Confused wrote:
I'm in my 20s. I also have a long time horizon. But $25 million is beyond where inflation is going to matter in the slightest. My spouse and I spend under $25k per year, but we'll call it that for easy math. That $25m works out to be 1,000 years of expenses. There's no way 1,000 years of expenses is going to be eroded by inflation - if it were, we'd all be doomed. If the global economy "explodes", then I'd have bigger problems to deal with, like you said. Even if I only had $2m, I'd take my ball and go home.
You should probably check the other thread for the full story. But the short version is, should you be in this situation, it probably won't be just you. There is my family/children, 4 aging parents, siblings, nieces/nephews, etc. Living in an expensive area, and to the degree I can help everyone, I'm looking at 400k-800k/yr. So it's about what kind of risk I want to take to be reasonably able to help out everyone I can.
Now, it's not "really" risk... since as you say I can always take the money off the table at a much lower level if I wanted to worry about just me. So that can function as a failsafe, should everything explode and my portfolio drops by 90%+ then I may have to really consider that.
But squirreling away that kind of windfall, just so I can be personally extra-secure in an early retirement... isn't really an option for me.
(To color my comments: my situation is ER trying to make a large portfolio that is 99% taxable last 45 years)