Reply to Has anyone here on a normal income successfully FIREd?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You need to figure out what kind of childhood you want your kids to have. HCOL or LCOL, and what are you willing to deny them for the sake of FIRE? You also need to understand that if one of your children has significant special needs, it will be really expensive and any notion of FIRE will vanish immediately. Instead it will be work until 70 to pay for therapies and adult care.

What is your FIRE number assuming your kids will need a 3br home, health insurance, and college? Are you willing to deny them all sports and activities? Are you willing to make them go in-state or to a much less good college just for FIRE? It can be hard to find a woman who's on board with that.

I would really question your assumption that there's no rush to have kids. Plenty of women don't want an older husband or don't want their kids to have an older dad, and that's what you're on track to be if you don't get serious about dating very soon. Yes late-30s men can still date, marry, and have kids, but it becomes more and more of a liability. Especially if they don't earn that much. You don't earn enough to make up for it.[/quote]

Well, you didn’t answer the question, but you do raise some good points. My FIRE number is just for me, not for a family—my number is $2 million plus a paid-off $500,000 condo.  That would provide $60,000 per year (3% withdrawal), which is fine for me.

Obviously, that would not be enough to support a family, But I assume that my future wife will probably have another million dollars and some home equity (after all, given how much I value savings, I don’t see how I could end up with a spouse that has a fundamentally different view in that regard).

So with $3 million and a paid-off house, I figure that’s plenty for a LCOL area. And I’m not opposed to working in the future if needed – I just don’t want it to be a necessity.

Lastly, I guess I just disagree with your assessment that, in a few years, I’ll be too old to date. I’ve never heard of a 33-year-old woman that wouldn’t date a 39-year-old man. In fact, that seems to be more common than not in my experience.[/quote]

A 30 year old woman won't have $1,000,000 not even close. If she's 35+ like you, then you'll be paying roughly 60K in IVF costs per kid. Maybe only one, but still. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. 40K per year in daycare, 150K per year for college...like I said, good luck![/quote]

I don’t foresee more than one or two kids, and I will definitely make sure that we pay in-state tuition for them, even if I have to go back to work to pay for that.  However, I don’t buy into the DCUM notion that there’s any value whatsoever in those $80,000/year SLACs.  If they want to go expensive colleges that are actually worth it (e.g., Harvard), they’re going to have to take out loans.

And there’s no daycare because we won’t be working – that’s the whole point.[/quote]

Wait. Both of you not working. At age 41/35? And still paying for college (even in-state)? Show me the math.

Your demented stricture of $1m in savings at age 33 is ruling out a huge number of women. No doctors no PhDs. Nobody who's had any sort of significantly costly or work-impairing health problem. Who wants to FIRE-parent, meaning deny their kids various normal things, limited to 2 kids, with an older dad, in a LCOL area. Who has no family in need of support. And who actually likes you enough to do this. Can't you see you are looking for a unicorn?[/quote]

Everyone is getting hung up on the $1 million savings at age 33.  I do think that’s reasonable for someone with a professional job who values savings because, as I said, I have more than that saved at 33, while also having paid off a $500,000 condo and never having earned more than $150,000 per year (though I did live with my parents for several years and my expenses were zero during those years).

But even if she doesn’t have $1 million—for example, if she is significantly younger than 33 when we meet—once I have $2 million at age 38, it’s not that tough to add on another million assuming no major market crashes. I do 100% stocks, and we’d probably be able to add $100,000+ per year in contributions between the two of us.  Assuming 10% growth with all stocks and $100,000 in new contributions per year, $2 million becomes $3 million in just three years—so even if she entered our marriage with zero savings, the plan is not that far off.

And regarding college, UMD in-state tuition is $11,000 per year, or $44,000 total per child.  Sorry, but with one or two kids, that’s not going to derail anything.  I would have them live at home for free unless they wanted to get a job to pay rent outside the house.  “But what about summer camps?”  Yes, we probably won’t be able to do a lot of those extras. I’m not a parent, so my thoughts on this could change, but I’m not a believer in the over-scheduled, activity-packed parenting style that is in vogue now. My life was much more laid-back as a child—I don’t think I suffered for it and would probably take a similar approach with my own kid(s).  That’s actually kind of the whole point:  there are always an endless number of things that you can spend money on and trade your life away to be able to pay for.  I am actively choosing to live a simple life, which is totally doable on $3 million, even with a family.

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