BoerneAg11 said:
Reading the early retirement thread made me think back to this. Also interesting to look through the early COVID timelines on this thread - definitely the 'stay fully invested' advice was the best.
Early 30s, married with two kids. We hit $1M at the end of 2021, $1.2M to start 2022.
- Graduated A&M with accounting undergrad/finance masters debt free in 2012. Started with ~$55K salary - up to around $165K annually this year
- Married in 2016 - kids in 2018/2020, potentially one more planned.
- Wife worked full time until second kid and then switched to 3 days a week ( ~75K a year salary now, part time)
- Maxed our retirement accounts for the most part to the extent possible, I have always been far more frugal than my wife who will save some - but she definitely has an itchy Amazon trigger finger.
- Very fortunate that my wife's father has built a very successful company that they will sell at some point, likely a future windfall/inheritance. They are currently gifting us $30K annually under the gift exemption. We try not to include that eventual inheritance mentally in our budget/forecasts, but it is nice to know it is coming down the road.
Home Equity: $330K
Retirement Accounts: $305K
Taxable Investments: $395K
Savings/Liquidity: $175K
Next step is to buy a larger house to accommodate a potential third child. Definitely noticed that the kids were the largest factor in slowing down our rate of savings/net worth creation. Love them, but its a trade-off for sure.
For a long time the goal was to just get to the $1M mark - now its a little more ambiguous trying to plan from here. I don't hate my job, I also don't love it. And the stress only seems to grow as the compensation grows - as with any job. I am still early 30s but I find myself often trying to budget how much longer I can keep at the current gig before I can cut loose and find something less stressful/more rewarding and coast through to retirement.
We're very similar I think. Well, except I apparently married into the wrong family.
We're 34, one kid, and both still full gas on our careers. '21 thrusted us well past dos commas after become millionaires a dozen times in '20 with the volatility.
I think my wife will downshift into PT in the next few years as the kido starts public school. I've got 5 or so years left in my consulting career to the point of equity partner or counseled out. If partnership, I don't want to walk away. Counseled out - I'm out of corporate and onto a monetized hobby.
Specific to coasting, I track progress towards "coasting" based on various inputs (e.g., equity returns, equity/bond mix and our projected RE spend). Here's how it looks:
Coast % being how close we are to not needing to save anymore to reach various versions of FI by age, e.g. we don't need to save another dime to FI at 43 @ 4% SWR interval.
Contributions being monthly savings needed to reach certain versions of FI by age, we need to save $4.6k / mo. to FI at 40 @ 4% SWR.
Lean = $2.5m; 4% = $2m; 3% = $2.6m; and FAT = $3.5m. Blue cells are my daughter's undergrad years. Blue as maybe Dems will cover that for me.
Anyways, maybe a benchmark for you to leverage on your coasting calcs.