Insane to live off savings?

[Anonymous]

Use your $500k in home equity to significantly reduce the amount of the mortgage on a smaller house. Then the interest rate hit won't be as bad. And it doesn't need to be in DC if that's too expensive. If the goal is to take a couple of years off then you need to make some changes. You have good savings but could blow though those pretty quickly and of course lost out on buildup during a time when you should be adding to your retirement savings.

[Anonymous]

I would sell for sure. You can easily get a cheaper monthly payment which will be worth it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is fine short term, but you need a long term plan.

I agree. Please consider your professional potential if switching jobs becomes necessary. It's much more difficult to get hired as one gets older. Ageism is a real thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You want to cut your income from about 590k a year to about 240k a year. I don’t think you can expect to do this long term without changing your lifestyle. Your kids are young, too. You have many many years of cost ahead of you. Counting on a grandparent to indefinitely fund private school for 24 years is foolish. In my opinion? Sell your house that you agree is too large and expensive for you, and move to a house you can afford on your income, including school costs. Plenty of families live on that salary and you don’t have to save much money anymore if you don’t want to, since your savings are ok if you don’t plan on retiring early. If you don’t like what that looks like for your family, then taking a job that makes a quarter of what you make now isn’t a good plan for you.

The point about a grandparent funding school is interesting -- why do you think it's foolish? We obviously didn't raise it or ask. Grandparent has an enormous amount (even assuming she lives a long time and has 24/7 in home care for a lengthy period of time), half of it is eventually going to my kids, and I'd almost rather them have a luxurious education then a huge trust fund at 21.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good God. What’s insane is the degree to which some people—apparently including you—are wedded to the idea that one should never pay off one’s house and that low-interest-rate mortgages are some kind of manna from heaven.

Essentially you’re asking, “Should I permanently live above my means so that I can keep my low-interest mortgage?” I hope others reading this realize all of the second-order effects that come from the decision not to pay off one’s house if one has the means to do so. For me personally, the day I paid off my house was one of the best days of my life and I have not regretted it for one minute.

AMEN !!!

[Anonymous]

Going from 590k to 240k is a massive lifestyle change and you'd be doing it at a time when kids start getting more and more expensive.

Plenty of people live comfortably off 240k. Can you?

I wouldn't move back into DC unless I knew I could afford private school. People move OUT of DC to get away from DCPS. Does your grandparent know the cost of DC privates? 50+K per kid for multiple years? Many grandparents still think in terms of when an expensive private school was 10k a year! Then college is hitting 90k a year at the expensive elite schools.

There's an element of pipe dream in your planning. I agree a good step is to move to a more manageable house, but you mentioned your mother is still with you, so make sure it has a ground floor bedroom if she wants to age in place. Once you live somewhere more affordable, then you can look at your other plans.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You want to cut your income from about 590k a year to about 240k a year. I don’t think you can expect to do this long term without changing your lifestyle. Your kids are young, too. You have many many years of cost ahead of you. Counting on a grandparent to indefinitely fund private school for 24 years is foolish. In my opinion? Sell your house that you agree is too large and expensive for you, and move to a house you can afford on your income, including school costs. Plenty of families live on that salary and you don’t have to save much money anymore if you don’t want to, since your savings are ok if you don’t plan on retiring early. If you don’t like what that looks like for your family, then taking a job that makes a quarter of what you make now isn’t a good plan for you.

The point about a grandparent funding school is interesting -- why do you think it's foolish? We obviously didn't raise it or ask. Grandparent has an enormous amount (even assuming she lives a long time and has 24/7 in home care for a lengthy period of time), half of it is eventually going to my kids, and I'd almost rather them have a luxurious education then a huge trust fund at 21.

It’s always foolish to count on someone else’s money. They could have a change of heart and not want to pay, and then you’re stuck with a school bill or a terrible public option since you didn’t consider school zones when you bought. They could make bad investments and lose it all. They could develop dementia and marry a gold digger. Or a million other things could happen. Using another persons money, or a possible inheritance, as a financial plan is a bad idea.

[Anonymous]

$15k/month in housing costs on a $240k income doesn't compute. That's about what my husband and I make...our monthly costs are $3k/month for our 4500 sq ft house we bought with a 500k down payment.

The huge house and your current job are basically golden handcuffs keeping you from a job you actually enjoy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Going from 590k to 240k is a massive lifestyle change and you'd be doing it at a time when kids start getting more and more expensive.

Plenty of people live comfortably off 240k. Can you?

I wouldn't move back into DC unless I knew I could afford private school. People move OUT of DC to get away from DCPS. Does your grandparent know the cost of DC privates? 50+K per kid for multiple years? Many grandparents still think in terms of when an expensive private school was 10k a year! Then college is hitting 90k a year at the expensive elite schools.

There's an element of pipe dream in your planning. I agree a good step is to move to a more manageable house, but you mentioned your mother is still with you, so make sure it has a ground floor bedroom if she wants to age in place. Once you live somewhere more affordable, then you can look at your other plans.

Thanks for this. Part of the issue is the runway for my job coincides with when we might want to change schools for my kid (closer to middle school), so hard to move. She's socially thriving, her friends are all 2 minutes away, and I'd hate to rock the boat. But I'm sure she'd adjust. And yes, grandparent understands $50K/kid/year with expected 5% annual increases.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a relatively high earning job (am on a reduced hour schedule and make approx. $450K) that I'd like to potentially scale back from in 2-4 years to pivot to something with far less income potential (closer to $100K). Husband makes around $140K, stable, not likely to dramatically change. We save quite a bit now, but would need to dip into savings to cover our expenses if I took the job with less income. In particular, the major expense we have now is our house -- we bought much larger than we needed to accommodate my dad, who died 9 months ago. We'd be happy to downsize, but would want to move back into DC (in NoVA now) and given our very low interest rate (2.75%!), would need the house to be substantially cheaper so as to meaningfully reduce the mortgage payment.

So the question: insane to stay in our too-expensive house and use our savings to fund our lifestyle? We have about $1 million in retirement, $2 million in savings (basically all in index funds in brokerage accounts), $300K in 529s for our two young kids, and $500K home equity.

Do you really? With 180k in baseline housing costs? Somehow I doubt it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:$15k/month in housing costs on a $240k income doesn't compute. That's about what my husband and I make...our monthly costs are $3k/month for our 4500 sq ft house we bought with a 500k down payment.

The huge house and your current job are basically golden handcuffs keeping you from a job you actually enjoy.

Right -- the point of my post was to ask whether using the interest we're earning on the brokerage account to pay the shortfall is crazy. FWIW, I agree this plan is mostly pipe dreams and we need to move or I need to say in my job. My husband (incidentally, an economist) thinks it'll work fine to use the brokerage, though agrees we should move if/when kids end up in private to be close to school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a relatively high earning job (am on a reduced hour schedule and make approx. $450K) that I'd like to potentially scale back from in 2-4 years to pivot to something with far less income potential (closer to $100K). Husband makes around $140K, stable, not likely to dramatically change. We save quite a bit now, but would need to dip into savings to cover our expenses if I took the job with less income. In particular, the major expense we have now is our house -- we bought much larger than we needed to accommodate my dad, who died 9 months ago. We'd be happy to downsize, but would want to move back into DC (in NoVA now) and given our very low interest rate (2.75%!), would need the house to be substantially cheaper so as to meaningfully reduce the mortgage payment.

So the question: insane to stay in our too-expensive house and use our savings to fund our lifestyle? We have about $1 million in retirement, $2 million in savings (basically all in index funds in brokerage accounts), $300K in 529s for our two young kids, and $500K home equity.

Do you really? With 180k in baseline housing costs? Somehow I doubt it.

I guess it's all relative? I'm in late 30s, seems like $3.3ish isn't terrible, but I'm sure we could have done more. We're not huge spenders, with the large exception of the house, and that decision had a lot to do with circumstances and isn't what I would consider our typical approach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a relatively high earning job (am on a reduced hour schedule and make approx. $450K) that I'd like to potentially scale back from in 2-4 years to pivot to something with far less income potential (closer to $100K). Husband makes around $140K, stable, not likely to dramatically change. We save quite a bit now, but would need to dip into savings to cover our expenses if I took the job with less income. In particular, the major expense we have now is our house -- we bought much larger than we needed to accommodate my dad, who died 9 months ago. We'd be happy to downsize, but would want to move back into DC (in NoVA now) and given our very low interest rate (2.75%!), would need the house to be substantially cheaper so as to meaningfully reduce the mortgage payment.

So the question: insane to stay in our too-expensive house and use our savings to fund our lifestyle? We have about $1 million in retirement, $2 million in savings (basically all in index funds in brokerage accounts), $300K in 529s for our two young kids, and $500K home equity.

Do you really? With 180k in baseline housing costs? Somehow I doubt it.

She has $2 million outside of retirement. Clearly they’re saving some money.

[Anonymous]

How much is left on the mortgage? I’m not sure DCUM will be good at parsing this all out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a relatively high earning job (am on a reduced hour schedule and make approx. $450K) that I'd like to potentially scale back from in 2-4 years to pivot to something with far less income potential (closer to $100K). Husband makes around $140K, stable, not likely to dramatically change. We save quite a bit now, but would need to dip into savings to cover our expenses if I took the job with less income. In particular, the major expense we have now is our house -- we bought much larger than we needed to accommodate my dad, who died 9 months ago. We'd be happy to downsize, but would want to move back into DC (in NoVA now) and given our very low interest rate (2.75%!), would need the house to be substantially cheaper so as to meaningfully reduce the mortgage payment.

So the question: insane to stay in our too-expensive house and use our savings to fund our lifestyle? We have about $1 million in retirement, $2 million in savings (basically all in index funds in brokerage accounts), $300K in 529s for our two young kids, and $500K home equity.

Do you really? With 180k in baseline housing costs? Somehow I doubt it.

I guess it's all relative? I'm in late 30s, seems like $3.3ish isn't terrible, but I'm sure we could have done more. We're not huge spenders, with the large exception of the house, and that decision had a lot to do with circumstances and isn't what I would consider our typical approach.

You are fine, OP. Ignore the previous posters. This is DCUM, you can never have enough money. YOLO and all that.