Do you mind sharing what you work as? I suppose your job is not stressful. I am thinking of switching gear to a less stressful job once I hit 55 in 6 months time. Financially I don't have to work anymore but I would rather work as I don't have a good and sustainable hobby to occupy my time if I should retire.

I think $50k pa would be enough to cover my yearly expenses without need to use any of my passive income which I could use for reinvestment.

Regarding having a maid, I think it is not so straight forward to conclude that you would save money by not having one. I had this same thought initially, that I could save money by not employing a maid. But I was wrong once I did a more detailed tracking of my expenses with and without a maid. My 2 teenagers and my parents are staying with us.

If we just go out for dinner three times a week for 6 of us in a typical coffee shop, that would set us back $200 for that week or $800 a month. Since my wife also works, we order food delivery rest of the time. That easily comes to another $250 per month. So just looking at the money aspects alone, it is cheaper, in our case, to employ a maid. We pay $500 per month for her salary, and another $250 per month on the levy.

But what I thought most important of all was the time we could save from not doing the house cleaning, washing of dishes, clothes and all the other mundane stuff. We now have more time for each other and other pursuits. And we don't dread coming home after a hard days work thinking of all the housework we used to have to do. Now our maid does of these things. Clothes are ironed and kept neatly, the house is cleaned every morning, nice and freshly cooked food ready to be eaten by the time we come back from work each day. This kind of lifestyle is worth more than the money you pay to the maid.