Anonymous wrote:There are 7.6 million jobs open right now. So you are not qualified for any of them?

While still working take out a HELOC.

Get a job is the answer. There are literally millions of them.

Okay, so obviously new job is plan but no one hires 50 year olds… except the government. Get real.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t see any way to keep paying $60k/year (!!!) for one kid to attend private/OOS college without totally screwing over your other children and yourself in retirement. Think OP!

We covered all expenses with cash flow and usually saved about $2k/month in after tax accounts. Govt jobs used to be very safe so it was a reasonable to plan on; we bought a condo years ago because we wanted a cheap housing we could carry on one income, but when we sold it we lost money. Being too cheap can be expensive too, so we tried to buy a crummy house in good neighborhood to make sure it grew in value.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it looks like one of us will be RIF, seems very likely. We have tons of fixed expenses between college tuition and mortgage, and we had to buy a new car because some idiot ran into us and totaled our very old Honda.

We have a pretty healthy TSP balance, but only about 100 K liquid, we just moved up from a condo to a single-family home during the pandemic which burned up all our extra cash.

So what is our option for a hardship withdrawal, obviously we could sell the house or our kid could drop out of college, so what qualifies as real hardship?

Take out a TSP loan while you are still employed. You can borrow up to 50k and pay it back over 4 years. I am sorry you are going through this.

Wait, what?? I thought if you left service, you have to pay back the TSP loan entirely right away or else it gets taxed.

Only if you let the loan lapse. If you make payments you can keep the deadline to pay it off.

Anonymous wrote:I am confused about the $5K in tuition a month while there is $300K in the 529. I am also confused about $500 a month for health insurance when one of you is a federal employee.

What is confusing to you about a Federal employee paying $500 a month for health insurance? Are you one of those MAGAs who think Feds get everything for free?

There are 7.6 million jobs open right now. So you are not qualified for any of them?

While still working take out a HELOC.

Get a job is the answer. There are literally millions of them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it looks like one of us will be RIF, seems very likely. We have tons of fixed expenses between college tuition and mortgage, and we had to buy a new car because some idiot ran into us and totaled our very old Honda.

We have a pretty healthy TSP balance, but only about 100 K liquid, we just moved up from a condo to a single-family home during the pandemic which burned up all our extra cash.

So what is our option for a hardship withdrawal, obviously we could sell the house or our kid could drop out of college, so what qualifies as real hardship?

Take out a TSP loan while you are still employed. You can borrow up to 50k and pay it back over 4 years. I am sorry you are going through this.

Wait, what?? I thought if you left service, you have to pay back the TSP loan entirely right away or else it gets taxed.

+1

I don’t see any way to keep paying $60k/year (!!!) for one kid to attend private/OOS college without totally screwing over your other children and yourself in retirement. Think OP!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it looks like one of us will be RIF, seems very likely. We have tons of fixed expenses between college tuition and mortgage, and we had to buy a new car because some idiot ran into us and totaled our very old Honda.

We have a pretty healthy TSP balance, but only about 100 K liquid, we just moved up from a condo to a single-family home during the pandemic which burned up all our extra cash.

So what is our option for a hardship withdrawal, obviously we could sell the house or our kid could drop out of college, so what qualifies as real hardship?

Take out a TSP loan while you are still employed. You can borrow up to 50k and pay it back over 4 years. I am sorry you are going through this.

Wait, what?? I thought if you left service, you have to pay back the TSP loan entirely right away or else it gets taxed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I need to stop reading this site! My husband and I do not have kids but only have about $70K liquid…and people on here are saying $100K is nothing…

When you don’t have kids you don’t need a lot of money. You can pack up and rent an apartment anywhere. Worse comes to worst, live in the wild and hunt for food.

Kids change everything.

We want to have children though…I am not being dramatic when I say the current economy is making us reconsider. Which is unfortunate because we are already early 30s.

Wanna hear something crazy?
I had my first kid 17 year ago and QUIT my job to stay home with him, even thought my DH only made 55k (it wasn’t much then either)
And yet, here we are, we survived, I have an incredible job, we are doing fine, we have enough, the kids will go to college and we will retire. Obviously that kind of blind faith doesn’t work if you’re a striver prioritizing the accumulation of wealth.

Thank you for sharing your story! I appreciate it.

We try to live below our means but definitely have room to cut back a lot further, and that is what we have been doing. It is stressful but I’m trying to remind myself that there have been lots of difficult times throughout the past 100 years and people have made it through.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I need to stop reading this site! My husband and I do not have kids but only have about $70K liquid…and people on here are saying $100K is nothing…

When you don’t have kids you don’t need a lot of money. You can pack up and rent an apartment anywhere. Worse comes to worst, live in the wild and hunt for food.

Kids change everything.

We want to have children though…I am not being dramatic when I say the current economy is making us reconsider. Which is unfortunate because we are already early 30s.

Wanna hear something crazy?
I had my first kid 17 year ago and QUIT my job to stay home with him, even thought my DH only made 55k (it wasn’t much then either)
And yet, here we are, we survived, I have an incredible job, we are doing fine, we have enough, the kids will go to college and we will retire. Obviously that kind of blind faith doesn’t work if you’re a striver prioritizing the accumulation of wealth.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I need to stop reading this site! My husband and I do not have kids but only have about $70K liquid…and people on here are saying $100K is nothing…

When you don’t have kids you don’t need a lot of money. You can pack up and rent an apartment anywhere. Worse comes to worst, live in the wild and hunt for food.

Kids change everything.

We want to have children though…I am not being dramatic when I say the current economy is making us reconsider. Which is unfortunate because we are already early 30s.

I wouldn’t let it bother you. We had our first during the recession, after one of us lost our job. Everything turned out fine.

Our saving grace is that we have a low mortgage ($2500) and a low rate (2%) so we are throwing equity into our home.

Thank you for sharing this, it made me feel better.

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I need to stop reading this site! My husband and I do not have kids but only have about $70K liquid…and people on here are saying $100K is nothing…[/quote]

When you don’t have kids you don’t need a lot of money. You can pack up and rent an apartment anywhere. Worse comes to worst, live in the wild and hunt for food.

Kids change everything.

[/quote]

Of course kids change everything, and they make it extremely hard to save up mounds of money when you have daycare, then summer and after school care, saving for college, feeding and clothing, another bedroom or two. If I did not have kids but spent the same amount on myself as I do IRL with kids, I would be a multi millionaire in spite of my income not being very high. But a lot of people without kids don’t live this way, obviously, they want to have fun and go on vacation.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I need to stop reading this site! My husband and I do not have kids but only have about $70K liquid…and people on here are saying $100K is nothing…

When you don’t have kids you don’t need a lot of money. You can pack up and rent an apartment anywhere. Worse comes to worst, live in the wild and hunt for food.

Kids change everything.

We want to have children though…I am not being dramatic when I say the current economy is making us reconsider. Which is unfortunate because we are already early 30s.

I wouldn’t let it bother you. We had our first during the recession, after one of us lost our job. Everything turned out fine.

Anonymous wrote:“Only $100K liquid’ my god some people on this site are so out of touch with how the vast majority of this country, hell, THIS AREA lives.

Well hopefully those people don’t have $5k mortgages and kids in private college.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I need to stop reading this site! My husband and I do not have kids but only have about $70K liquid…and people on here are saying $100K is nothing…

When you don’t have kids you don’t need a lot of money. You can pack up and rent an apartment anywhere. Worse comes to worst, live in the wild and hunt for food.

Kids change everything.

We want to have children though…I am not being dramatic when I say the current economy is making us reconsider. Which is unfortunate because we are already early 30s.