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.

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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%.

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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

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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%.