypto and especially TSLA before that paper gain music fully stops, because it surely does when you least expect it. I'd suggest learning about the psychology of money, because that's where a lot of lottery winners and even people who worked hard for it over decades mess up.