Is FIRE next to impossible with children?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

PP you replied to. We have significant assets and do not benefit from financial aid. The difference is that when you purposefully engineer your life to retire early with assets, you also plan for your kids' colleges. As I said in my follow-up post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Op’s HHI is 350-400k (presumably gross) so they’re already going to be below 250k net after taxes/maxing 401k contributions before even factoring in 529s or additional retirement savings

[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.

Live like you make half including saving what you would save if you made half and save the rest on top of that. Then, you will only have to replace half because that is what you are used to spending.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Op’s HHI is 350-400k (presumably gross) so they’re already going to be below 250k net after taxes/maxing 401k contributions before even factoring in 529s or additional retirement savings

This is true but the PP's original point still stands -- even if they just continue to max out 401ks with employer match, they will be close to 6m by 55. It's not as young as most FIRE plans aim for but it's still very young for retirement. They could also potentially do a partial retirement at 50 if college is paid for by then and they were willing to continue working on a part-time basis for a longer period of time (say until 60) and could secure reliable income doing consulting or another flexible or part-time job. If they had college paid for they could live off a decreased salary for a time without touching retirement assets (say around 200k gross). If kids are out of the house they could also downsize or move somewhere lower COL and even be able to continue to invest and save some portion of that income.

For us the key has always been to get rid of mortgage and college savings by 50 (our kid won't go to college until we are mid-50s but we want enough saved for college to where we no longer have to set aside money for it by 50 which is feasible if you start early). If we have no mortgage and no college costs by 50 we can either stay in our current jobs a few more years and save aggressively into retirement accounts to top them off OR we can shift to easier or or more flexible jobs and save less but not need to touch retirement until 60 if we are willing to work in those "retirement jobs" until then. Things open up considerably once you can cross mortgage and college off your financial priorities because then you only have to think about retirement and if you can continue to cash flow your living expenses in a kind of partial retirement then your retirement accounts can continue to grow before you ever have to touch them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is FIRE?

Finance insurance real estate

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

+1 OP is correct that it's next to impossible to FIRE with children unless you somehow acquired gobs and gobs of money.

I guess we technically could tell our kids no to their activities and college and go live in a crappy apartment, but I would never make my UMC kids live like poor people just so I could retire early.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

+1 OP is correct that it's next to impossible to FIRE with children unless you somehow acquired gobs and gobs of money.

I guess we technically could tell our kids no to their activities and college and go live in a crappy apartment, but I would never make my UMC kids live like poor people just so I could retire early.

I forgot to mention that I have SN kids. I'm hemorrhaging $ for their therapies and I'm grateful that we're able to sacrifice to cover it. We owe it to our kids to do what we can to help them.

[Anonymous]

We make about $400k and our monthly burn rate is about $12k, or $144k a year. This doesn't count any 529 or retirement contributions or healthcare premiums. This is a very nice UMC life with higher end EC's for the kids. They will also attend college debt free, have a car to drive when they are 16, etc. And it still allows us to put a hefty chunk in savings each year. At 44 we have $4M excluding 529 and home equity. Our goal is to retire with $8M so we will see what happens.

[Anonymous]

I think the “retire early” concept is the wrong goal. The goal is to be able to have whatever job or project you want to pursue. Start a business. Make art. Open a restaurant. Teach. Whatever. Just living cheaply in a different country isn’t a good goal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the “retire early” concept is the wrong goal. The goal is to be able to have whatever job or project you want to pursue. Start a business. Make art. Open a restaurant. Teach. Whatever. Just living cheaply in a different country isn’t a good goal.

This isn't my particular goal, but who are you to decide what is and is not a good goal? WOW.

[Anonymous]

Of course it’s possible. You radically cut your expenses. Presto!

Doing this myself. What do you want to know?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the “retire early” concept is the wrong goal. The goal is to be able to have whatever job or project you want to pursue. Start a business. Make art. Open a restaurant. Teach. Whatever. Just living cheaply in a different country isn’t a good goal.

I mostly agree with you, but you're being harsh about OP's plan to live abroad. My DH and I have plans for "retirement jobs" where we just get to do stuff we enjoy, but we also have a plan once DC finishes college to spend 3 months every few years (basically the max length of a tourist visa) living in a foreign city. You can get pretty inexpensive apartments in a lot of places if you rent on a monthly basis instead of weekly or daily, and even better if you are willing to stay outside the the really major cities. For us this is a big deal because we really limited travel for years in order to have kids and build up our nest egg and we want a chance to do more of it in retirement. So I get where OP is coming from.

[Anonymous]

I’m sorry, you are in your early 30s making buckets of money and you want to be able to retire *before* you turn 50 and live for 50 years on your earnings from less than 20 years?? In what economy would it make sense to have most adults sitting around benefiting from the work of others? Our society and economy work well because adults work. Otherwise you are simply sucking off your investments which grow because other people are working. That you feel entitled to retire before you turn 50 is literally the definition of privilege and insanity. Adjust your mindset, find a job that you like or at least don’t hate and grow people beneath you and beside you so that humans can have fulfilling productive lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m sorry, you are in your early 30s making buckets of money and you want to be able to retire *before* you turn 50 and live for 50 years on your earnings from less than 20 years?? In what economy would it make sense to have most adults sitting around benefiting from the work of others? Our society and economy work well because adults work. Otherwise you are simply sucking off your investments which grow because other people are working. That you feel entitled to retire before you turn 50 is literally the definition of privilege and insanity. Adjust your mindset, find a job that you like or at least don’t hate and grow people beneath you and beside you so that humans can have fulfilling productive lives.

OP—pay attention. This poster explains why people who have big, early company exits typically come up with fake jobs. For example, tell people you run your family office once you retire.