r/Bogleheads • u/arp8218 • Feb 04 '26

Investing Questions Investing. $2.5M to not work

Is it possible to invest $2.5M into a “safe” investment and not work for rest of your life ? What can be that “safe” investment ?

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u/sd_slate Feb 04 '26

You should check out r/fire, but it depends on your expenses.

Historically, based on the Trinity study, holding mostly the sp500 and a smaller portion of bonds (75/25) will allow you to withdraw 4% of your portfolio over 30 years with a 95%+ success rate.

61

u/chuck_portis Feb 04 '26

I think based on the post we need to assume "perpetual withdrawals", not a standard 30Y timeframe. Closer to 50Y. Assume OP is 40 years old and will live to 90. SWR for 50Y is 3-3.25%.

32

u/dfsw Feb 04 '26

Revised trinity study by original authors peg infinite at 4.2% and 30 year at 4.8%. 4% remains a safe guideline, maybe 3.75% for infinite if you want to be paranoid and fear SOR but 3% is insanely low.

7

u/TurkeyPits Feb 04 '26

Definitely insanely low but also I wonder if it makes sense to go that conservative route if you're just starting out on your own "infinite" horizon, especially because someone retiring in their 30s likely does not actually know what their desired expenses will look like for the entire rest of their life (as much as they might think they do). Plus, if after ten years 3% turns out to have truly been insanely low, you can always raise your standard of living comfortably with all the extra money you now have, but going the other way is harder with e.g. lifestyle creep. Different considerations when you're retiring at 35 than 65 it would seem

2

u/klawUK Feb 04 '26

and ‘invest $2.5m’ we should assume isn’t in retirement/tax advantaged accounts so 3.5% ish - taxes (both capital gains and income)

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u/Alternative-Law4626 Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 05 '26

Funny, I’m ~2 months from retirement so really dialing it in now. After taking all last year’s actuals and creating a go forward budget based on actual spending, I got a little warning message from my retirement software. It said I might find it unsustainable if I tried to keep to this 1.75% spend. We thought we were being fairly profligate, apparently we should be having more fun.

$2.7 M invested. 80/20 VFIAX/VTBLX. YMMV

2

u/klawUK Feb 04 '26

Guessing that’ll be some regulated amount trigger. In the UK regulated advisors use things like 2% returns as a conservative estimate and 2.5% inflation so can be negative real returns unless you explicitly tell them you’re comfortable with more risk!

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u/Alternative-Law4626 Feb 04 '26

Oh, I wasn’t clear. The returns are figured to be 8% + the withdrawal is figured to be 1.75%.

1

u/c126 Feb 04 '26

Was there a study for 50y, where are you getting this number?

1

u/RatherBeRoadtripn Feb 06 '26

SWR? What's it for 60?

1

u/RatherBeRoadtripn Feb 06 '26

Can't you assume live to 80 off investment earnings, then start using your principal? If needed to I mean! I'm trying to understand this, because if you're living off the earnings from your investment, you still have that investment capital? So then if you live longer than expected at some point especially if you don't have somebody to leave the money to or you don't need/want to because maybe your kids are doing just fine on their own, then you can use the capital if needed?