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I have bad news for you and good news for your children. At your current income and spend level it will take a little more than 10 years to get there, so your children can still benefit from public education and not be homeschooled for a long time.
It may be. Some people are in truly awful conditions and home schooling is better by default.
But that's rare. This homeschooling surge is going to leave a lot of people unable to navigate their communities as adults. Add to that that most parents are simply not skilled as full time educators and you have a real societal mess on our hands. It's like the exact opposite of an education surge.
Coach
Your net worth is $750k (or $650k excluding home equity finance)
You need to build towards around $3m for FIRE, so you’re some way from this. If you are both working it may take around 10-15 years to get there at your current salaries.
You do have a lot of options though:
You could take a few years out while your kids are young, and then return to work for several years once they are older.
You could continue to go hard for next ~5 years, and then move to a Coast Fire / lower stress job.
You could quit for good, make some spending cuts, but your husband would likely need to work to 65.
Being a stay at home mom might be worth it?
There’s a lot of things that work. It mostly depends on how long (and when) you both want to work.
Subject Expert
There is some guesswork in here, but I think basically the answer is that the two of you have to keep working for a good long while.
Guessing randomly that you live in Colorado, it looks like your take home pay before saving is $216k if you work and $107k if you don't. If you are spending $11k a month, that is $132k a year, meaning you could save about $84k a year if you work, and run a deficit of about $25k a year if you do not work. Is that about right?
To retire, suppose you are OK with a slightly risky 4% WR at $11k a month, but need 25% extra for taxes (since that is not included in your spending number but you will pay taxes in retirement), and assuming $150k each for your kids' college, that means you need about $4.4 million to retire.
Giving you a uniform 5% real return, saving $84k a year, starting with a portfolio of $617k, that would take about 21 years. You would be 57 and your husband 62. And then you could both stop working.
If you were OO with your husband working until 65, then, again under these assumptions, you could stop working around 51, in about 15 years.
Social security and pensions, if you have information and estimates on them, can help these numbers out by a few years on average. A decrease in expenses in retirement, e.g. from having the house paid off, could help that too. You'll also want to make sure the expense number includes everything (healthcare, taxes, home maintenance, infrequent expenses). And that you have a bequest strategy you are comfortable with.
I know this may come as bad news. A few silver linings:
I you can make significantly more money or cut your expenses a lot, that will help accelerate things. We could run some numbers.
You have some flexibility to leave the workforce briefly now/soon if you want to, as long as you can return to the same or similar income after.
Think on the reason for your stay at home mom? Given you make $175k, you are skilled and my recommendation would be to leverage this skill. If you are burnt out or stressed, consider changing your employer or work half time and make $80k/ year.. this will keep your mental state sane and all allow you to work for a longer period of time. And in the remaining half time start doing something that you like and see how you can monetize it and gradually shift all the time there
Exactly this! I took a sabbatical but still employed on paper. I’m planning to go back and take an easier role but stay employed and flex on hours. Health insurance costs are real
Coach
Not sure how you are getting $304k based on numbers that add up to $754k. What you're asking doesn't really have much to do with fire. If you've got 14 years until the kid goes to school, you should aim to be FI in 12 years so you are both able to stop work and have your kids qualify for financial aid in a state that does not means test. This will spare you needing to save for college and can accelerate your fire plan.
Wait wait wait. There are some states where they only look at your recent income and not your new worth when it comes to financial aid? How do I find out what states these are cuz I’m moving to one in 6 years when my kids are close to college age.
bers myself but worry I am not accounting for something. Any help would be appreciated.
Net worth: $304K (assuming this based on numbers below) (36F, 41M - married with two kids)
- $617K in investments, including retirement
- $37K cash emergency fund
- $100K home equity (about $450K left to pay)
Monthly income and expenses:
- Husband: Income: $151K
- My Income: $175K
- Monthly expenses: $10K-11K (bare minimum $7.5K)
- Future expenses (big ones): College for two kids in 16 and 14 years (we’ve started 529s); family vacations every year with about $5K budget
Thank you so much
I'm honestly not sure it's possible to FIRE if you are not working and staying home with the kids at your current income. I think it's an either/or situation.
Grind and invest hard until your kids are home school age, then get a coast fire job with flexibility during the day. Are you sure you want to homeschool though??