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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We've always made significantly less than you, OP, and yet own a home in a nice suburb of DC and have enough to pay for college and retirement. We lived extremely frugally when we were younger, however, and invested in stocks early on that have done well over the decades. You really must start reining in your spending and investing what you can, except that your time-frame will be much shorter.
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DH and I have always made [b]way less than you[/b] as well. But, we’ve had the financial discipline to always take the high road and live within our means. We’re in our mid-40s and have $1.6M saved in our 401k, $750K saved in 529 plans for our three kids, a taxable brokerage account with $600K, and an online savings account with 36 months ($150K) of net living expenses for emergencies.

Maybe it’s time to stop spending so much of your money on buying the latest car and cell phone model every two years – take the bus like we do. Lose the cleaning service. Stop eating out and actually cook your food. Stop taking vacations – save that for when you’re in retirement. [/quote]

I don't believe this for a second. You're saying you make "way less" than OP's $160k--so maybe $120k? Even if you've been making this HHI for 20 years that's $2.4m in income.  You're telling me on roughly $2.4k in income you saved $3.1m between all of the accounts you listed?  All while...housing, feeding, and clothing yourselves and 3 kids? This just is not plausible even with the stock run up over the past 10 years.  If this is true, you are an anomaly that either got lucky in the market or had other cash infusions, and not someone OP or anyone else should measure themselves against.[/quote]

I wondered about this too. And with 4000/month living expenses, must be a super low mortgage (i.e. bought a while ago) and no day care costs. We were only able to keep costs below that as renters in very old apartment buildings until we had kids. [/quote]

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