Is FIRE next to impossible with children?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If investments and income can get you to 30million by 35 sure. But definitely only have 1 kid. My sister isn't FIRE but manages to raise her kids on a shoe string while her DH retired (he inherited and they owned their house outright). She is an ED nurse and just picked up extra shifts when an expense popped up. That said, 4 kids, zero extracurriculars, zero enrichment of any kind. Travel was maybe driving to another state. Her kids were funnelled into community college and all live at home. One is now at the local 4 year. I have mixed feelings about what she did but it sounds like what the FIRE lifestyle would be with kids.

If her husband inherited, they could probably spend more than they do. They are probably just really frugal and not materialistic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If investments and income can get you to 30million by 35 sure. But definitely only have 1 kid. My sister isn't FIRE but manages to raise her kids on a shoe string while her DH retired (he inherited and they owned their house outright). She is an ED nurse and just picked up extra shifts when an expense popped up. That said, 4 kids, zero extracurriculars, zero enrichment of any kind. Travel was maybe driving to another state. Her kids were funnelled into community college and all live at home. One is now at the local 4 year. I have mixed feelings about what she did but it sounds like what the FIRE lifestyle would be with kids.

If her husband inherited, they could probably spend more than they do. They are probably just really frugal and not materialistic.

Pp here. Lol. My sister has name brand everything. Like Louis Vitton name brand. And my BIL build an in home music studio. They are strategic what they spend their money on.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I quit my corporate job as a software engineer last year, just before turning 30. My highest corporate W2 income was $126k. If that seems low for a software engineer with 10 years of experience—yeah, but it was intentional. I was offered promotions 3 times during my long tenure at the same company and I refused each time. I needed my brainpower for my side businesses, so if it meant doing mid-tier software development work at the company—I'm all for it since I could do it on autopilot.

My personal cash pile is around $170k now, and I have one kid. I can tap into the cash flow from the business at any time, though I've barely needed to so far. My couple of businesses now make around $700k in revenue per year at roughly a 55% gross margin, and I try to reinvest as much as possible with the goal to 1.5-2x each year. It's been working out well so far.

We're burning through roughly $12k of our personal cash per month, with our only "splurges" being rent at $3,900/month for a 2-bedroom and a car at $995/month. The rest ($7k) goes mainly to Amazon for stuff, Costco for groceries, and a nanny for 12 hours a week to teach our kid a 3rd language. It still adds up, and our $170k would last only around 15 months... I'm worried about that, but I keep it all in investments. Interestingly, I had $170k when I quit my job a year ago, thanks to positions in QQQ, Treasuries, Bitcoin, and so forth. This allowed the business to grow from $400k/year to $700k/year while our personal cash pile stayed the same.

To get back to your original question—if we had one extra kid, our spending might go up another $3k/month, primarily due to the need for an extra room, making it $15k/month total. To bootstrap my businesses a few years ago, I loaned them $310k total, so in your case, you would still have $690k left. At $15k/month spend, it would last you 46 months, more than it took me to reach $700k/year from the businesses. If I chose to stop growing and just took in profits, at 55% margins that would be $385k/year, or $32k/month, which is more than the $15k/month needed.

Starting the businesses wasn't too difficult either. I was able to get them up and running while having a day job, working no more than 30 hours/week, mostly on weekends. Now that the businesses are set, I use AI and virtual assistants offshore to only spend about 1-6 hours/day on them (avg. 2hrs/day), leaving the rest of the time for my child, wife, and traveling. We just spent 3 months in Japan because why not—the yen is at an all-time low, and we're not locked to an office. Our own business means we control the rules!

At 2 hours/day on average, we're effectively FIRE with only $170k and I enjoy growing the businesses, so it's no chore either.

I have three kids. I can’t imagine murdering two of my unborn children for a trip to Japan.

Huh? I’m pretty sure this poster did not murder children. Having one child allows for my financial independence. Seems like this poster is doing a lot of things right!

How is it different? My wife wanted three kids and if I said no I want to retire early and goof off let’s just not have the two extra kids. Those two kids disappear

It is terminator movie where they try to kill the not yet born John Connor by killing mother pre his birth.

You are dumber than rocks. Choosing not to have additional kids is not the same as murder.

It is for the grandparents. My cousin only could have one child. Their one child got married and is Fire decided no kids. She killed off whole bloodline

Are they thoroughbred racehorces?

If my kids would not have kids I would just knock up some 35-40 year old bimbo all my cash that kid even if 80 years old

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FIRE is countercultural. Have you seen how many people are negative about SAHMs? That's a proxy for the general belief that if you're not working you suck in this country.

There’s a big difference between not working and being dependent on partner’s income vs. not working because you personally amassed a large enough nest egg to support yourself indefinitely.

[Anonymous]

The answer is yes. The FIRE community is small, the subset with kids is much smaller. Few will accomplish FIRE, very very few with multiple kids. It’s math. Especially if you make W2 income.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FIRE is countercultural. Have you seen how many people are negative about SAHMs? That's a proxy for the general belief that if you're not working you suck in this country.

There’s a big difference between not working and being dependent on partner’s income vs. not working because you personally amassed a large enough nest egg to support yourself indefinitely.

Why?

If a family has decided that they want a lifestyle that involves one parent ramping up their career and the other taking care of all doctors appointments and kid transport, and they want to be more frugal to afford that lifestyle, why judge that?

If another family decides to save money quickly so both spouses can retire by 45, that also requires frugality and is countercultural.

Let's say a family is very frugal, has a stay at home spouse and then they fire by the time both spouses are 45, does that magically make one of them lazy and a taker while the other one is smart and countercultural?

The whole thing where we decide people are only good and worthy if they are working for money their whole lives is truly sexist and small minded.
Why not let other families make their own decisions and mind your own business?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FIRE is countercultural. Have you seen how many people are negative about SAHMs? That's a proxy for the general belief that if you're not working you suck in this country.

There’s a big difference between not working and being dependent on partner’s income vs. not working because you personally amassed a large enough nest egg to support yourself indefinitely.

Why?

If a family has decided that they want a lifestyle that involves one parent ramping up their career and the other taking care of all doctors appointments and kid transport, and they want to be more frugal to afford that lifestyle, why judge that?

If another family decides to save money quickly so both spouses can retire by 45, that also requires frugality and is countercultural.

Let's say a family is very frugal, has a stay at home spouse and then they fire by the time both spouses are 45, does that magically make one of them lazy and a taker while the other one is smart and countercultural?

The whole thing where we decide people are only good and worthy if they are working for money their whole lives is truly sexist and small minded.
Why not let other families make their own decisions and mind your own business?

I couldn’t agree more. And I’d love to be able to find more MC SAHMs instead of only super wealthy ones.

[Anonymous]

It's very hard to FIRE with kids. I only make $125K and my spouse about $100K. We live in Northern Virginia, and try save some money. We don't eat out, drive old cars, and our kids don't do much extra activities. Just buying clothes, groceries, property taxes, bills take a huge chunk of our paychecks. We maximize 401K, and put extra $1000-2000 monthly in brokerage accounts. Travelling is also so expensive, we usually pick cheap interior cabines on cruiselines, drive to other states and try not to fly to often. It is what it is. I wish to find other parents with whom I could be friends that are trying to FIRE in my area. It seems to me that everyone spends so much money on everything and there are so many SAH moms who don't even work but drive nice cars.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband used to be get into the FIRE movement before we had kids... When I got pregnant, the only way to convince him to read parenting books with me was that I agreed to read a "mr. Money mustache" article.

(Btw, MMM is now divorced, owns a Tesla, and doesn't seem to abide by his own rules anymore).

We have two kids and do not abide by a FIRE mentality, and the kids can pursue activities, we go on vacation, etc.
But all that reading shifted our thinking and we do a few things that are FIRE-ish:

We bought a house we could afford on one income (though we had two when we bought). In our case, that meant buying in a gentrifying neighborhood in DC to get a better deal.

Our house is a duplex (two apartments that are connected.) until our kids were about 5 and 8, we lived in one and rented out the other, which covered the mortgage. Now we use both and connected them. When the kids are in college, we will rent the other side again and be income-positive on the house, and soin after that our mortgage will be paid and we will have a pretty significant source of monthly income from the house.

We drive a Toyota that I bought for $9,000 in 2009. That thing is not going to die anytime soon.

We don't have any car commutes in our life -- we can all bike to work/school . This cuts down on costs tremendously and increases happiness.

Part of my husband's desire to FIRE was that he hated his job. So, he was daydreaming about early retirement. After our conversations about it, he switched to a mission-driven organization that he cares about and now he really likes his job.

This sounds similar to our story. My DH started reading Mr. Money Mustache in 2014 when I was pregnant with our first DC. We followed a lot of MMM's advice, saving over half our gross income, for four years and then went down to a single income for a few years when we moved across the country to pursue a career change for DH. We are a lot more lax with our spending now, but still live below our means and those years of aggressive saving at a young age have given us a lot of security. I'm grateful for those "MMM" years even though we ultimately don't plan to FIRE anymore.