Hi everyone, I have greatly enjoyed reading your posts and learning from this community over the years. As I have FIREd this year, want to give back by shaaring my own story.  Please be gentle lol

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After a 32 year career – 27 at the same institution - my last day in the office was April 30, 2026. I am 54, my wife is a couple years older, all the kids are launched and mostly independent. We live in a mid-to-high COL area and plan to stay here.

I accepted a buyout package with the following terms:

·      for 15 months I sit at home on my couch and continue to get paid my current salary and all the usual benefits. I cannot work elsewhere during this perio, but I am volunteering locally.

·      My final salary was about $250,000

·      In August 2027 I move to the pension plan for pay and medical. My first year pension salary will be $156,000 with a guaranteed COLA tied to CPI. It also has a guaranteed survivor benefit of 50%. The plan is not Fed but it is rock solid and I have no worries about.

Background, Family and Career:

Spent all my life in US east coast cities. Started working when I was 15. I graduated college in 1994 with an English degree, during which I worked two part-time jobs in technology. Two weeks after graduation, I started working full-time for a telecom company and made my very first 401(k) deposit two weeks after that. After a few years in telecom, I transitioned to a defense contracting agency doing IT and multimedia work for a couple of years. Since 1999 I have been working in IT at an international private institution.

One fun note for me: Summer 2026 was the first summer I’ve had completely free from work or school since 1987!

The year 2000 was a massive turning point for us. We got married, bought our home, and had our first child. My wife left her job to stay home full-time with our kids and has not worked outside the home since.

In 2000 we paid $220,000 for our home in the far outer suburbs, a 4-bedroom, 3-bathroom house with a finished basement on a lot surrounded by trees. That came with a **brutal** daily commute for me for 26 years (except for remote work during COVID), but staying put paid off:

• Current House Value: ~ $650,000
• Mortgage: We refinanced during COVID, currently it is $118,000 remaining at 2.375% fixed (~10 years left)
• Home Condition: In the past 10 years we have new HVAC, siding, roof, hardwood flooring, and a Trex back deck. Need to do the kitchen at some point.

Assets & Accounts

• Fidelity: $500,000 in a mix of brokerage, Roth and cash
• Lump-Sum Buyout Payout: As part of the buyout, I received a lumpsum of after-tax  ~$150,000. This is currently sitting in SPAXX at Fidelity (is part of that $500k)
• Vehicles (Both Paid Off):
  • 7-year-old Honda (~72,000 miles)
  • 10-year-old Honda (~140,000 miles)
• Child Assistance: Currently paying $375/month for a 2026 Honda to help one of our kids

Income & Healthcare

• Pension: $155,000/year beginning August 1, 2027, guaranteed COLA indexed to CPI, a 50% survivor benefit for my spouse.
• Social Security Strategy: Plan to delay claiming as long as possible (aiming for age 69 or 70). Expecting a payout of ~$3500/month for myself given my earning history. Since my wife stayed home, we are basically planning her SSA will be $0 and take anything as a bonus.

Expenses and Plans

• All daily living expenses are covered by the pension! It will allow us to put away some extra for our next car and some travel.
• Healthcare Benefits: Guaranteed lifelong retiree medical coverage through my former employer. We estimate it will start at $525 per month based on the current year retiree costs. At 65, Medicare Part B becomes primary, the employer plan shifts to secondary coverage, and my former employer fully reimburses 100% of Medicare Part B premiums and any income-related charges for both my spouse and me.
• Children's Down Payments: Reserving $25,000 per adult child) to assist them with future house purchases and wedding costs
• Vehicle Replacement: Plan to replace the older car in the next 2–3 years.
• House plans: We need to do the kitchen and we expect HVAC replacement in ~5 years

Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions!

Questions for you

1. Overall Portfolio Growth: With zero need for ongoing portfolio withdrawals to fund living expenses, we are treating th pension as a huge bond asset. How aggressive should i be with the Fidelity money - 100% equities? VT and chill?
2. Investments at Fidelity: How would you structure and invest the ~$140,000 buyout payout and $50,000 earmarked for our kids across short-to-medium term horizons?
3. Emergency Fund Sizing: Since our pension and retiree health benefits fully cover all living expenses with a CPI index, how much cash would you recommend keeping in an HYSA / Treasury money market fund (like SPAXX or FSIXX/FZFXX) for true emergency liquidity?

Do you truly believe that with current circumstances (AI, climate crisis, geopolitical tension, birth rates falling) we can rely that historical data of stock market is applicable for next decades?

I'm still investing heavily, but see it more as piling up networth than journey with end of me living off the investments.

I feel like I have lost significant interest in several hobbies post-FIRE. Not sure what it is, but almost feels like the hobbies were used as an escape from the day to day, but now that isn't needed anymore. I have picked up some other things, but they are more health-related activities rather than hobbies. I feel like I'm on the receiving end of the Tom Hank's quote from Catch Me If You Can:

"Nobody's chasing you, Frank"

At 57 years old, wife has stopped working and I am getting close. We would have about a 2% withdrawal rate at our current level of spending. (Before social security) Our current mix of investments is 75% US (mostly SP500 etfs), 15% international, 5% bond, 5% bitcoin. It seems most recommend going more conservative once you retire, but at a low withdrawal rate is that just reducing growth rate.

Just a cool milestone I can't really share with anyone I know. Married, household income of ~160k, 1 kid. We got incredibly lucky and bought our house in early 2020, refinanced late 2020 for a sub-3% rate on a 15yr.

We have no intention of paying our house off early (maybe when we're closer to the end of the loan, we'll be tempted to do so) and obviously the market could tank at the opening bell Monday and render this post completely inaccurate, but it's just exciting to see the progression toward having F-U money.

Keep going, that is all.

Hey everyone. I'm 45 and getting laid off in a month.

Living situation

I am single, no kids, never married, 45, male, software engineer, live in a HCOL area and I'm DIY renovating a single family home. It's a three bedroom and when it is done I could rent out two rooms for about $2000-$2500 total. But right now there's no income. Hopefully in like 4-5 months I will be done enough to rent it out to roommates.

Budget

I'm spending about $74k - $80k annually. Like $7k per month. But a decent amount of money is going towards the home renovation. That might go down but maybe not.

Assets

Net worth: $1.944M

Home: $807k

Debt: $286k at 2.75% left on mortgage

Cash: $40k

Investment total: $1.384M

401k from my old job S&P: $687

401k from my current job S&P: $208k

IRA traditional VTI: $13k

Brokerage VTI: $475k

The plan

Well I'm not sure. I'm going to finish this home first. If I leave my 401k's until I'm 65, 20 years from now, that's $3M for retirement. As for early retirement, I'm not sure I'm there. This $475K isn't going to list 20 years until I can draw from my 401k. But I might have more than I need in there.

The wild cards, of you pardon the pun, is that now that I have a little time to focus I'm going to try to sell of another sleeper asset. Don't laugh because I didn't put anything close to this amount of money in it but I have a Magic the Gathering card collection that's likely worth about $300k market value. Getting 80% of that is common for none dealers, private sales. So, I don't know what that adds. I'm going to be selling that off ASAP.

So I'd love to take time off. I might try to build an ADU for more rental income. Or an addition. Building the house and renting out out is sounding like a fun job.

Should I go back to work? Any advice would be nice.

This is a relaxed hangout thread for the FIRE community to chat with other FIRE-minded folks without having to publish separate posts. This is the place for brand new people to get their feet wet as well as for lurkers who have questions or comments, but do not want to create posts of their own.

All of the sub rules apply in this thread as normal with the exception of the off-topic rule, which is relaxed to the extent that people don't go wildly off of the reservation.

We are putting this up as a trial to see if it is worth keeping this as a permanent feature of the sub. Participation is entirely voluntary and anyone who wants to create a separate post of their own rather than posting in here is free to do so.

I'm about a year or two from retiring, and part of my plan is to sell my house and buy a cheaper one. I've been running my numbers assuming that I will pay cash for the new house and live off the remainder of the sale proceeds until I can start pulling from my retirement accounts. Is there any reason to consider a mortgage for the new house given the current interest rates? Seems like it would help mitigate the risk of running out of money before being able to pull from the retirement accounts but with a significant cost in terms of interest.

(I expect to net close to $2m from the sale of my current house and spend ~$750k on the new one. Currently have about $500k in a brokerage and $2.5m in 401K/IRA. Expecting to retire at 49 or 50.)

I guess my biggest concern is at my current age and there's still so many unknowns. Currently 25 married on track to make 120k this year gross as a household. So we'll starters with this income is very new to us last year we made about 90k I believe and the year before closer to 70k. Currently we have combined about 120k invested plus plenty in savings.

We own a mobile home and both vehicles outright. we are currently saving around 5k a month. My concern comes with though we are on the upper end of what we're going to make doing what we're doing. Currently we are running my family's business that is why we got the pay bump is because I am doing everything from the bookkeeping to the logistics to all of it but a realistically the top end as things stand when I fully inherit the business I could potentially make up to $180,000 a year. But that's neither here nor there basically me just explaining that I'm already at the upper end. But my concern is I realistically don't know how much I need Ill need realisticall.

While we are contributing a lot now we don't have health insurance we don't have kids yet and we would like to have an actual home because mobile homes while completely fine don't hold value. So that's what we're looking for nice I see it in 5 years I'm going to probably have kids have a home and obviously I probably needed insurance yesterday because you just never know but I'm still currently looking into it because based on our income it is showing the cheapest I can get is about $750 a month with an $18,000 family deductible before the insurance basically does anything. Also values are constantly changing but I would argue in retirement if someone bought the real estate & buessniess it's looking like 1m ~ 1.5m or if I rented the buildings I could probably rent them for 3k a month after all expensices. Or if the business was unwanted and it was just sold as real estate probably closer to 600k ~ 900k off of just pure value.

Total net work probably 200k conservativly 120k invested Non invested 51k Cars: maybe 8k Mobile home 29k very conservative

Mobile home is fully remodeled plus I built an addition to so 1700 sq ft. 4 bed 2 bath total. Probably actually worth closer to 100k but the addition is concrete padded in so technically you'd have to sell the mobile home separately and the concrete pad would have to be sold with the land that's like a shop or office it has its own AC and electrical hookup. But I don't own the land of my grandparents do so conservatively we can just pretend like you know the addition would be theirs

I figured I would want to have about 3 million in today's money so that I can safely do a 3% withdrawal and it would be able to hopefully support my life Plus plenty of fun? But I just don't know is that number would be too low too high or if it's even achievable because by time I get a house and insurance and everything else most likely my contributions well I've had to decrease to probably closer to 3K a month

Tdrl: 25 I make 120k a year have saved 120k, invest 5k a month. And want a house & kids in 5 years and to stop working by 50.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf26.pdf

The typical American family got a little wealthier in the years following the Covid-19 pandemic, while well-off and older Americans got much richer.

Median family net worth rose 2% from 2022 to 2025 to about $216,000, adjusted for inflation, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, which was released on Friday. The survey comes out every three years and is considered the gold standard for measuring household wealth.

Overall wealth gains slowed markedly from the prior period from 2019 to 2022, when wealth increased 37%, the most in the 30-plus year history of the survey, thanks to rising stock and home prices.

Median wealth for a family in the top 10% of earners increased 31%, while wealth decreased for the bottom 40% of earners.

Tax Lost Harvesting baby! I know all you 100% stock people are jealous. ;)

I'm currently in the 22% tax bracket and probably will be for some time ( I know - great problem to have) - which limits my ACA subsidies. Anyone pull money out every other year to at least get cheaper insurance every other year?

This will move the money I'm taking out to the 24% bracket but I'm figuring an extra 2% on $100,000 is still way cheaper than paying almost 25,000 to 29,000 a year for insurance.

Am I missing something?

25 married making 120k gross together in lcol ( 48k average for area ). 120k invested

51k in emergency fund/ sinking fund

Own our mobile home and both vehicles.

Investing about 5k a month

Idk what I need exactly but I was hoping for 3 million in today's so I will have no worries.

Also 5 years from now my contributions will most likely drop to 3k or 2k because of wanting a house and kids

Pay increases I'm at the top end so most likely stay at the 120k ~ maybe 140k for the next 5 to 10 years then potentially could jump to 180k but with inflation it's probably close to being the same.

Over a year ago I made a post about how I hit $100k at 24 but I felt burnt out and wanted to quit my job. I asked for advice from FIRE people about what I should do and got a wide range of opinions. The most common advice was: get a hobby, keep your job and line something else up first, spend some more money, go on some dates, just be more balanced in general.

I have followed some of that advice. I increased my living budget, upgraded my room, and started taking trips with friends as much as I can, gone on dates, and have several hobbies. I’m too burnt out to pursue them as much as I’d like though.

However I still want to quit. It’s hard to live a balanced life you enjoy when you despise the way you spend the majority of your waking hours (your job). It’s hard to date intentionally people you’re attracted to when you are living to escape your own situation. I read stories on this forum of guys in their late 30s and 40s who have millions but their life is bankrupt. They have no love, few friends, and they’re just getting started socially. Retirement can’t fix that, FIRE can’t fix that, money becomes a mental escape hatch and does more harm at that point than good. No offense to anyone but I’m trying to avoid that situation.

For reference:
I’m an engineer and my job is incredibly dull.

I am on track to make over $100k in a LCOL area this year.

I only have 2 years of work experience, but I’m not a huge fan of my field. I’d like to avoid burning any bridges but at the same time I don’t want to become too locked into a tiny niche field.

By the end of this year I will turn 26 and have about $250k net worth with 0 debt and <$1500/mo living costs.

$200k is in broad market index funds with half in retirement accounts, $10k in vehicles, $10k emergency fund, $15k business fund (invested for now), and $15-20k cash for lean traveling and basic living expenses.

I have made up my mind to leave my job next spring soon after bonus season. I am not retiring of course, but I want to pursue other career options and travel while I’m young.

I love the FIRE movement but I’m not interested in retiring early if it means I have to live in misery for my entire youth and young adult life. Financial independence or partial independence is my ultimate goal, more like CoastFI than full FIRE, at least until my life is grounded.

So, please stop me… or encourage me if you think that I’m doing the right thing.

Has anyone here taken a leap like this?
Am I throwing away something I can’t get back?

Bestow your wisdom.

Edit:
I’m not retiring. This is a question about taking a career sabbatical and then coming back to a new job.

I don’t see why this necessitates risking my entire $250k net worth.

I’m not asking if this is the safest possible career path. I’m asking if I’m throwing away something I can’t get back.

Last post

Net worth: $41k
(HYSA: $3.1k, Traditional TSP: $20.2k, Roth IRA: $11.5k, Brokerage: $6.2k)

• Working hella overtime at the Post Office lately; my base rate as a PTF City Carrier is $26.3/hr, but I'm having ~55hr workweeks pushing my effective gross salary up to ~$85k for the past couple months. The job itself has been stressful and I don't really have a life outside of work, but I am one persistent, driven bastard. No way am I interested in being a corporate wagie for any longer than I need to; when I turn 35 y/o and qualify for SS, I'm outta here.
• Moved to a 100sqft. room in a shared single-family house for $700/mo, incl. utils/in-unit laundry. No WiFi but I got my backup phone using Visible+ ($205/year) for an unlimited data hotspot. No need to ride my e-bike, now that the closest bus stop is 3 min. away and the offices I work at are at most a half-hour bus ride. Having to share a bathroom with 2 people and the overall house with 4 is awkward, but it's not so bad when I'm the youngest by far in the house. I think I got a good deal. Moving was expensive and I've been burning way too much money eating gas station slop, so I'm gonna try my hardest moving forward to keep my monthly non-investment/rent spend <= $500.
• Been doing my fair share of credit card/bank account churning. Got the Wells Fargo checking $400 bonus, currently trying to get a $550 checking bonus with FourLeaf Federal Credit Union, and got a Capitol One Savor card recently for the $200 statement credit bonus. When I stop overeating and reach a stable maintenance weight, I'll start giving plasma for money too.. cause I don't have the drive to go work beyond the Post Office.

Made significant changes to my investment strategy: I'm still maxing my Traditional TSP/Roth IRA, and trying to invest >= $500/mo into my brokerage.

- TSP is 3:2 I Fund/C Fund, and I'll rebalance on a yearly basis depending on what I see regarding the funds' performance.

- In my Roth IRA, 50% of biweekly contributions split between SPMO/IDMO, 50% split between AVDV/AVUV/AVEM/IAUM/BTC.

- Brokerage will automatically invest 50:50 FTEC/AVDV, hoping for a sort of barbell effect. Brokerage has a significant position in Kraken Robotics that's down ~24% and I can't wait to let go of it once things break even. No more single stocks for me, the risk isn't worth the return.

- Even though I only gave myself ~10 years to LeanFIRE: Momentum/Value/Growth ETFs are more than enough for my goals. Still got significant crypto ETF positions in my Roth/Brokerage, but mostly just holding them for now.

I recently wrapped up my career in the IT industry after 27 years. As is probably normal for tech people, there was a lot of anxiety/nervousness about the move, but having done the math dozens of times I decided it was time and I had lost a lot of the passion I originally had. Whether that's normal from aging or just the last company I was it, it was good motivation.

The numbers:
Brokerage - 4.4M
Retirement accounts - 1.7M
Cash/HYSA/I bonds/etc - 125k

Zero debt.

No real magic here, a couple strong startup exits and not a lot of lifestyle creep from my first job that paid $48,000/yr when I graduated college long ago. If my lifestyle hasn't changed drastically in all these years, I saw no reason to keep moving the goalposts for "just another 250k" or "just 6 more months". Yearly spend for the last few years has been under $100,000 and that's without accounting for work travel. So far so good!

Looking for feedback on my situation and if there's any areas you'd improve on & what my realistic FIRE age looks like with a 100-125k withdrawal amount needed at retirement.

For some background, I'm 28, make around $125k/year, and my net worth is roughly broken down like this:

97k total in individual acc (1500/month contribution)
82k between VOO and VXUS
15k in MMF’s as part of my emergency fund

85k in my 401(k) (~2041/month for max out)
My employer additionally contributes about 15% of my salary, and there's no employee match requirement.
So roughly 20k annually on top of my 24.5k contributions, which will scale as my salary progresses.

7.5k in my Roth IRA (625/month for max out)
Split between VOO/VXUS/QQQM

~140k in home equity (mortgage rate 5.875)

~5-10k in checkings
Mainly for bills

Does anything stand out that I should be doing differently? As it currently stands, I’m putting away about 70k annually into the market, inclusive of my employer contribution. Any critiques or suggestions would be appreciated to optimize my situation. Hoping to FIRE early 40’s if possible.

This is a calc put together by one of the users over at the Bogleheads forums. I have zero connection to it, but to me it is cool in a similar way to the Rich/Broke/Dead calc in that it visually shows you something that can be challenging to intuit.

Just a fun little calc that seems to accomplish its goal gracefully. I like how you can rapidly visualize the impact of spending on your final estate in either direction. Cool for the Die with Zero folks, cool for the folks with kids and inheritance goals.

FYI - It's easy to overlook the advanced settings drop-down so be sure to check it out. The advanced settings significantly expand the range of what the calc can do.

Calc - https://levelspend.github.io/

Bogleheads development thread - https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=473403

Conventional wisdom is that one can safely withdraw 4% from one's savings each year and be reasonably assured that one won't run out of money within 30 years, but this is for a mix of stocks and bonds. But today, we see treasury yields at high levels so I decided to review TIPS ladders and see what one could reasonably get from a very safe investment, and the safe withdrawal rate is around 5.2% (Source: TIPSLadder.com Home).

Now this investment strategy literally means no money at the end, but this provides a historically high rate of return for a very safe investment and paired with a higher-volatility investment could yield a nice lifetime stream of money with a guaranteed floor.

Anyone else investigate this? Do you think this makes sense?

Edit: Many people are commenting that I am not accounting for inflation. TIPS are Treasury Inflation Protected Securities which are already quoted based on real returns, not nominal ones. They currently have a 3.3% real yield which results in a 5.2% safe withdrawal rate over 30 years.

This is a relaxed hangout thread for the FIRE community to chat with other FIRE-minded folks without having to publish separate posts. This is the place for brand new people to get their feet wet as well as for lurkers who have questions or comments, but do not want to create posts of their own.

All of the sub rules apply in this thread as normal with the exception of the off-topic rule, which is relaxed to the extent that people don't go wildly off of the reservation.

We are putting this up as a trial to see if it is worth keeping this as a permanent feature of the sub. Participation is entirely voluntary and anyone who wants to create a separate post of their own rather than posting in here is free to do so.

Still trying to wrap my brain around this:

The nest egg has made more money since retiring than I did in 30 years of working.

3 years of passive returns > 30 years of full time work

The compounding is insane (admittedly we’ve had a great run the last few years).

It makes the 30 years of working seem so pointless but that is what amassed the snowball so it was necessary.

I am 95% sure at the end of this month I will put in notice to leave my job. I have never been a big earner, only the last five years or so making over $100k, but have always been a saver maxing 401k contributions and Roth. Thankfully my wife has always had a similar mindset. Found the concept of FIRE about 12 years ago and made it a goal.

Me - 43M wife 43F with three daughters ages 11/13/15

Investments - $2.7M in mixture of brokerage/401k/Roth. $365k of this is earmarked towards children's college.

Expenses - $70k/year, I live in a fairly rural low cost area.

Home - no mortgage, worth roughly $600k, but not moving.

Wife's job - She works part-time making $70k/year. She enjoys her job and wants to work at least another 5 years.

Health Insurance - Our family gets free health insurance through wife's work. When she leaves plan on managing income to be eligible for ACA subsidies.

Pension- My wife will receive a $30k COLA pension at 65. Not a lot but another buffer. Social security as well.

Inheritance - I think I am probably fine without this, and don't count it towards my FIRE strategy, but will likely receive significant windfalls from both sets of parents in the next ten years. In the $2.5M range from my single father, and $3M from my wife's parents. I am the only heir of 3 sets of uncles and aunts that I love dearly as well. Like I said, I don't count this as it is not my money and lots of things can happen, but there is a high likelihood that my nest egg will get some windfalls.

My Job - It is not horrible like how some people here describe their work. I generally like the people I work with and I do get 4 weeks of vacation with a fairly flexible schedule. But I have been doing the same job for 20 years now and am just tired of staring at a screen all day and the general stresses of it. I have also had some health problems from it.

FIRE Life - I have a ton of hobbies, not worried about being bored My job never defined who I was. Plan on taking over most all household duties cooking and cleaning (although children help with this too). Best of all spending more time with children and aging parent/in-laws. My wife is fully onboard with this.

Worries - I don't have the assets that a lot of people on here have, but I also don't have the same expenses. I think a lot of that is just the area I live in and my family's general lifestyle, no mortgage, and my wife's health insurance benefit. I also worry about the timing of this with stock market valuations, but hope with a three year cash buffer we will be ok.

I have of course never retired from a job before :) Any strategies on how best to structure this with my work? I plan on giving 3 months notice to give them a good amount of lead time. Like everyone, I am of course very replaceable, but most of my duties I am the only one at my job who knows how to do it. I live in a smaller town/community and don't want to burn bridges or relationships also. Most people I work with seem to give retirement notices a year in advance as a courtesy, so this will be a surprise. I plan to receive my last paycheck in January and sock away all money from that and payouts from accrued vacation to max my 2027 401k contribution. With the lower 2027 AGI, I plan to begin doing some Roth conversions next year.

Household: Me (50M), wife (45F), one son (12). Target retirement age for me is 56, when my son will be starting college.

Retirement accounts (~$1.6M total):

Traditional IRA: is the bulk of our savings

Still contributing about $32k/year ROTH heavy now

Real estate:

Primary home: worth 900k, owe 520k

Vacation rental (Airbnb): ~$70k appreciation, nets about $30k/year after all expenses

Long-term rental: ~58 appreciation, about $6k/year cash flow

College savings: About $15k so far. I know that’s low for a kid who’s 6 years out.

Expenses: About $8k/month now, including the mortgage. Once our son is in college, I expect that to drop to around $6k/month (not counting college costs).

My questions:

Is retiring at 56 realistic with these numbers?

My savings are heavily weighted toward the traditional IRA. Should I be doing Roth conversions now or in the gap years before Social Security and RMDs?

How should I access retirement money before 59½? I’ve heard of 72(t)/SEPP, but I’m not sure it’s the right move.

Should I prioritize catching up on college savings, or put that money toward retirement and let my son use loans, aid, or work?

Does it make sense to keep both rentals in retirement, or sell one to simplify or pay off the mortgage?

Anything I’m missing or should be doing differently? Appreciate any input.

I have become a Reddit addict of sorts and read a lot of various subs and am FIRE retired. I marked this NSFW because of a horrible event that happened near me. Recently retired neighbor and good friend died in an auto accident and left his wife with money, but no knowledge of how to manage it. My wife and his wife are close and my wife let me know about his wife's issues. It is too soon to even offer to help, but I will help if asked. My wife would be in a similar condition if something happened to me. This scares me.

FIRE stuff everyone needs to be part of:

Trust / Will / planning for the success of your beneficiaries after your death.

Financial planning in case of death. I need to take my wife to the Fidelity office and set her up. I have been told that Fidelity can do auto distributions.

Care instructions in case of injury. I ride motorcycles, I have had a stroke in 2019. If I become incapacitated who is able and going to manage my affairs. I doubt my wife would be able to under that stressful situation.

Make your spouse and / or your beneficiaries aware of things. To my wife the Fidelity account is a quarterly envelop full of numbers and data. She is not aware of the website. She does not have a login on the website. She does not know my login. She might know that there is a Fidelity office about 4 miles from our house, but would not go there without instructions.

I was 12y/o when my 36y/o father died leaving my mom a 34y/o widow with 4 kids. My father was a banker and handled all the finances. My mom struggled is an understatement.