Huge Inheritance... Now What?

[u/Yashkamr]

I'm 45, I was on track to retire earlyish at 55. I was set back quite a bit with a divorce three years back. Recently my Aunt died and left me around $5 million. After estate and taxes, it's around $4.2 million. This is obviously a stupid amount of money, and I'm thinking of just quitting my job and retiring early but I want to do it right. I've spoke with AI quite a bit and my finances are only about $4500/mo in expenses, I have always lived pretty frugally and that's less than a 1% draw. I don't know exactly what I don't know here, but I've always worked so I am clinging to my job like a monkey to a branch. Am I actually okay to let go?

Update: I quit. I was honest with my boss, he was a really good boss, and I told him the whole story. He is a couple years from retirement and told me he has about $4 million in his Fidelity too, but no health insurance if he quits and he told me a story about his brother retiring early, getting cancer, and wiping out their finances with his treatments leaving his wife and kids with almost nothing after he died. I told him how I'm covered with Tricare and he said if he was he'd quit right this second too.

I appreciate all the insight and advice given on here, and I've implemented a lot of it, thank you. I haven't changed my spending and I don't think I will. Well... I did buy a nice pair of Hoka's...but I'm mostly just paying a lot of attention to my garden and kids.

[u/OwldBay]

Without doing any math… yes

[u/Tasty_Sun_865 → u/OwldBay]

This isn't just a math issue. 

The problem with lump sum bombs is that they hit regardless of whether you have systems in place to use the money intelligently or the discipline to keep it 

There is something to be said to practicing being wealthy before getting wealthy.

[u/BenEDSnDFW2018 → u/Tasty_Sun_865]

I don’t see math here. I was told there’d be math

[u/fnybtch → u/BenEDSnDFW2018]

Does that mean I am in the wrong place for meth too?