FIRE rarely works unless you move to a low cost of living area and have a cheap way to get healthcare. This is especially true if you have kids. Most abandon FIRE and have to work at least part time.

DW and I are both teachers. I retired 2 months short of my 52nd birthday. We have one DC who is in grad school currently and will have very little college debt. We paid for undergrad using 529 funds and grad tuition is covered. We’ve been comfortable.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the “retire early” concept is the wrong goal. The goal is to be able to have whatever job or project you want to pursue. Start a business. Make art. Open a restaurant. Teach. Whatever. Just living cheaply in a different country isn’t a good goal.

The early retired people I know do not have a second career, entrepreneurial endeavor, or volunteer gig they are passionate about. They use their free time to watch YouTube videos and let their mental acuity slowly fade away. I don’t get the attraction to this lifestyle.

That doesn’t sound fun. The Money Mustache guy fixes up houses, runs a coworking space, etc.

The point, to me, is to have freedom to learn new things.

Yes

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends on lifestyle. Plenty of families with kids live well on less than 100K a year, in this area. I know, I'm one of them.

With that income, you need to figure out whether a reduction in lifestyle is worth early retirement. Only you can decide.

Yes but the kids of families making less than 100k are typically eligible for significant financial aid for college and other scholarships or reduced fees, which is not going to be the case for those with parents that chose to retire early with significant assets.

Moreover it’s perfectly understandable and reasonable to tell your children that they need to take out student loans or that they can’t participate in travel teams/extracurricular activities/study abroad programs etc because you truly can’t afford it. However it would strike me as quite selfish to deprive my children of such opportunities so that I could retire by 50.

PP you replied to. We have significant assets and do not benefit from financial aid. The difference is that when you purposefully engineer your life to retire early with assets, you also plan for your kids' colleges. As I said in my follow-up post.

We are another family that didn’t quality for financial aid. Our salary is low. Our assets are high.

We pay full tuition for college.

Anonymous wrote:I think the “retire early” concept is the wrong goal. The goal is to be able to have whatever job or project you want to pursue. Start a business. Make art. Open a restaurant. Teach. Whatever. Just living cheaply in a different country isn’t a good goal.

The early retired people I know do not have a second career, entrepreneurial endeavor, or volunteer gig they are passionate about. They use their free time to watch YouTube videos and let their mental acuity slowly fade away. I don’t get the attraction to this lifestyle.

You can do anything you want, but you can't do everything you want. It's that simple. You can have kids, lavish travel, a nice house, freakishly early retirement with no lifestyle changes - but not likely all at one time,

You should go to a FIRE forum if you want good answers. FIRE people expect to retire in their 30s and have all kinds of strategies to do it...even with kids.

We plan to achieve FI by 50 at the latest with 5M total. With mortgage paid off and kids in college (and drawing down from 529), our expenses will be significantly smaller. That makes any RE much more doable

Anonymous wrote:It'd be impossible for me. And I make seven figures. Sure I could do it but why would I want to? I like living large with my brood. Lots of beautiful vacations, a variety of activities for the kids, great food, beautiful home. A life of meagerness and penny pinching sounds wholly depressing. I enjoy my career for the most part, and am proud of the example I'm setting for my kids as a hardworking mom.

FIRE is "financial independence, retire early." Not for me.

Penny pinching is depressing for you. People are different. Don't assume that a penny pincher doesn't enjoy it. They probably enjoy it more than you enjoy your career. Working for someone else is depressing to me or even working for myself.
I don't work, I trade. I FIRED myself in mid 40s.
My kids don't need an example. They are the example.

We plan to FIRE at 55 with $8-$10M having raised two kids and never making more than $400k. It can definitely be done.

Early 30s with two young kids? They should be in or very near being in college by the time you hit 50. At $400K HHI you should easily be able to save enough to cover their college expenses by the time you are 50 and they are almost in college. You could live a comfortable life on your projected savings by then but might need to work longer if you want a more lavish retirement.

You are very rich. We're doing just fine and never made half of what you do, so on your income, that young, with kids even? Of course you can retire early unless you spend like a Kardashian douchebag,

We're at a similar HHI but husband is active duty so when he hits 20 in a few years we have a pension and heslthcare for life. So we absolutely can FIRE but we're also very frugal. Living way below our means.

We will probably FIRE with two kids from W-2 incomes by the time we are 50 (so “early”ish?)

Had 200k HHI until about two years ago when it jumped to 500k. The income jump coincided with us having kids. We were already maxing out retirement accounts before the jump. Increase allowed us to pay for daycare and used the first 1.5 years of extra to get 100k in each 529 (kids are under 3 so compounding should do most of the work but are still doing 4k/year). We also paid down the mortgage enough to go from 30years to 20 years (when the youngest will be in college.)

Now saving the “jump” in income in maxing mega back door and brokerage account.

Yes kids are expensive as they get older, but we are spending 50k on daycare per year now. As long as we don’t go private, I don’t think our kid expenses will go up.