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[quote=Anonymous][quote=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.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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