Millionaire Interview 463

Here’s our latest interview with a millionaire as we seek to learn from those who have grown their wealth to high heights.

If you’d like to be considered for an interview, drop me a note and we can chat about specifics.

This interview took place in October. It’s a long one, so we’ll be breaking it up into two posts.

My questions are in bold italics and their responses follow in black.

OVERVIEW

How old are you (and spouse if applicable, plus how long you’ve been married)?

My husband (55M) and I (50F) have been married for 22 years.

Note that the answers below on career/earnings mostly cover me, but spending and investments include his contributions.

Do you have kids/family (if so, how old are they)?

We have 3 kids: two in high school and one in college.

What area of the country do you live in (and urban or rural)?

We live in a large, urban VHCOL area on the West Coast.

We live in an apartment in the city center, as we decided early on that we did not want to commute hours to work. So we have less space but more time.

Neither of us are originally from here, but after 25+ years, it is likely our forever home location due to our community here, the great access to medical care, and all the amenities the city offers, which makes it an expensive but great place to age. But that may change if our kids settle elsewhere.

What is your current net worth?

Current net worth is $11.3M, including primary home.

What are the main assets that make up your net worth (stocks, real estate, business, home, retirement accounts, etc.) and any debt that offsets part of these?

• Home: $1.8M (conservatively valued)
• Retirement: $4M
• Non-retirement: $3.25M
• Deferred Comp (payable over 10 years): $1.7M
• 529: $400K
• HSA: $150K
• Debts: None

EARN

What is your job?

I just retired in summer 2025! I so, so appreciate all the wisdom shared in prior ESI interviews, which helped us plan and gave me the courage to finally pull the trigger after a couple years of “one more year” syndrome!

I’m sharing our story with the hope that it will help others in the same vein.

My spouse retired 3.5 years ago from a career in finance (trading & portfolio/wealth management).

My most recent job was as a senior marketing executive in a mega corp, leading a global team of several hundred people in a fast-growing industry.

What is your annual income?

We don’t have any “work” income anymore as we are both retired. 

Investment and deferred comp income are included later in the “Any sources of income besides career” question.  

Tell us about your income performance over time. What was the starting salary of your first job, how did it grow from there (and what you did to make it grow), and where are you now?

My first job was at a retail shop in high school, making whatever minimum wage was back then. I was bored witless and frustrated by how little money it was after so many hours of work.

It definitely gave me perspective and a desire to have a higher earning & more fulfilling career. I always had jobs or internships throughout high school and college, from retail and restaurant gigs to interning with a state senator and an insurance company.

I got an undergrad business degree at a top 25 university and got my first real job as a buyer for a large retail store via campus recruiting making $30K per year. It was great training where I ultimately managed a P&L.

It wasn’t until I got to business school that I realized how unique it was to have P&L responsibility as a 25-year-old. There was also high turnover, and it was a sink or swim environment where I had the opportunity to step up and do my boss’s jobs when they moved on (2x), and was ultimately promoted into those higher levels in record time.

It was a great lesson in taking the initiative and doing the job versus waiting for someone to tell you what to do.

I realized pretty quickly that retail was not for me long-term. After 3 years, I was working crazy hours, weekends, every holiday, and was ultimately making $50K per year in a VHCOL city where I could barely afford rent.

So I went to a top 5 business school to get an MBA with the goal of pivoting to a more traditional marketing role.

I ended up getting a full ride to business school, which saved me about $100K at that time (not including the opportunity cost of 2 lost years of work), but I still left with $30K in student loans, which covered room & board. Regardless, I felt like I had won the lottery!

That was a good thing because the economy was tanking while I was in school! Tons of companies were rescinding offers, and recruiting was a bloodbath.

I had an internship after my first year with a tech company that didn’t rescind offers, but told the intern class on day 1 that most of us would not be getting full-time offers.

It was a rough summer, but I did manage to snag an offer, which I accepted just to have a job, but was not excited about it. So I went to the tech company full-time after graduating, making $90K + bonus.

I lasted a year, during which time I got married and quickly started looking for new roles.

A business school colleague referred me to a role at a large mega corp, which netted me a promotion to Sr. Mg,r and I jumped to $100k/yr + bonus. I stayed there for 14 years in various marketing and strategy roles and got promoted from Sr. Manager -> Director -> VP.

My comp increased with annual merit increases and promotions. I ultimately left as a VP making mid $300K (salary/bonus/stock).

During my time there and after the birth of my 2nd child, I ended up going part-time to 4d/week for 5 years (my salary and bonus were also cut to 80%).

Going part-time definitely slowed down my career trajectory, but was worth every penny for my sanity and the ability to spend more time with the kiddos. It also kept me super loyal to the company and was a big reason I stayed so long.

It was a great company with amazing people, but after 14 years, I was itching for something new when I got a call from a headhunter about a role to launch a new product/division for another mega corp. It was basically working for a well-funded start-up, as we were a standalone entity for the first several years, building up the business from scratch.

I was a team of 1 initially, but over the next several years, I  helped launch the business globally and built out a team of 400+. The early years were crazy with 70-80 hour weeks working 7d per week.

The last few years have been much more reasonable relative to those early years. And the comp growth has far exceeded my expectations.

I started out at the VP level making $250K base + signing bonus, annual bonus & stock grants, which netted out in the mid $500K range for the first couple of years. A bigger step-change came when I was promoted to Senior VP level and earned $900K-1.4M ($410K salary + bonus & stock grants) for the last five years.

It was not easy to walk away from that comp and unvested stock. But as a revenue driving role, the pressure was relentless.

What tips do you have for others who want to grow their career-related income?

Where you study helps you get that first job and can provide a great network for future moves. But beyond that, it’s your performance that will get you promoted and paid more.

I used campus recruiting to get into competitive roles/companies out of both undergrad and MBA, but no one cared where I studied after that.

If possible, choose a growing industry where investments are being made into teams, people, and products. There is a lot more opportunity for growth during expansions.

Keep your skills relevant. As a marketer, for example, you’re going to be less in demand and paid less if you specialize in old-school TV/print media versus having expertise in digital channels, performance marketing, programmatic/auction-based media buying, etc.

Stay up to date and relevant!

Advocate for yourself and be proactive. As long as you do it in a professional manner, no one can fault you for asking!

That goes for everything from negotiating compensation to making sure your work is seen. Don’t assume you can put your head down and do good work and it will get noticed.

Your career development and career path are your responsibility, not your boss’. It may be uncomfortable to initiate these conversations, but view it as a required part of the job and just do it.

This took me many years to get comfortable with and surely cost me money over time.

Work hard, do great work, and show up every day to add value to both the culture and the job itself. Be the person people want to work with and for because you bring positive energy and contribute to the overall team morale.

I would rather hire a “B+ player” who makes the office a fun and invigorating place than the high-maintenance “A player” who is always complaining and bringing down morale.

Your career should be managed like a marathon and not a sprint. I’ve seen people get promoted too quickly and fail spectacularly because they weren’t ready.

I’ve personally taken lateral moves (vs. promotion) to expand my skill set and open up more career options down the line. Having led many teams, I’ve also had way too many people expect promotions when they hit 1 year in role or done good work on a project.

Two things need to happen for a promotion – you need to consistently produce great work over time (ideally at the level above you), AND the company has to have an opportunity available. If only 1 of those factors is present, you may need to be patient.

This becomes more true the higher you go, as there are fewer senior roles.

And for the women out there, speak up, don’t apologize, and take up the space you deserve at the table. There were many years where I was the only woman at the table.

I had to unlearn my polite, nice girl habits and literally start interrupting others in meetings to make sure I could get a word in edgewise. This also took me many, many years to get comfortable with.

What’s your work-life balance look like?

Now, it’s amazing!! But while working, the norm was 50-60 hours/week (or often more), traveling a week a month, taking calls at all hours to manage global teams, and never fully off during weekends and vacations.

I had a very fulfilling and financially rewarding career, but it was exhausting. I have no regrets but am very excited to own my own time now and detox after almost 3 decades of grind.

My husband left his corporate role 3.5 years ago and took over 90% of household responsibilities at that time, which made my last few years way easier. It’s a huge luxury having 1 parent at home.

We had full-time help until he left his role. While expensive, it was a necessary expense to enable two careers.

Do you have any sources of income besides your career? If so, can you list them, give us a feel for how much you earn with each, and offer some insight into how you developed them?

We’ve always been solely W2 and investment income. For many years, I deferred 100% of my cash bonus and 50% of my salary, which will be paid out over 10 years, so I will get a “paycheck” of $175-200k+ per year for 10 years, which makes pulling the plug less scary.

Intuitively, I know it’s the same money, but the steady paycheck will be nice to manage sequence risk and keep withdrawal rates low. We also control how this money is invested.

Additionally, we earn ~$280K annually in dividends and interest across all accounts (retirement & non-retirement).

SAVE

What is your annual spending?

Our spending has increased dramatically over the past few years for a few reasons (in addition to inflation). First, kids’ stuff gets so much more expensive: teenage appetites, travel sports, clothes, dances, tutors, classes, college prep, etc.

Childcare expenses have been more than offset by other costs. For those wondering what to budget, I would say assume a lot more unless you’re not going to allow them to participate.

Second, we’ve been living the last couple of years with the mentality that the extra income is bonus money (due to “one more year syndrome”), and we have been living it up more than ever to take advantage of the last years with all kids at home before our oldest left for college. We view this as a finite time that we will never get back, and have had some amazing, and expensive, adventures.

I’ve been tracking spending since 2017, when I “discovered” FIRE. At that time, we spent $170K but once I started tracking, our spend naturally declined to $150K solely due to having awareness of where the money was going.

We started bringing breakfast and lunch to work versus buying every day. I stopped buying random stuff that I didn’t really need every time I stepped into a Target, etc.

Fast forward a few years, and we are now spending $200-225K per year (excluding college tuition & taxes) with variance due to how much travel and one-time expenses hit. Note that we had already paid off our mortgage by 2017, so none of these spend levels include mortgage expense.

What are the main categories (expenses) this spending breaks into?

Our anticipated budget going forward, post retirement: ~$225K pre-tax / $300K estimated w/tax (excluding college)

• Home: $45K (no mortgage but includes taxes, HOA, maintenance, utilities, insurance)
• Medical: $40K (Cobra is $25K in premiums for 4pp + out of pocket expenses assumed at out of pocket max as we usually have a lot of medical bills. ACA in
• our area is currently slightly less.)
• Travel: $35K (we travel a lot but try to keep costs reasonable per trip, almost always fly coach, use points, etc.)
• Entertainment/Hobbies: $20K (skiing, golf, wine, shows, music lessons, etc)
• Kid stuff: $20K (travel sports, classes, tutors, college prep, etc. I expect this will go down once 2nd is in college)
• Dining Out: $18K (inflation and kids’ appetites have increased this a lot over last few years)
• Groceries: $12K (this will go down once kids out of house)
• Charitable Giving: $15K
• Miscellaneous: $20K (General merchandise, clothes/shoes, transportation, etc.)
• Taxes TBD: $75K estimated

While this budget probably looks high relative to some parts of the country, it is pretty reasonable for a VHCOL city life.

We no longer have student loans or mortgage payments and opted out of private schools, cars, 2nd homes, country clubs, beach clubs, and other expensive outlays that many of our peers spend on.

Do you have a budget? If so, how do you implement it?

We’ve never used a budget but always spent less than we made. We also always wanted to be able to live on 1 salary, if necessary/desired, so we worked to keep our lifestyle sustainable on one salary.

I have tracked spending monthly since 2017. Going forward, we will have a target budget range, given that we are no longer earning income.

I do all of the budget/spend tracking and forecasting; my husband does most of the investing. We review with each other at least monthly.

Our planned budget going forward of $300K (including taxes) has a 0% fail rate leveraging BigERN’s SWR tool. We also used a financial planner to sanity check our numbers and feel like this should be more than sufficient spending and a healthy buffer.

If the markets tank, we’ll reduce spending. If a fun opportunity comes up, we are comfortable increasing it.

What percentage of your gross income do you save and how has that changed over time?

I’ve not tracked it over time but it’s increased as our income has gone up. We have always maxed out retirement accounts and then saved anything possible above that.

Over the last decade, I estimate we’ve saved 40-50%.

What’s your best tip for saving (accumulating) money?

Two things have been the main drivers for us:

First, growing our career and earnings so there is more money available to save! We invested our efforts into our primary careers vs. doing any side hustles.

Also, while living in a VHCOL area is expensive, for us, the career/earning opportunities have more than offset the higher cost.

Second, spending less than we earn. Keep lifestyle creep minimal, but spend on things you enjoy and value. I love Paula Pants’s quote, “You can afford anything but not everything”.

We lived in a 2-bedroom apartment for many, many years with kids sharing a room before we expanded to a larger space. All that money was saved, and we didn’t know any differently.

Our kids went to public school and got a great education. The first is at a top 10 university.

We don’t buy expensive clothes/shoes/jewelry. We no longer have a car and rent or Uber as needed. But we spend a ton on food, travel, and kids’ sports because we value them.

I think it also helps that we are friends with a very economically diverse group of people and not solely wealthy families, which helps temper the need to “keep up with the Jones”.

I cannot overstate enough how AMAZING it feels to have options now. And it honestly didn’t feel like a sacrifice then.

Could I go back to a 2-bedroom apt now? Not happily.

We did 1 international trip a year then (to visit family); this year we are taking 5, and it’s way more fun to do so with older kids.

What’s your best tip for spending less money?

Track your spend! I had no idea what we spent until I started following the FIRE movement in 2017.

I would dread opening up the credit card bill every month and lived head in sand. We paid it off every month, but some months were painful, and I hated having to shift money from savings to cover it.

I had no idea how empowering it would be to track and understand where we were spending. There are 3 main benefits for me:

• Just monitoring it makes me a more conscious consumer. I think about whether I would rather retire sooner or have that sweater that I don’t really need. Is lunch out at $20 a pop every day worth it, or would I rather eat healthier and save more? No wrong answer, but if you don’t track, you won’t be able to make an informed decision that works for you.
• If needed, I know exactly where we can pull back. There is a ton of fat in our budget. Conversely, if we want to add a trip, I feel comfortable doing so because I know exactly where we stand.
• While we saved for retirement previously, we had no idea how much was truly needed, and just saved into a black hole. Regardless of whether you want to retire early, having an FI target gives you a number to hit, and then you can decide how fast you want to get there and adjust spending appropriately. You’re saving for a specific goal.

Rather than thinking about it as spending less money (feels like deprivation), think about it as choosing when you’re spending the money (a personal choice).

What is your favorite thing to spend money on/your secret splurge?

In no particular order: food, wine, travel, skiing, kids’ sports.

INVEST

What is your investment philosophy/plan?

My husband was a trader and portfolio manager and is way more interested in investing than I am, so he has managed our investments from the get-go. He’ll have to do an interview for more detailed answers to these questions.

We’ve always maxed out retirement accounts first and then saved as much as possible while still enjoying the journey. He had us leveraging low-fee funds and dollar cost averaged from the get-go.

We didn’t track annually, but were 60-70% stocks and the rest in a mix of fixed income, REITs & gold/silver. In hindsight, we were too conservative, especially early on.

But easy to say after such a long bull run, and we’ve slept well at night. Despite not being “optimally” invested, we still won the game. It doesn’t take perfection; just save consistently and keep investing.

Now that we are both retired and we feel that we’ve won the game, we don’t want to take as much risk. We are currently at 50% equities with a lot in cash equivalents that we will be reinvesting (i recently had a couple of big liquidity events + we sold off a lot of company stock).

The goal is to get to 60% equities. We also plan to keep 3 years of living expenses in cash equivalents.

What has been your best investment?

Marrying my husband. I think I just got lucky, but we are both naturally frugal and like to save money.

We have also both earned well. He contributed more to savings early on, which enabled us to buy a home earlier than I would have been able to do on my own.

I’ve contributed significantly more over the last 10 years. It would have been so hard to achieve our goals if we weren’t on the same page financially.

I can’t overstate how much luck we’ve had as well; from having a lot of upfront advantages (where we were born, family support) to timing of market runs. We’ve worked very hard but have also been very, very lucky.

What has been your worst investment?

Per above, being too conservative in the early years when we had a long time horizon. My husband also purchased land in his home country that he planned to build a house on but we’ve basically written it off at this point.

What’s been your overall return?

Haven’t tracked, but likely aligned with the market overall.

How often do you monitor/review your portfolio?

At least weekly if we are at home/not traveling.

We update our net worth monthly.

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To read the rest of this story, check out part 2!