Is FIRE next to impossible with children?

[Anonymous]

Have 1M in our early 30’s and 2 young kids. 350-400k HHI. When I was 25 I felt like 2M would be enough to stop working and 3M would be plenty but now seems like with kids you would need to double that. I think 5-6M at the minimum and if we want to fully replace our income we’ll need 10. That’s not going not happen until at least our 50’s to 60’s if ever. If I fully prioritized FIRE and never had kids/lived frugally I could probably get to 2M by 35 and move to a foreign country. Living a good lifestyle in the US while not working doesn’t seem possible unless you started life with a trust fund.

[Anonymous]

What is FIRE?

[Anonymous]

You'll spend between $20K and $100K per child from ages 5 to 22 if they do athletics and go to college. So, you need to earmark between $40K and $200K per year plus inflation for two children. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is FIRE?

Financial Independence, Retire early

[Anonymous]

It'd be impossible for me. And I make seven figures. Sure I could do it but why would I want to? I like living large with my brood. Lots of beautiful vacations, a variety of activities for the kids, great food, beautiful home. A life of meagerness and penny pinching sounds wholly depressing. I enjoy my career for the most part, and am proud of the example I'm setting for my kids as a hardworking mom.

FIRE is "financial independence, retire early." Not for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have 1M in our early 30’s and 2 young kids. 350-400k HHI. When I was 25 I felt like 2M would be enough to stop working and 3M would be plenty but now seems like with kids you would need to double that. I think 5-6M at the minimum and if we want to fully replace our income we’ll need 10. That’s not going not happen until at least our 50’s to 60’s if ever. If I fully prioritized FIRE and never had kids/lived frugally I could probably get to 2M by 35 and move to a foreign country. Living a good lifestyle in the US while not working doesn’t seem possible unless you started life with a trust fund.

uh.. no shlt? that's most people all over the world. If you lived in a different country, chances are, you wouldn't have been able to make $350k per year.

FWIW, I'm going to try to retire at 56 in a couple of years. We'll have about $3.3 to $3.5 mil saved, and college funded for in state.

We always wanted to retire early so we made sure to save as much as possible in our earlier years.

My friend moved their entire family to Portugal. They retired in their late 40s and live on $140K per year; kids in private school there.

[Anonymous]

It depends on what you're willing to deny your children. And how many children you have.

It's easy when they're little and don't know any different. Much harder when they're older and know what they're missing. Or if they do have any abilities you want to cultivate. And if they have significant medical or special needs, you can forget FIRE entirely.

[Anonymous]

It's much more difficult with kids, but the FI aspect can still be helpful. We saved very aggressively before kids, and while we're not in a position to retire early we were in a position for mom to go part-time without money issues. We could also contribute $0 to retirement from now on (early 40s) and still retire on time. We're not doing that, but the idea that we've already achieved Coast FIRE without allocating any further mental energy to the topic is very relaxing.

[Anonymous]

Depends on lifestyle. Plenty of families with kids live well on less than 100K a year, in this area. I know, I'm one of them.

With that income, you need to figure out whether a reduction in lifestyle is worth early retirement. Only you can decide.

[Anonymous]

I have friends who are essentially FI. They sold a business in their 20s or 30s. They still work, or at least they claim to be doing various entrepreneurial things, like starting a lifestyle business or working in a fund. I don't know anyone who got to FI in their thirties by saving and investing a lot from a W2 job, but I live in an HCOL area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Depends on lifestyle. Plenty of families with kids live well on less than 100K a year, in this area. I know, I'm one of them.

With that income, you need to figure out whether a reduction in lifestyle is worth early retirement. Only you can decide.

Me again. I have a teen and a young adult. Good public schools in Bethesda. We have assets set aside for university and retirement, so they can pick the education they want from now on. But we have adhered to a strict yearly budget, to have flexibility now and later. As it is, one of us is retired and the other doesn't work a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You'll spend between $20K and $100K per child from ages 5 to 22 if they do athletics and go to college. So, you need to earmark between $40K and $200K per year plus inflation for two children. Good luck.

I have one kid who does two activities seriously (ballet and piano, both with year round private instruction) and we are in the low end of that range. Currently spend around 20k, it will go up on the ballet side as she starts training more days per week. Very good public school with some supplementing for math (not needed for ELA, she became very advanced without much outside help beyond providing lots of books). May get foreign language tutor in high school if necessary.

We've been saving 15k per year towards college since birth, at this point we may stop putting money into the 529s, especially as both sets of grandparents have offered some funds.

We're in track to retire at 52. We kept other costs down by buying a very small row house in a hot neighborhood that has appreciated nicely and which we will have paid off by 50. We cook at home a lot, travel inexpensively, own one used car, eat at home a lot, and utilize DC's many free/inexpensive entertainment options (museums, parks, festivals, etc.).

It's not quite FIRE but we've used a lot of the same principles and are in track to fully fund private college, retire on the early side, with about 5m in retirement funds, another 500k in other liquid investments, and a house worth 800k-1m.

The key was one kid and being thoughtful about school, neighborhood, housing, and activity choices. We travel internationally once every three years and otherwise vacations are mostly camping and visiting family.

If we'd had a second kid, this all blows up because we would have had to buy a larger home, double activity costs, double college savings. Plus harder on my career to have two kids-- there is absolutely an income hit to most women when you have kids unless you have a lot of help, and if you have to pay for the help, it's harder to save aggressively.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Depends on lifestyle. Plenty of families with kids live well on less than 100K a year, in this area. I know, I'm one of them.

With that income, you need to figure out whether a reduction in lifestyle is worth early retirement. Only you can decide.

Yes but the kids of families making less than 100k are typically eligible for significant financial aid for college and other scholarships or reduced fees, which is not going to be the case for those with parents that chose to retire early with significant assets.

Moreover it’s perfectly understandable and reasonable to tell your children that they need to take out student loans or that they can’t participate in travel teams/extracurricular activities/study abroad programs etc because you truly can’t afford it. However it would strike me as quite selfish to deprive my children of such opportunities so that I could retire by 50.

[Anonymous]

I think you're ok, you have $1 million and assuming you're 35 and both max out your 401Ks with a 5% match, at 7% you'll have around $5.8 million in 20 years at 55. That would be $233,000 per year based on a 4% withdrawal rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you're ok, you have $1 million and assuming you're 35 and both max out your 401Ks with a 5% match, at 7% you'll have around $5.8 million in 20 years at 55. That would be $233,000 per year based on a 4% withdrawal rate.

Oops forgot to add that if you're interested in FIRE then at your income, you can drastically cut expenses and aggressively save now, even with kids. Live off $250K and save the rest including maxing out 529s and saving for kids' futures, and you can still retire by 50.