u/Ok_Rent_2937

I spent 4 years from 2021 to 2025 accumulating BTC. Only bought, never sold, using a rough DCA principle. By Q4 2025, I had 3.55 BTC bought at average cost of $55k per bitcoin.

I bought bitcoin in order to use it. I don’t want to HODL forever. The objective was to use the bitcoin to help pay down my home loan faster.

Towards that end, I executed my first sale of 0.55 BTC in Dec 2025 at price of $88k, netting $48k. I have now paid the cap gain tax for that.

My plan is to continue selling $40k worth of bitcoin each year, so that the capital gains tax is not too high and I can pay gradually during each subsequent tax return.

So, the question is:

I current have 3 BTC.

My minimum price for selling is $90k per BTC. I have not sold any in 2026, and comfortable to wait until price (currently at $75k) goes up to $90k, whether that happens this year or next.

Do you all think I can slowly offload all my BTC over the course of next 6-7 years $40k per sale transaction, netting at least $250k overall?

So, here’s my situation in a nutshell.

M52 - been working for 26 years straight, without any gaps in pay check. In traditional engineering company for past 15 years, not big tech or anything fancy rocket ship, only get paid salary no stock. Keep getting 3% annual raises, no promotions. But job is interesting and flexible, and company is reasonably stable. Spouse also works with similar type employer.

Net worth is $6.1M:

Portfolio is $4M, of which $2.7M is in retirement accounts, $350k cash, $950k post tax brokerage.

Home value is $3.2M (modest 60 year old home in VHCOL). Still owe $1.1M at fixed 2.6% rate.

If we sell and GTFO from VHCOL in any HCOL or MCOL, we could have a fully paid off home and $5M in portfolio.

Or we could stay in VHCOL, keep working 8-10 years and pay it off and retire in VHCOL.

What would you do???

With the recent market surge, our investment portfolio just hit $4M, which is my base-case FIRE number. At age 52, looks like I may have reached this milestone 8 years early (I always mentally thought of 60 as my desired retirement age - not too early, not too late).

At $4M, can sustainably pull $160k per year using 4% rule. And in 8-10 years time, we will start getting annuities (2 social securities and 1 pension) that I estimate will amount to $10-11k per month. Taken together, that would mean a retirement income of almost $280-300k per year (pre-tax), even without any further appreciation in the portfolio.

But since those annuities are almost a decade away, I am in no hurry to quit work. Instead, I am now relaxed and enjoying my work because the stakes are suddenly lower. I am on good terms with my co-workers. As one of the senior individual contributors (long tenure of 15+ years at the company), people seem to like me (or at least tolerate me). So, I will keep going at my own pace as long as my employer keeps me on payroll, and whenever it stops, I guess I am done and retired. Made it this far without getting any stock grants from employer. In fact, they just started giving me some stock - about $20k per year for next 4 years…

I get 36 days of paid vacation a year, which seems plenty. Also have a lot of accrued vacation balance. I take a 1 or 2 days off each month and take 2-3 longer vacations a year to travel a bit. And I guess it’s time to focus more on family, health, sleep, and eating well.

That’s all I came here to say …