385 votes to decide whether to quit his job with €1.3 million

385 votes to decide whether to quit his job with €1.3 million

A 52-year-old man, single, with no children and a net worth of €1.3 million, has spent months unable to make a decision any financial adviser would settle in an afternoon: whether or not to quit his job. He earns €3,000 net a month, works almost entirely from home, and has just buried his father, who lived with him. The poll he peine to break the deadlock has already gathered 385 votes.

The case has a detail that throws people off: when he first asked, back in September, the majority advised him to keep working. At 52, with €1.3 million in assets, nearly half of those consulted told him to hold on. It surprised him. "It gives me something to think about," he wrote.

The assets, item by item

The numbers are on the table and leave little room for debate. €600,000 in an MSCI ACWI index fund. An inherited 1960s flat, rented out, which he values at €150,000. A house in his mother's home village in northern Spain's plateau, worth €50,000. An empty garage worth €20,000 that he wants to sell. And his own home, over 100 square metres of usable space, built in 2005, which he puts at between €400,000 and €500,000.

His plan involves getting rid of the secondary properties: "If they give me €300,000 in total, I'll be more than happy." That would leave him with €900,000 in liquid assets plus the home he lives in, which he has been advised not to touch.

What does it cost to replace a €3,000 salary?

The job is no hell. It's remote work, his colleagues have offered their condolences, and his manager called to invite him into the office for lunch. Some argue that this setup, with €3,000 net a month, is a privileged position you don't get back at 52: falling out of the loop for two or three years closes the door on returning. The most cautious scenario suggests holding out until 55 or 56.

On the other side, the opposing argument: health declines with the years, and at 65 you can't do what you can do now. One case mentioned in the conversation is that of someone who stopped at 59 and admits he should have stopped earlier.

The grief no one factors into the spreadsheet

Here is the part that appears in no financial model. His father died on 10 January, and he describes it as "the ground shifting under my feet". His mother passed away in 2014 after nearly five years battling cancer. Between 2016 and 2018 he went through generalised anxiety disorder, which he himself calls "a true hell", and came out of it with psychiatric help. "I knew this moment would come sooner or later, but I don't know what will happen to me."

The anxiety keeps office hours. Mondays are the worst days. He spends Sundays "ruminating" over pending paperwork: the notary, the owners' association of the rented flat. Saturdays, on the other hand, he wakes up feeling fine. And there's a date marked in red: the Friday on which his father would have turned 91, six days after the birthday his mother would have celebrated.

The dividends divide

A good part of the discussion drifted into an old passive-investing quarrel: living off dividends or selling shares. One camp argues that selling part of your portfolio is equivalent to collecting a dividend, with the advantage that you decide when and optimise for tax. The other warns of the psychological component: in a bear-market decade, having to sell assets to eat is a different matter. And they remind you that the 1970s saw thirteen years without the stock market gaining value.

The full calculation of how much can be withdrawn each year without depleting the fund, with its inflation and return scenarios, is the part of the matter that generates the least consensus.

What those who have already done it say

The most repeated piece of advice is not financial but about timing: don't make decisions in the middle of grief. Wait a year, be at 70% or 100%, and only then look at the spreadsheet. Others point to middle-ground options: cutting back hours, working part-time, or even working remotely from another part of the country without losing income.

And then there's the question he asks himself, which no poll can answer: what to do with his days. His answer, when asked: eat, sleep, listen to, dance to and sing music, exercise, read about economics, investing, sociology, evolution, geopolitics, history and psychology.

385 votes later, the poll is still open. He still goes to work. How many votes does it take to decide a life?