49M, 1.8M. Fire feels close.

49M, married, no kids. Wife 45F, we keep our finances mostly separate, just how we've always done it. Arrangement has been wife pays bills & groceries, I pay the mortgage, which comes out pretty fair in relation to our incomes. My finances: 650k+ in brokerage account, 1M+ in 401k/Rollover IRA, 150k+ cash / other fairly liquid miscellaneous stuff. We have one new car, one old but reliable beater. Neither of us has any debt. I have hobbies that are cheap and/or small income generating (poker) Just sent the wire to make our final mortgage payment last week. Our monthly expenses were already pretty low, and are about to be that much lower. Becoming harder to focus at work as retirement, or at least semi-retirement/baristafire, begins to feel that much more real.

Current plan: I expect to be laid off sometime in the next 18 hours to 18 months. I'll sock away as much as I can in the brokerage until I get laid off or as long as I can stand it. I'm sure I can stand it for 6 months, until I turn 50, or maybe as long as 18 months. Then get on wife's health insurance as long as she is still working. Live off brokerage until I can tap into 401K/Rollover IRA without penalty, by that point hopefully it's grown somewhat. Thinking about going heavily into income-oriented investments on the brokerage side to bridge the gap and leaving the pre-tax stuff in mostly growth. Undecided between that and just leaving the brokerage in mostly growth and spending it down as needed, using cash to avoid selling during downturns as necessary. I plan to take SS as soon as eligible.

I reviewed all of my own spending for 2025 (including the mortgage), was just over 42k. I'll lose the mortgage payment, but take on half of the bills & groceries going forward. It's all back of the envelope math at this point, but this would leave me needing about 21k per year to maintain the same standard of living. Because I'm a crazy person I feel like I need double that to really feel comfortable and secure. And all of my sims are telling me that double that is manageable. Still, feels scary to pull the trigger and suddenly go from being a saver to a spender.

What do you all think?