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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Husband and I are 53 and 50. We make about $250k combined. A few years ago it was more like $150k.

We have about 1.7m in savings, and about 600k in equity on a $1m house.

Our goal is 3.5m, with the house paid off and the two kids done with college. (We have separate 529s for that). That gives us about $125k a year.

Approximately early 60s retirement. The wildcard for us is no healthcare (neither of us is fed) so we may not be able to retire u til 65 depending on the cost of private care and our health in 10 years. [/quote]

It boggles my mind how people save so much, afford such an expensive home, and pay off two kids’ college expenses on a $150k HHI. The math doesn’t work for me unless you are literally eating Ramen and tuna fish every night, take no vacations or have a lot of help from your parents.[/quote]

Not PP but in a similar spot. The missing pieces are 1) we bought the house for $250k before prices exploded and then put another $200k into renovation. Many older couples around here that own a "$1m house" did not pay anything close to $1M for that. 2) Grandparents are paying for one year of college and both kids (one in college, one a HS senior) picked colleges that cost us <$30k. 3) the base of our retirement fund is mostly that DH saved like crazy for the first 10 years of his working life. Compound interest is amazing.[/quote]

+1 with some variations, but the biggest things in common are saving a lot early on before expenses grew and investing that and buying a house that appreciated.
1) We bought our house somewhat later in life (late 30s) but it's grown more than 2.5x in value.  We're early 50s now.
2) Because we rented rather than owning a house we saved a LOT--DH were together since college but didn't have kids until we were 30. Before then we rented a relatively cheap apartment in a city, didn't own a car and saved like crazy (40-50% of our income towards retirement, future downpayment and college savings) while still having a lot of fun in the city. We also had 1.5 years of foreign assignment where all cost of living expenses were paid and we saved like 80% of our incomes.  We put much of this savings in stock investments that have done well.  
3) Once we had kids we were able to arrange our schedules so we didn't have to pay for daycare when our kids were under 2.5.  
4) We don't have parental support for college and our first kids' college costs about 40k (we'll see what the 2nd one costs soon).  [/quote]

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