Agreed, it's super weird to see that keep getting mentioned, that you need to minimize the volatility of your extreme fortune. Why? Are you planning to liquidate the extreme fortune in the next 1-5 years? ...

I think the argument is really about passing it on to your kids. That's the desire to keep the extreme fortune together.

Yes but minimizing volatility and doing the right tax/inheritance things are orthogonal...

Definitely agree. IIRC, the biggest yearly loss for the Dow was 52% in 1931. While I would HATE to lose 50% of my wealth, the point is that with $50m I can EASILY ride that loss out and give it time to recover in a few years. Now, if I only had $50k in the market and was planning on using all of it on a big purchase that particular year (e.g. home down payment, child's college tuition), a 50% loss could be devastating.

Volatility doesn't seem to have as much power when the potential losses are not great enough to cripple you.

> $50m is about 100x more than I could ever need

That's precisely why wealthy investors want to minimize volatility. They don't need their wealth to grow (they already have more than they need), but they definitely don't want it to disappear.

Also, I must say that $500k really isn't that much money—it's not even enough to retire.

Just remember that by doing that, you're betting on the US economy's perpetual growth, as diluted by outside influences (like China...) If increased globalization stands to average global wealth (which it seems to be, except for the 1%) then I'm not sure growth is a good bet, over the long term.

SPY, QQQ, etc only go up as the economy goes up...

If you really don't care about the money, you could donate it and let it be someone else's concern.

You have the money so you don't have to care about the money; if you gave it away, you'd be stuck caring about money again.