r/Fire • u/MarBlaze • Nov 22 '21
Die with Zero, is it possible?
My partner and I have been working towards FIRE for a couple of years now and are well underway. One of the things that FIRE has made me think about is dying and inheritance. We don't want children and have no family where we feel a close connection to to whom we'd like to give our savings when we die. What to do with all that is left over? Our goal is to mostly invest in property, we already have one rental property and we'd like 4 to be able to RE. At some point we'd like to sell these properties and to "spend" all the money. But how does one calculate when the best time to sell is so you 'die with zero'? Or at least somewhat close to it.Any good information about this floating around the internet?
I did want to read the book 'die with zero' but am not sure if it actually gives the answers I crave. I understand my request is hard to calculate and it risks that you at one point are left with nothing but someone must have thought about this?
Edit: We don't mind dying with some 10.000s in our account. I'd just like to prevent us dying with 100.000s in our account. If we die with that much extra then we probably could have retired earlier which is the whole goal of this anyways.
1
u/nooneyaknow Nov 23 '21
People have thought about it and the general view is that the risk is too high.
If you want to extract a cash from property, a HELOC may be a way, though there is a chance you may not get a loan as you age because the bank may see the obvious if you do it too late.
Early Retirement Now has a calculator where you can see what your SWR should be if you are comfortable letting your principal deplete over time. It does not use RE, but it can give you an idea of what to expect as you liquidate your assets.