Ask HN: What to do after $8M (all cash, post tax) exit?

I did have ~40x my monthly expenses saved. I just spent them over the course of about 40 months!

I had no illusions about not working again, but I did do what retired people do: whatever the heck I wanted!

First, there's some pretty good advice already here. I'm not really adding much, but I'm hoping I can simplify some things.

Don't freak out. There's nothing to freak out about. You have a windfall, and unless the taxes are wrong, you can live the rest of your life on the interest.

The simplest thing to put the money in an index stock market index fund (I have very high trust in Vanguard, but there are lots of low cost index funds in most brokerages). You can realistically live off of a 3% draw down for the rest of you and your wife's lives, and never have to worry about the capital. 3% is very conservative, and many consider 4% to have a very good chance of continuing to grow your capital. This means, that your family now has a nearly guaranteed income of $240k, which will more or less grow with inflation. And is more than enough to live on in roughly 95% of the world.

You mention everything is paid for, and no debt. This is good, if you're not including your mortage in this, it's definitely a good idea to pay off your mortgage even if it's below 4% simply because you reduce your risk profile.

If you want to get fancy, and reduce your risk profile even more, at the cost of income, it's a good idea to also hold an index bond fund, somewhere around 30% of your portfolio. You'll want to decide the percentage up front, and rebalance your portfolio at least every 2 years. More often is better, but I've never run the math on how frequent will minimize your tax burden.

It's also a good idea to keep cash reserves of somewhere between 1-3 years living expenses split amongst multiple banks. This is mostly for catastrophic risk prevention, and will prevent you from selling index funds if there's another black monday, and prices are at their lowest.

If this is all you do with your money, you will never have to worry financially ever again. Just continue to live within your means, and don't try to show off your wealth, or keep up with the Joneses.

This means you no longer need to work for money again, and can be very liberating. Now you can take a job that normally wouldn't pay enough, or get a PhD in some field that will never make sense financially. All of my favorite school teachers in high school were mostly financially independent, which meant that they didn't have to tow the line, and could contradict the administration if they felt like it. It does sound like you may have to worry about motivation since you will no longer have any extrinsic need to work for money. I'm not sure how to help you here. I have so many things I'd do if I didn't have to work for a living (ironically many of them have much higher earning potential than my current career, gotta love local maximas...).

You may also want to lurk in the subreddits related to FIRE (financially independent retire early), the content isn't as pertinent to you, since you aren't striving anymore to retire early, but you'll find people who are very economically conscious, and want to not have to be wage slaves anymore.

My suggestion would be to set aside a reasonable amount of money to be able to continue a normal lifestyle if something should ever occur and then try to figure out how you can habe the most positive impact in the world.

There is a movement called effective altruism (EA) which specializes on the topic of how to do the most good with the resources you have. For example, there ks the website 80000hours.org which does research into the worlds most pressing problems and how you can use your career to solve them.

For me, the most interesting thing about EA is that it combines a challenge to develop yourself with a meaningful goal and a supportive community to help you along. You could certainly contact 80000hours to get personalized recommendations if you tell them you have say 7m available. Other organizations which may be interesting to you are: givingwhatwecan.org; founderspledge.org; or more generally effectivealtruism.org.

You could also ask more specific questions here and I will see what I can do for you :)

According to this : https://www.thebalance.com/definition-of-middle-class-income... 150k is just the limit between upper middle class and high income, and most politicians use 200ke as the definition of high income.

You might have a different definition of upper middle class, but mine has following

> At 8m and 1.5% safe withdrawl you still need to work.

$8m at 1.5% is $120,000/year. Since he's already mentioned the house and cars being paid off already, that's going to be a living wage even in Silicon Valley, especially considering he also said the $8m is AFTER taxes. He doesn't need to work.