How much money would you need to quit work forever?

[Beezknees]

Musing over this as I am on the way to work 😂

Everyone has different circumstances. I would need quite a lot to be able to never have to work again, I'm 33 and don't own a house or have many savings, and only have a small private pension. I think I'd need about £30million to feel comfortable quitting work permanently at this stage of my life.

Christ. And I get told I'm well off! This is a prime example of the breadth of posters on MN.

I'm 57. We own our home, not surprising at our age. We have very, very small pension pots compared to many here. Which might be why I think if we had 1-200,000 we'd retire, him now into a part time job, me in a couple of years into the second business I am starting, and think ourselves really well off.

So, if you only had 29 million, you’d keep on getting up and going to work?

that's more like it!

£30 million is a crazy figure OP. Is your loo roll gold edged?!

£4-5 million - that’s roughly going to be the sum of our joint income for the next 25 years, but that would obviously keep us living at the same standard.

I really love my job. So it would have to be north of ,£10m and enough that I could set up a decent charitable trust and get the same level of "making a difference" satisfaction.

One of the things about working is it stops you spending money. So I think if you’ve got nothing to do with your day you need more money to pay for your hobby’s, travelling, garden etc than you would need working. And if you pay off your mortgage with your windfall the amount of money you have left to generate a passive income is reduced.

£1million well invested could generate an income of about £50000/year but by the the time you’ve paid off you mortgage, gone on a nice holiday, updated your cars and helped a sibling out you wouldn’t have that much left.

I reckon £1million would let me have a very comfortable life but I couldn’t completely give up work. £2million would let me stop.

I reckon 2 million would be loads. 1 million would be way more than my wages until predicted retirement, but then I have to add a bit on for the fact I'd not have earned my full pension for working up to 60/65.

Plus allowing for increased costs in the next 30-40 years.

🤔 So I figure just round it up a bit in case my calculations are pants 👍

I’d consider it on 200k , mortgage will be paid off soon and I have 19 years til state pension , have £100k in savings and around the same in private pensions

Been working with two chronic illnesses for a long item and I would happily live a very modest life to not have to work

I have done it already and certainly didn't have anywhere near a few million pounds, more like £800k but its all in property, not cash. I live on around 35k a year which is unlikely to increase in real terms.

Interesting.

I'm 36, 3 kids, single, private renting, can’t afford to drive either.

I’d say 10 million?

I have ADHD/ASD/CPTSD, DD1&2 have ADHD Dx, DD2 is waiting on ASD and DD3 is too young to be assessed yet. So I’m factoring in the cost of those disabilities.

Putting all 3 through Uni (assuming they’d all go).

Buying, decorating, furnishing and maintaining a 4 bed house (we live rural as if suits all of us much better and most houses are listed).

5m if I’m wishing. In reality I’d be tempted to stop if I won £2m. We have no mortgage or debts, kids are coming to the end of their schooling ,although still have university to get through) l. We are not spendy people either.

I'd take £1 million happily. My take home salary is 1500 a month, so 18k a year x 30 more years of work is just over half a million, plus inflation and pension and I reckon that's about right. If I paid off the mortgage with a lump sum that'd save a lot of money in interest that I wouldn't need to earn.

1 million would be more than enough for me. 42, not much left on the mortgage, happy to live quite simply. I also have a flat I rent out so would get a small income from that.

After this morning, a fiver would do

I'm 32 and 2million would more than cover my wages until retirement age so I would stop with that.

I'm not a high earner at all! But I'd want to be able to live comfortably and with the way inflation is right now who knows what things will be like in just 10 years time, let alone 50 if I live that long. That's why I'd only quit work if I had a really high sum of money, enough to be able to see me through potentially another 50+ years.

£30m ?!?! Fucking hell, I thought I had quite high expectations.

I reckon £3-4m, I could draw down about 100k a year on that (reducing once I get past 70ish)

Half a million a year but you could maybe manage on half that? 😂

@Sarahemmabrown Yes. Money depreciates rapidly with inflation, if you've no other income at all and need to plan for up to 50 years more life, I think you do need around £10m to be certain you'll never have to work again, ever. To be certain that you can meet every health and care need, to be certain you can have a good quality standard of living. People thinking they can never ever work again on £1m are either pretty poor already and won't be able to advance their lifestyle very much with their million, or are very very rich already and wouldn't need to. The rest of us in the middle are deluded is they think they can achieve a certain standard of luxury for possibly 50 years on that. £10m would see almost everyone else comfortable for the rest of their lives on a very very decent annual income from it and still with the capital sum to fall back on when necessary.

£30m is is either daft or dodgy maths if the goal is just to be able to quit working.

About £3m would easily do it for us to be comfortable (we're both c.50), and with some effort into financial planning I'm pretty sure £2m would be enough for most people to live comfortably. If you can restrain the bling and extravagance. It also depends how much you want to have left over.

That's not to say I'd turn down Friday's £14m jackpot...

4 million for us I think. Enough to put a decent amount in pensions straightaway and set some aside for kids. We earn around 80k between us right now so 3 million would probably cover around 25-30 years and in that time the house would be paid off and pensions would start paying out. Likely it wouldn't mean living in luxury but we're used to that!

Maybe I should go for 5 mill to be on the safe side

30 million 😂 OP do you mean ‘want’ vs ‘need’. Cos I probably would need £3-5m to retire and pay for all children and parent related costs and then my own costs and be comfortable but I would love £30m (or more 😅)

At work, before wfh became widespread, we used to keep a whiteboard on which we all recorded how much we would need in order to give up work. We each updated our 'number' anytime we felt it change

Mostly it was in the millions, though one particularly bad week, the average hit £200.00.

Well, how much would be enough for you personally I guess! Everyone's different and wants a different standard of living.

You're forgetting that you can invest the money so it keeps growing, so will go some way towards keeping up with inflation and provide an income without eroding the capital.

It's said that if it's invested and you withdraw at 4%, you'll never run out of money. So you could take over a million a year out of your £30M, you must have extremely expensive tastes to need this amount to never work again.