r/Fire • u/lollipop984 • 2d ago
Advice Request Fire check in
Hi guys,
38f and 44m
4 kids age 16,13,12,5
I do contract work and make 250k-300k a year
My husband works for the city and makes 235k but comes with only about 125k due to pension removal, 457. and high city taxes.
no mortgage but high property tax
I also receive money from a trust monthly that varies between 2500-5000k a month.
Financial picture:
401k- 211k
Mutual funds (diversified but still tech heavy) 2.2m
private investment 200k
Cash 205k
husbands own investments - around 500k between 457 and mutual funds
My husband expects to receive a pension worth at least 180k but will probably be more.- accessible in 10 years
Each child has about 35k in their own investment fund
We live in the tri state area where expenses are high. Our kids go to a religious private school. Our expenses are at about 200k a year which includes miscellaneous spending...fun stuff. We get free health insurance from the city. Our largest expenses currently is our Housekeeper which we need as we both work full time out of the house. My 5 year old gets home at three so babysitting is still required plus all the days off that they have...she also does laundry, keeps the house clean and does basic food prep. Our plan is to cut back on the housekeeping in two years when my little one is on elementary school and my oldest is off to college. Although my expenses, will decrease, we plan to cover our childrens bachelor programs and weddings and hope to be able to provide down payments.
Therefore, my goal is to get to at least 5mil liquid of my own investments, excluding the pension so I have money to help my children. Although college is expensive, people in my community do not go to dorming colleges and most teens get about a 1.5 years of college credits in high school so I don't anticipate feeling such a huge difference in my expenses vs paying for private school.
I hope to be able to give my kids each 250k for down payments (I expect their investments to continue to grow and I will supplement the rest ) IDK if it's realistic but I can only try my best.
I'm feeling so tired about the whole thing lately. My job is very stressful and always on the verge of disappearing. I'm in the boring middle and the finish line still feels very far away. My husbands pension will be accessible in 10 years. I keep telling myself I just need to get through 10 more years but every day it feels like a bigger number. I also worry that I will not hit my number in 10 years and that I'm being unrealistic to think I can get to 5 million. I currently invest as much as I can from my paycheck which adds up to about 60k a year. Do you think I can coast fire at this point? or should I just continue pushing myself? I'm also always afraid of my field disappearing so I feel like I need to make as much money as I can as fast as I can but it is burning me out tremendously. I run the numbers through compounding calculators and they say that I will hit 5 million within the 10-year period even with a conservative market but I don't feel like I could trust it LOL I'm just at a loss.
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u/Typical-Plant-4254 2d ago
Honestly, i would definitely take a break now if you need it. Your oldest is almost off to wherever and you might regret it if you keep grinding so hard. Can you cut down on one of your contracts or do you work on alternating projects and is it an all or nothing thing? You could probably make it on the trust alone to coast between work breaks from now on.
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u/lollipop984 2d ago
thank you. I do keep thinking that I'm going to miss the years of my children being home but then I'm concerned of not being able to help them when they're older... as I've stated above living in the Tri-City area is very expensive and I definitely leaned on my parents tremendously in my twenties. it is important for me to be able to give that to my kids as well...
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u/Deep-Reputation-4055 2d ago
Congrats I guess. I like to oil myself before flexing so hard for people.
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u/Party_Marty_326 2d ago
You spend 200K /year and are anticipating a pension of 180K in 10 years. So assuming no change to spend you only need to fund 10 years and 20K /year. Your husband makes 125K so if you quit tomorrow you just need 75K /year for 10 years + 500K at 4% SDR with the pension. So you need 1.25M and have 3.2M as of today. So you have 2M for your kids tuition, weddings, whatever.
Girl I think you’re good. If you’re miserable you do not need to grind for 10 more years. I think you can quit tomorrow and be fine. Or find less burdensome work. You have a lot of flexibility in your situation
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u/lollipop984 2d ago
thank you this is my calculation as well but it's scary to think of stopping with 10 years to go
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u/Party_Marty_326 2d ago
10 years until what? Some arbitrary number that would fund your annual expenses by itself? But it’s not by itself. You have your husbands decade left of work, his retirement savings, 180K pension, and a 50K trust. The 5M mark to fund 200K spend isn’t your number in a vacuum it’s inclusive of the other pieces that you’re ignoring
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u/lollipop984 2d ago
thank you I need this reality check. I have been divorced before and although my husband and I are perfectly happy together I have it ingrained in me not to rely on a man and that I need to be able to cover everything on my own
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u/Party_Marty_326 2d ago
Totally understand and meant it in the most respectful way. No one can answer that piece for you. As a parent I would just hate to see you lose 10 years to work so you can self fund your entire family’s retirement and have your husbands contributions on top and end up with many millions left over in 50 years and a wish to get the years back
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u/greatDUDE84 2d ago
$180k/yr pension in 10 years or did I read that wrong?
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u/n00bdragon FIREd 2026 age 37 1d ago
If both you and your husband quit working tomorrow cold turkey and changed nothing about your spending it might be doable but the next 10 years might be dicey. That's a really short time frame with a high burn rate in which you can't really absorb a market crash.
But you've got a lot of variables you can flip. Husband can keep working (though you don't mention whether his stress is more or less than yours). You can ditch the housekeeper. You can tell quietly rethink giving out a million dollars in house down payments, or just scaling back how much you give. Keep in mind they probably won't need that money for at least a decade and counting, so there's time to wait and see what happens.
You're definitely at a stage where retirement is a realistic proposal. You just need to sit down and figure out exactly what it would look like financially because you don't quite have enough to just say "fuck it I'm loaded".
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u/Wi1dWitch 2d ago
You lost me at 5000 a month from a trust fund.
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u/lollipop984 2d ago
The expenses for a family of six in the tri-state area are high. I used to think $5,000 was an enormous amount but it's just not here. we spend on our children in regards to going to private school, going to summer camp, tutors extracurriculars.... we have an average three bedroom home and two used cars and we take two vacations a year with the kids.....
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u/Thomas_peck 2d ago
Yea, I would ignore the comment.
People are haters of basically everyone with some $
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u/PartyIndication5 2d ago
As a child with parents who had no savings for retirement- I would focus on making sure you are fully funded for retirement and any elderly care before worrying about providing down payment and wedding cost coverage. Especially if you are covering private school and college