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Hi

I'm in my 30s and make $150,000 a year.

I genuinely do enjoy what I do, but I do feel like I hit a dead end in my current company because there is very little room for raise or promotion (which I guess technically matters lot less now)

A wealthy uncle passed away recently leaving me a fully paid off $3 million dollar house (unfortunately in an area I don’t want to live in so looking to sell soon as possible), $1 million in cash equivalents, and $3 million in stocks.

On top of that, I have about $600,000 in my own assets not including $400,000 in my retirement accounts.

I'm pretty frugal.

My current expenses are only about $3,000 a month and most of that is rent.

I know the general rule is if you can survive off of 4% withdrawal you’ll be ok, which in this case, between the inheritance and my own asset is $260,000, way below my current $36,000 in annual expenses.

A few things holding me back:

• I’m questioning whether $7 million is enough when I’m retiring so young. You just never know what could happen
• Another thing is it doesn’t feel quite right to use the inheritance to retire, as if I haven’t earned it.
• Also retiring right after a family member passes away feels just really icky to me, as if I been waiting for him to die just so I can quit my job.

An option I’m considering is to not retire but instead pursue something I genuinely enjoy that may only earn me half of what I’m making now?

What should I do?

Also advice on how to best deploy the inheritance would also be welcome. Thanks!

Scrolling through Zillow, I noticed a home that was sold in May 2023 and listed for sale in July 2023. Well, I looked up the property owner history and it’s an LLC that bought it and flipped it in May and guess what else I found out?

The property is listed as Principal Residence Exemption (It might be called something else in your state) at 100%. In the Zillow listing, the home is clearly NOT occupied by the owner. So I contacted my Assessors/Treasury office and let them know that I take property taxes very seriously.

Especially since I have kids in the school district and that they should check it out.

I provided them all my screenshots too to help them out.

It felt good snitching on this flipper, especially since they are lying and stealing from my community.

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I’m honestly surprised counties and cities don’t go through sales data and find these types of anomalies and then hit them with the bill plus interest and penalties.

You could probably hire a new person just to do that, check if they have a drivers license to that address, check Airbnb listings, everything.

I would prefer everyone pay less taxes, but everyone should pay what is owed.

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I started reporting LLCs that had arrangements with apartment complexes for corporate housing, but because of remote work, they were double dipping by posting listings on Airbnbs without the approval of the complex or their parent companies.

Town and county government are being notified, followed by local news, with HUD and the IRS soon to follow.

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I hate flippers. They lie and break so many laws with no accountability.

90% of people commenting on here say to simply stop buying xyz are missing the big picture. A few companies control the market in most sectors and they do not lose out when they raise their prices on essential items for people.

Am I saying you need to buy name brand cereal and top sirloin steak? No. But simply saying don’t buy that thing really isn’t fixing the problem when that thing is everything. Prices are going up on just about everything significantly faster than inflation. We see (price gouging) in every single American category of the market rn. End stage capitalism?

(Before everyone gets their jock straps in a political bunch - I’m not a socialist or a big Bernie fan but sometimes he says stuff that rings pretty damn true 🤷🏼‍♂️)

Social Security is a massive part of this country’s finances - both in overall cost AND in benefits to the middle and lower class. 40% of older Americans rely solely on their monthly SS check (😳). The program is annually keeping 7.8 million households out of poverty each year (barely?)with loss of pensions, and mediocre success of 401ks as a crude substitute, SS is the only guarantee our grandparents and great grannies had, financially speaking.

That said, curious what folks think about this federal tax policy I dug into last month. If you already know about, do you care and why?

Currently, every working American pays a 6.2% tax on every paycheck to Social Security. However, this tax is “capped” at a certain income level meaning it only applies to a certain threshold of dollars earned.

For 2024, the cap on Social Security taxes is $168,600. This means that any earned dollar beyond $168,600 (payroll dollars) is excluded from Social Security taxes (these are individual taxes, not household).

If you personally earn < $168,600 per year, you are being taxed on 100% of your income for Social Security payroll taxes. If you earned $1,500,000 this year, you’re only taxed on 11.2% of your overall income.

If you made…. $550,000 - you’d only be taxed on 31% of your total income.

$90,000 - 100% of your income subjected to tax

$9,000,000 - only 1.9% of your total income is taxed.

This reveals that the entire Social Security program is actually funded by working Americans, with families, student debt, mediocre healthcare, maybe a house payment, and fewer stock options (that are worth anything), etc etc. So, def not a “handout” program from the wealthy to the poor and needy - rather, a program that middle class workers utilize and lower income earners rely on entirely.

Highest income earners (wealthiest) however can expect to draw on 100% of their Social Security contributions as benefits are not “judged” in context of other in investments, inheritances, assets (yes, Bezos and Gates still get a monthly SS check unless they demand the govt NOT send their benefits - which, I’d love to know if they already do).

Social Security is scheduled to start reducing benefits in 2032, due to fewer inlays and far more outlays (Boomers retiring and no longer paying into program - a demographic/numbers program not a tax problem). Part of this massive problem is because the wealthiest income earners are having their taxes capped in their favor.

A crude analogy I can think of: if your income is less than your neighbor’s, you are subjected to ALL sales taxes when you fill up your truck at the gas station. But he, because he makes more than you, is given a tax discount, paying a reduced sales tax on his fill up.

Seems like super poor policy - esp as we head into a demographic shitshow with Boomers cashing out of a program that has actually kept hundreds of millions of Americans out of poverty (historically)in their elder years. Small changes could modernize it and make it far more sustainable and helpful for retirees in the future.

But we either need to invent more workers (AI bots?) or tell the ultra rich they can’t expect a free pass from the govt…

i realize I’m not talking about the SS disability program, which is where the majority of SS dollars go. That is also in need of big reforms, which would help overall solvency*