I figure around 3 million. Earning 3% after-tax on that should be pretty easy. That would be 90K a year, more than enough to live on.
4 million. Enough to live comfortably with investments and not worry about having to go back to work if the economy takes a sudden dump.
Just to set some expectations, total lifetime earning, based on education level, is as follows:
high school graduates $1.2 million
bachelor’s degree $2.1 million
master’s degree $2.5 million
professional degrees $4.4 million
FWIW, I don’t know that I believe the premise of the OP / film. I don’t think most people, including Wall Street bankers and traders have an exact walk-away number, besides “more”. I think Bud Fox’s statement of “I didn’t know how poor I was until I made a little bit of money” from the first film is more accurate. $150,000 a year seems like a lot, until you are around people making $400,000 a year. Which also seems like a lot until you get invited over to their boss’ house in Connecticut.
I’m sure the math is a lot more complex and that there are a lot of factors not counted in, but as a very crude & overly simple formula, here goes:
(Principal Windfall)/2{taxes} = (Net Windfall)
(NW) * .03 = (Principal Income) the assumption being that what you choose for investments gets you about 3% return. This is a hope for the best, plan for the worst scenario.
(Principal Income)/2 = (Net Income) Here I’m lumping lots of things together: cost of health insurance normally contributed to by an employer as well occasional training to keep your skills up to date. Personally, I’d need Net Income to be about what I’m making now.
There’s also boredom costs, as 40 hours of your week is suddenly available to do things which might cost money either directly or indirectly. Note these impulse costs must be fought & the line held hard to keep from touching principal.
There are a lot of costs I can’t adequately compensate for though: 5-10 year replacement of large ticket items which depreciate (cars), capital improvements to infrastructure (home repairs & maintenance), and the biggest variable of all: constant requests for money/funding/financing.
I’m sure that somewhere there’s a way where the lucky person could incorporate, be a stockholder and pay themselves a salary, write off their losses, and bury their new car purchases as business expenses, but I’ll leave that to someone else to lay out.
I agree with $3MM US.
More than that would be annoying , less than that would cause stress.
Five to ten millions dollars.
I’d be pretty OK with living a fairly austere lifestyle if it meant never having to go to work. I’d have time to raise a nice vegetable garden, do canning for the winter, raise some livestock (poultry at least). Camping, hunting, bicycle or motorcycle touring suit me fine as cheap vacations. When I have time, I do OK fixing my own vehicles, home repairs, etc. It’s that damn going to work all the time that really hurts my productivity!
I think $1M would do it if well managed, and that is a problem right there. I’d need to hire a money manager, because I get seriously stressed if I try to do that myself. Stressed as in total freak-out stressed.
Machine Elf, in a very real sense you *have *won the jackpot.
worry for those that seem to need multi millions. I suspect that it’d never be enough for them whatever it was.
With my current pension I could do nicely with as little as $500,000. As is I live comfortably but have to watch my dollars pretty close.
I could probably do it with an after-tax figure of $2M, to support me and my wife for the next 50 years, and my kids until they’re able to start their own careers. $3M would allow me to improve our lifestyle nicely.
My SO and I talk this out every once in a while, on car trips.
The number always comes out at someplace around $2mill for the pair of us.
That would let us live at least our current lifestyle, based on a reasonable earnings on that money.
About $2M.
Right this minute, 135 K enough to move back to my house in Ontario with my son, pay it off and float us until I find another job. I wouldn’t even have to get a nursing job, if my house was paid off, I could settle for something bit less.
But its been a rough day.
Other days I would need more because I would be aiming for something other than not this place of employment & not these people (except my son) around me.
Maybe today needs its own pit thread.
You guys are all low-balling it. To be really comfortable, you want to be able to live off the interest on the interest. Otherwise, inflation could come back to haunt you in 20, 30, 40 years.
So I’d hold out for £100million. 2% of that is £2million, and 2% of that £40,000, which would suit me just fine given I can dip into the principal at any time without any problems, if I ever want an outrageously expensive luxury like flying round the world first-class or a new Ferrari.
What everyone misses out on is that you don’t take the number, invest it and live off of it. 90%+ of you are going to need to spend some of that up front in one form or another. Paying off your mortgage, buying a new house, etc.
Me, I’ll go with $5m. Enough for me to buy a small farm, kick back and relax.
5 million. 1 million isn’t enough to live happily ever after, I’m too young. And it’s hard to be happy when you have to continue investing and worrying about your money, which I would have to do with just a million. I’m only 28, I’m banking on living another 40-60 years. I don’t want to end up broke when I’m 65.
With 5 million, the principal alone is 83,333 annually. Or a 1% savings account (which I could probably find with that amount of money) would be 50k annually. I could be very happy living off the interest for the next 10 years, and planning what to do with the principal long-term.
This is about it. I like my job too much to just bail on it because I can.
I went with $3 million because I already have a small farm. Kicking back and relaxing is not, however, all that congruent with small farm life.
Not done the maths but I can’t see it being less than 1 trillion.
Otherwise I’ve no chance of stepping foot on mars 
I walk away from stuff all. the. time. I am used to being upended and on the go. For me, a job is a job I can walk away from and go get another. So it wouldn’t take much.
But for someone to hand me the cash and say “You are not allowed to receive money for services, ever again in your life,” and for me to accept it, I couldn’t go with less than 10 million. Money is worth less and less these days; my needs are few, my wants pretty cheap, but I don’t even trust the money managers to make sure I get enough interest to make me not worry, so…yeah. At LEAST 10 million.