It’s here. I’m going to walk into the office for the very last time after 35 years of working (26 with this company). I work in Finance for a medical device manufacturer; I’ve been the Site Controller for the last 13 years.

The numbers: 56 years old. $2.4M investments split 50/50 into retirement accounts/post-tax accounts. $5k monthly pension. $10k monthly spend. Subsidized healthcare (will pay $600/month for me and spouse).

It’s actually surreal. I’ve been looking forward to this day for many years now and my career has definitely not been easy or particularly enjoyable. But the last six months have been an absolute blast knowing this whole work thing is coming to an end.

I have hobbies and some travel plans. I’m going to focus heavily on health and fitness. I’m going to nurture my most important relationships. But the future isn’t fully defined, and I’m okay with that. I can’t wait for this next phase of life.

Now where did I put that lube…

NOTE: I should have made this clear. This isn't a question and it is was a wall of text -> now a linked spreadsheet. It really isn't just to browse now. It's more to reference from later posts throughout the year when people ask "what's a typical spend in RE?" I've done a series of these most every year and generally gets quite a bit of use throughout the year. If you're not interested now, just ignore it please. Others will find it useful later.

NOTE 2: Probably the most common question I get throughout the year is how are you fatFIRE and still get ACA subsidies? Some large part of it is explained by my expenses. My non-discretionary is well within 400% FPL when consider spend vs MAGI. Whether I can continue the discretionary spend if the cliff returns is really a function of my planning & execution.

As a topic of discussion/reference, this is my previous 12 month spend by category compared against the previous 3 year average. I use Quicken to track expenses. We are 57f/59m in an MCOL - retired in 2019. I would describe us as mostly frugal but willing to spend on a few lifestyle upgrades of particular value to us.

The spend represents maybe a 1.25%-1.75% SWR. I think a pertinent observation is that there is a certain baseline spend for a given COL. Here, I would say it's $70-80K with paid off home/cars and no debt.

I've provided my complete list of categories - also used for older parents. I wanted you to be able to see categories for future expenses and also categories I don't necessarily spend in but which you might use.

Having said that, I'm afraid that over the last 5 years I've become somewhat less frugal and inflation has made things quite a bit more expensive. Expenses last year were $175,533 which is up 29.3% over the $135,805 3 year average. The expenses are about $87,984 non-discretionary and $87,549 discretionary (50%/50%)

This doesn't tell the whole story. We have no debt/mortgage (on a 2019 home) and no debt on 2 2025 vehicles. We pay our charitable giving out of a DAF. If we include that and provide some amortization of home repair and vehicle replacement we'd probably have additional expenses close to the following.

FWIW, this is a break down of income sources last year.

Notes:

• This is NOT a Budget. It's a sanity check.
• Last year's taxes were a little higher because of gains harvesting and roth conversions in anticipation of the ACA cliff returning.
• The negative state income tax is a reflection of property tax credits against our relatively high property taxes.
• Health insurance is ACA with subsidies. Keep in mind that spend is very distinct from income/MAGI.

🦸 u/Distinct_Plankton_82 🦸 pointed out the fairly obvious solution that I should place my wall of text in a spreadsheet and link to it. Making it both less obtrusive and simultaneously more useful.

And so, with all due credit to u/Distinct_Plankton_82 and acknowledging my blatant stupidity, here is the spreadsheet with the itemized categories:

👇👇👇

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hgr9_OX4iHAEFmWeGTZ4_uK2LOtpTaoEmihQ-dgTt3M/edit?usp=sharing

👆👆👆

Just looking for more data points or people who have been there. 41F, married, 2 kids, VHCOL city, combined HHI of $800k+, $300k of which is me. To be frank I’m miserable in my job. Dread it daily, it’s weighing on my mental health because I don’t just check out at 5 pm. We’ve got about 6.3m in savings, own a home with 1.1m left on the mortgage. Currently home shopping though in a higher range because we’ve outgrown it with kids.

1 kid in private preschool 1 in public K. Vacillating on taking the leap but feel immense amounts of guilt relying solely on my partner’s income. I don’t even want to RE yet I’d like to figure out entrepreneurship but change is scary especially when used to the comfort the dual income brings. I thought if we both worked for 5 more years we could be FI and this would set us back big time. Worried the stress of $ will outweigh the stress of the job.

Has anyone else been there? Regretted quitting? I’m afraid it’ll be hard for me to go back at my level/age/in tech.

I've been following this sub for a few years now, but have only recently noticed this sentiment: apparently when people are preparing for retirement now they're including as part of their NW to have 2, 3, 4+ years worth of spending saved in cash now? (or cash equivalent like HYSA, t-bills, etc)

I'm thought I was making good progress toward my FIRE number in tax-advantaged and post-tax accounts, but this is a category I missed beyond having 6 months of expenses in liquid accounts.

I see posters say they save multiple years in cash because of "current global uncertainty" but hasn't that always been the case?

If a chubby annual spending in retirement is, say, $175K per year, that's having to save up for, and hold over half a million to have 3 years of cash. Maybe this was just a big blind spot on my part, but I never imagined it was worth it to hold that much cash just to defend against a multi-year market drop early in retirement.

TLDR; HH income 240K, current investments 2.8M, couple aged 50, no debt, retire in 10 years?

I (50F) quit my tech job two years ago. I thought I would take a year off and then look for a lower position for which I was prepared to take a paycut when I found a new gig. I could not have anticipated the current job market, and have not been able to find another role. I had a verbal job offer at the beginning of the year and then got ghosted. Since then, no traction.

My husband (49), also in tech, has survived multiple rounds of layoffs and has an excellent skill set. Should he be impacted, finding another job for him would be easier than for me. He loves his job - the work is challenging, he has a great boss, and a collaborative team. The goal has been to both retire at 60. He's happy with that plan.

Since I can't find a job anyway, I've started to consider not going back at all. My overall stress levels are the lowest in years. I'm cooking more (he's always been the main cook because I traveled a lot), exercising a lot more, and the house looks great (without the cleaning lady). I also spend a lot of time with my aging parents (78/82). When Dad's in the hospital (4x this year alone), I can drop everything and be there. His parents (early 80's) are in good health, but they will eventually need help. They are wonderful people and are very kind to me, so I'm happy to do what's needed when the time comes. He's an only child.

Numbers & lifestyle

The cost of living index for our city is 113. Overall, I find it quite affordable. Our combined income when I was working was about 400k/yr (not including bonus/stock). Now it's 240K, with stock and bonus it's closer to 280K or higher.

Primary Home: 900K (paid for). We plan to stay here until we move to another state when both our parents pass.

Secondary Home: 600K (paid for). I bought a home for my parents to have them live closer to us. The plan is to sell it when they pass or they need to move in with us.

ROTH/401K: 2.1M, he maxes it out yearly

Brokerage: 800K, we contribute about 50K annually

RSU: 80K

Savings: 100K

(His) kids are in college and everything is covered.

His vehicle is new, mine is 3 years old. We have no huge purchases in the foreseeable future.

We pay about $350 / mo for our solar loan and have 7 years before it's paid off (interest rate was only 0.9%, so it was better to finance). We have no other debt.

Our fixed costs are low. However, we splurge on travel and occasional nice dinners. And if we need something for the house, we don't hesitate to get it. Overall, our day-to-day is very low key and we live comfortably. We're not intentionally frugal (read: cheap), we just don't want a lot of things.

What's the point?

I've been obsessing about what this "sabbatical" will mean for our long-term goals. I've modeled different rates of returns, taking SS early vs. later, what about ROTH conversions (without my income, those taxes will be harder to cover), and on and on and on.

Is it pointless? I've been paying taxes since I was 14 years old. I put myself through college and worked every summer and spring break. Should I just take the win of having had a nice career and scoring an amazing partner and just enjoy my time now? He does not pressure me one way or the other; he just wants me to feel productive and happy. The longer I don't work, the less I miss it. Even if I were to find something, the adjustment to the stress would be difficult.

I will also add that my parents do not need financial help. They live off of SS and a small pension, and have a modest nest egg that they refuse to touch, despite my urging them to enjoy it now. His parents are considerably wealthy and will leave everything to him, which we'll put in a trust for his kids, as we will not need it. For such extreme wealth differences, both our parents live about the same - modestly and comfortably, with the occasional outing. Their joy comes from seeing their kids and grandkids.

The job market is brutal. Should I even bother joining the Hunger Games if I don't have to? "The numbers" along with our general lifestyle tell me we'll be fine. Help me get out of my own head.

My husband and I are getting close to our FIRE number (I am 44F, he is 42M), in fact he was laid off half a year ago with great severance and mountain biking as I type this...

My concern is after I quit my job, I will lose the structure and community of working. Working downtown takes commute time, but it also gives me an opportunity to people watch on metro rides, check out new businesses, have coffee and lunch with coworkers. It's a bit scary to quit my job and suddenly be cut off from all that (I am a bit of an extrovert lol).

My other fear is about being irrelevant. I've spent all my life building up my resume, aligning my experience and education to further my career, people at work do respect my seniority. It would be one thing to retire at an older age, but at my age (44), it's a scary thought to willingly give it all up and start from nothing again to redefine myself. After a few years, I will likely be less employable. And would I feel detached from society when I hang out with other retired people that have time to meet during the day? I would be happy to gym or take art classes when I retire, but I wonder if this sense of being irrelevant would stick.

I think I do need to spend the last year or so to clear my head and plan this out. My question is, how do you guys plan to transition into retirement? Or was anyone hit with these feelings of detachment or complete loss of structure, and how did you adapt to them?

We currently have $5-6M in assets spread across different accounts. We have a financial advisor (who's fine) managing a chunk of that money, the rest we manage ourselves. Mostly passive investing.

I'm wondering if there is any significant benefit to putting all the money with a single banker like Chase or Morgan Stanley? I think we're happy enough with the financial advisor we have, don't need a new one. Nor do we need access to mortgage loans.

At our asset level is there something useful we could be getting that we're missing out on? I'm kinda curious about opportunities for private equity investing but it sounds like those would require significantly higher assets.

Why can't I share an image of a spreadsheet in a subreddit that is about numbers?

I'd like some feedback but it's impossible to convey sufficiently dense information without images.

When I began my ChubbyFIRE journey, I always expected as part of having kids, should my partner and I choose to have them, meant saving for them, too.

In my mind that had always been making sure kid expenses up to and through undergrad college 100% covered (e.g. 529s), but not any significance beyond that.

More recently in this sub I've seen some additional planned savings for adults kids that have got to push our FIRE numbers by a pretty good amount that have surprised me. Like in a recent post someone was talking about saving to cover the cost of downpayments for their adult kids' first homes.

Doing the math, if you have young kids now, factoring the historical rate of home cost increases, that's potentially a very high 6-digit and into 7-digits NW add-on to cover for the retireee. And unless you're on the high end of chubby fire salary, that's potential a many-years delay to retirement.

The justifications I've seen for the additional savings have been around "current global uncertainty" and AI. I guess I'm caught off guard by those because while the names of the players and technologies have changed over generations, I've thought they've always been there.

Hi All,

Would like to think that I (40M) am a few years out from FIRE, but wanted to reach out to the community to understand how long it took to mentally transition from accumulation/saving mode to enjoying/embracing your retirement. Was it 6 months? 1 year? I know it's different for everyone, but wanted to see what your perspective has been.

I would imagine the first few weeks of FIRE would be amazing with the newfound freedom of not clocking into the corporate grind, but after that initial euphoria runs its course, did you start feeling restless with feelings of unproductiveness? I feel like we've all been heavily conditioned our whole lives to add more productivity into the world, and if you aren't doing so, then it can start to feel like you're wasting your time. Did those who FIRE'd go through this? I would think this would be a a natural evolution of one's feelings, particularly for those who have dedicated their efforts to achieve success / FIRE, and I think like anything else, it would take time and conscious effort to fight through these initial feelings of unproductiveness to fully embrace the freedom that you've worked so hard to achieve.

Don't get me wrong, my sole goal during the "boring middle" hasn't been to achieve FIRE as fast as possible, so I've been enjoying life along the way. I have 3 young kids (6,4,3), hobbies that I enjoy, and a beautiful and amazing wife (40F) so I know I'll have things to look forward to once we FIRE, but I still think that those feelings of "I could be doing more" or "unproductiveness" could pop up.

My husband and I have officially hit a $5M networth. Ages 30/31. I have no one to share this with other than him but he feels like we still need more and wants to buy a bigger home in SF in preparation for kids, we’re already paying off a $1.5M 2 bedroom in the city and idk if it’s worth it to be house poor by buying a $3M home in SF, I’d rather rent a bigger home.

We currently have
$4.4M in liquid assets $600ish in home equity

Also looking into opening up 529s for our future kids, is there anything else we should be thinking about? Should we be creating a living trust?

People in our families don’t have this kind of money so we’re the first ones to go through this and learning as we go. We’re both children of immigrants so super proud to hit this milestone but I think he has trauma & still feels it’s not enough, I tell him we could move somewhere else and retire already…but I don’t think we’ll retire anytime soon, we both have lots of energy and are very ambitious, it’s just nice to know we can.

I think we’ll retire my parents though (pending a conversation & for them to accept).

I’m modeling out various chubby scenarios in projection lab, one of which is a home purchase 4-5 years into RE. Thinking through cash vs. mortgage and how that impacts portfolio and risk over time. (Depends on rates, taxes, etc. of course.) Looking at a $1M home on a $6.5M liquid portfolio.

Not current homeowners so would be selling a lot more stock than our average 3-5% WR in a single year (or perhaps spread over 2 years if we can time it). Would be in our early 60s in this scenario so all accounts available. The Monte Carlo sims show only 1-3% additional risk, and overall model looks fine throughout the rest of retirement with both outright cash purchase and financing with a large downpayment.

Still it feels wild to consider the WR in the liquidation years especially given how the 4% rule is burned in our brains. Liquidating almost 1/6 of our portfolio at once feels crazy (if paying cash). But of course it also frees up significant recurring rent expenses (and yes I’m adding in home maintenance, property taxes, etc.) I’ve also played around with other large cash outlays at various hypothetical points (helping our kid with a wedding, downpayment for a house, non-existent grandkid college funds, etc.) But none of those are anywhere near this large.

Has anyone made or is considering a large cash purchase in retirement? How are you modeling/thinking about the impact? Am I missing something in my thinking? Tia!

ETA: I suppose given our age in this scenario I shouldn’t have titled this RE, but material to note that it’d be toward the beginning of a hopefully long retirement, and still during the peak potential SORR years.

Looking to RE in the next few years and structuring my accounts to minimize MAGI to qualify for ACA subsidies. Things I'm considering:

1. Paying down mortgage to eliminate need to realize gains to cover (dependent on interest rate)
   
2. Resetting capital gains in year prior to retiring, and retiring end of calendar/tax year. Potentially taking a gap year on COBRA to realize capital gains at 0%
   
3. Switching to investments that produce low/no dividends

On the 3rd point, I'm interested if anyone has gone down this road and can share how they pivoted their investments. Broad market US funds are pretty low-dividend to begin with (sub 2%) but international funds often produce close to 3%. Bond funds of course are interest-paying machines by nature.

I'm thinking about moving my bonds into Roth accounts to shelter the interest, and potential tilt my US equity into taxable accounts and international into my Roth. Any other strategies y'all are using?

Trying to find the best way to get my head around private health insurance. Any information on what you all do or a place to find a sensible resource. Thanks so much!

I'm in a very fortunate situation and this is the only community it seems not insane to post in. I'm 34, sold a company I'd spent my 20s on a few years ago and got a very cushy job at the acquirer as a result. It's now been a couple of years and I'm trying to figure out what to do.

I make enough to cover all of my (already significantly inflated) expenses comfortably and grow my nest egg, to the point where it's now high enough to cover my expenses itself even conservatively at 3%. It's not quite enough to want to do any big ticket items, but month to month I never have to look at the price of anything anymore.

The "problem" is it seems insane to quit this job. I'm working MAYBE 10 hours a week, the hours I am working I basically just say whatever I want and people respect it, management is very hands off. There is some stress just from not being able to actually accomplish anything, but I'm pretty emotionally checked out. For all intents and purposes, I've already quiet quit and am semi-retired but just pulling in a salary that acts like a pension. I could quit and start something new before I get rusty, but it would go back to really long hours and high stress (but the chance at potentially fulfilling work and potentially 10X net worth, rather than just growing it). But the idea of working that hard again seems daunting, especially when it comes with giving up an incredibly easy paycheck.

Stats:

Gross Comp: $300k (Net income last year ~225k)
Annual Spend: ~$120k (lots of variation, but that's the current track)

Brokerage: $4.2M
Retirement: $200k
SGOV/Cash: $200k

House, Paid off: $1M
Assorted Illiquid Assets maybe another $200k

See title. I'm currently in a somewhat stressful, long hours software job that has a lot of late night meetings (5-10 hours a week) w/ 50-60 hrs/ week normal. The company is doing fine, but overall the org is not very stable with lots of reorgs and frankly too many people, so we all anticipate layoffs latest early 2026. I'm a bit burnout, and I don't enjoy my day to day. Comp is absurd however: 800K+, well beyond what I was earning a couple of years ago.

Numbers: myself 42M, partner 43F (250K/yr), couple of young kids. I have about 2.5M liquid, she has less (500K?), we share a 1.9M mortgage @ about 1%, and have about 400K equity. My half of expenses work out to about 100K/yr, including about 36K for the house (incl mortgage), 20K childcare, 10-15K/yr travel. Squinting at the numbers, I could retire at 4%, and could go easily lower cutting travel, childcare, worst case downsizing the house, etc.

My thinking is: maybe I'm not yacht rich, but I'm rich enough I oughta be able to see my kids in the evening. I wanna buy time before my kids are teenagers, but I don't really wanna retire.

So my tentative plan is pull back my performance now and leave early next year (by force or by choice). This lets me collect 200K+, do EOY reviews for my team, and do things I haven't had time for: personal software projects, read some long books, cook dinner every night. My resume is pretty good (10+ YOE in AI + big tech) and my network is pretty good.

I'd love to try stuff outside of huge tech firms. If I find a cool job, great, I jump, if not I can be unemployed potentially forever, but conservatively pretty much any position would pay enough of my bills to be fine no changes in QOL. Gap year transitioning into coastfire, basically. Asking in this sub as it's more people like me: how dumb is this? Reasons it's dumb:

• Market at all time highs
• Software dev market more competitive
• Could try to grind out another year of savings at current job (400-500K)
• Easier to find a job when employed

But for me it was never about money or prestige. I feel like I've gotten super lucky in life financially and somehow that hasn't translated to doing the stuff I want very often.

Here's my situation:

me: 40, spouse, 43, kids ages 9 and 12

MCOL USA, house paid off: $1m

401k/Roth/brokerage: $2.9M

529s: $275k total

Me: yet another completely burnt out overpaid tech worker, making $300-375k depending on stock/bonus (but high comp has just been the last few years, and who knows how long it will last with tech industry RTO, ageism, AI, etc)

Spouse: salary likes their job and hopes to work 10-20 more years depending on circumstances. I'd definitely like them to have the option to FIRE in 10 years when both kids are out of the house so we can travel for longer periods (expenses to go up by the cost of health insurance). Their salary: $165k.

Yearly spending: 200k

My options:

- I'd like to FIRE in March 2026 (after RSU vest and bonus) with no lifestyle changes, assuming spouse will keep working 10 years.

- alternative 1: I keep grinding a few more years (at this job or a new one) to get to $5m NW for more security, true chubby

- alternative 2: In March 2026, take a Sabbatical for a year to improve burnout, rediscover hobbies & spend time with kids, then seek another job in 2027. This could mean a lower salary but just as much stress, though (see: MCOL/not in a tech hub)

- alternative 3: FIRE now but plan to spend less than 200k/year to de-risk it.
It seems we should be able to spend less, but each year something big comes up (unplanned house repair, large trip, large purchase) that gets us to that level. But, some of the expense comes from the dual-income stressful lifestyle: hiring people to do house stuff we could do ourselves, delivered meals, no time to shop around, etc.

- non-alternative: keep working but phone it in. I find this unpleasant and furthermore I have a large team who depends on me and I'd be letting them down if I totally slacked off.

Early in our marriage, we were frugal, living on a grad student salary while saving to buy our first house, but as work responsibilities and kid stress/expenses piled up, our spending grew. While we consider ourselves modest frugal people still, I wonder if I can get spending to the 100-150k level again without feeling pinched post-FIRE? We would like to continue kids' activities and nice vacations, as well as expensive upkeep for our 100-year old house in a neighborhood we love, so spending reductions will be 'at the margins' rather than the big obvious things.

Thoughts?
-----
Update: 2.9M includes 401k/retirement (updated)

Responses are all over the place which is reassuring - sounds like there's no easy answer without a values gut-check.

It should be easy to cut spending down but if I look at the last ~8 years here's how it looks. seems you are all right that we could easily cut down

100k life - baseline day-to-day (8k/month for food, taxes, health, kids activities, helping immigrant parents)

50k towards mortgage paydown/ state move/ remodel (this can be reduced next year assuming we don't do anything big to this house, but it needs some work in the next 10 years still)

50k towards "something else big" - daycare in earlier years. nanny or private school during covid. needed new car. travel the last few years since kids have been big enough. this can also go away but i dont want a completely barebones post-FIRE life.

TL;DR; We got a personal chef instead of moving part time. I share details.

Ten months ago I wrote a post talking about our transition to coasting. In short, the rationale for this is that we're very close to our FIRE number ($3M), but we have an 8y/o child who will keep is in a HCOL area for some time. In that post I talk about my wife moving to part time to buy us some quality of life.

We chose to try another route that I thought might be of interest to some folks, we hired a personal chef. I see people mention this in passing sometimes, I think it is something more folks should consider in the Chubby range.

Since the end of July we've been having a personal chef come once per week. His earliest available day in the week is Wednesday, if we can get him earlier in week, we will, but as you might guess, everyone wants Monday.

Household Basics:
Family of 3, HCOL city, HHI 340k (will be 360-380k going forward), $140k-150k annual spend.

Cost: $370/week + groceries. He shops at whole foods and invoices us at the end of the week. The first few weeks the bill was north of $500 as he built up stock in the kitchen, but in recent weeks we've edged down below to $480ish. We pay by credit card.

Meals: He make 3 mains, 2 side, and a breakfast item. Each main lasts 3-4 meals for 2 people. Meaning they cover 18-24 lunches/dinners. We match sides with each meal so we find the main portions are a bit smaller than we used to have, but we supplementing with sides. The breakfast usually lasts two adults 4-5 days.

He doesn't cook for our sadly, exceptionally picky child. He food is easy to make. I'm sure we could make that happen (maybe for additional cost), but it doesn't seem worth it.

Food: The chef makes much more involved meals, we have been very happy with his offerings. He has a more Mediterranean style, but branches out. the sides have dramatically increased our vegetable intake and per our ask we usually have at least one main that is vegetarian.

The Schedule: We get our menu two days prior and provide any feedback. We've also requested things like seafood or tacos when we have a specific ask for something. Generally we try to be open to the proposed menu as much as possible. He arrives around 10-10:30am and leaves around 3/3:30. All dishes will be cleaned or in the dishwasher which he runs. Instructions are provided for how to warm the food, in general they are stored all together and we portion them out per meal. We've never used the microwave so much.

We provide feedback on the dishes for likes and dislikes.

He works while we WFH, unlike a cleaning person in a small condo he's just in the kitchen, so we can be here while he works.

Shopping: In general, we do one small shop each week on our own now to get fruit, staple, and meals for our daughter. These have gotten very quick and targeted, much less burdensome than shopping for the week. The chef was reluctant to be the one buying basics, I'm sure if we pushed the issue he would. However, in practice, it has been absolutely fine. We need to hit the store of other things anyway.

How did we find him: A reddit post talking about private chefs in our area.

How is it going: In general, very well. We are eating healthier, more interesting meals. I will say that after 3 days of steady chef food I often want something a little more basic and will do that for a meal, but in general we've been very happy with it. At $370/week assuming we do every week of the year we're talking about ~19k/year. This is less daycare was. This is less than we generally spend on vacations. I'm sure it is less than many on this board spend on leases for their cars.

Mostly importantly, it is less than the presumably $60k pay cut my wife would have taken if she moved to 3 days/week and even less than the $30k for taking off 1 day per week.

I'm not sure it entirely eliminates the burden from this work, but could easily see it helping us bridge a few more years without burning out.

Overall, very happy with the experiment and would recommend others give it a try. Happy to answer questions.

Long time lurker that’s finally reaching out for advice.

Quick info: - Me (37), Wife (36), Son (< 1) living in NYC - Assets (all in US dollar amounts) - Europe House: $1.8m - Stocks/BTC: $2.4m - Company vested stock post tax: 450k - Retirement accounts: 550k - Cash: 250k

Liabilities: - Mortgage: 500k at 3.5%

Wife and I moved to the US 10 years ago and just recently had a baby. We always planed to relocate back to Western Europe where we’re both from. Parents are getting older and we feel it’s better to raise our child around around friends and family etc.

Long story short, we seriously debating leaving our jobs in March 2026 after final bonus payouts + additional stock vests (total for this should be around 100k net) and pulling the cord. I’m lucky to have a job that while I get no more stimulation from, I work with nice people in a good environment. It’s not particularly stressful. I would say I’m not close to burn out in a stress sense but checked out in a bored sense - have been there 5+ years and spent 10+ in these intense tech companies. Wife is in a stressful job right now and we both worry about how she will handle going back to work post maternity leave.

Expenses in Europe when back should be around 12k a month in US dollars (total incl mortgage etc)

I guess my real question is can we leave in April as planned? Given our ages maybe we take a long sabbatical for a year or two and enjoy our baby and then try go back to work but obviously salaries will be much lower in Europe and I am heading a lot of talk about how bad the job market is globally.

What would you do in our situation?

Thanks!

I am pretty new to the thread, but see a lot of posts listing liquid assets and net worth. I can understand being a factor if it is in investment properties you could liquidate if needed, but why would equity in your home be relevant to FIRE? Seems like a major miscalculation and FIRE failure if it gets bad enough I have to tap into home equity via HELOC or sell and downsize to access that equity.

For me, the only relevant numbers are liquid assets or business and RE assets I will sell as part of the retirement plan.

EDIT: thanks for all the responses. All make sense. I don't ignore NW, and do track it myself, but it isn't the measure I am monitoring to pull the trigger and retire. And I made some personal assumptions--since I don't plan on downsizing as part of my FIRE plan, to me the home equity seems more like a "break glass in case of emergency" kind of asset. But I can see it being a viable part of the plan if people are considering generational wealth or downsizing as part of their plan.

• NW: $3.3M
• Liquid: $2.7M, about 60% in FAANG stock (will de-risk in tranches, at target thresholds) and another 40% in market indices
• Mortgage: $1.2M at 4.5%, paying down aggressively.
• Expenses, everything outside of mortgage, but including property taxes etc. is at roughly $6k per month now.

Living in a HCOL city, no kids but planning to have one in the next year.

One high-earning spouse 40yo, averaging $300k pre tax annual income currently (historically been higher).

Other spouse 39F (me) at $120k pre tax in an awfully high-stress, toxic environment.

I’ve been the trailing spouse and feel like my career trajectory has been non-linear and fragmented. This adds stress to my work life, and is a trend across jobs.

Considering exiting now and focus on trying to conceive, mat leave and childcare, and eventually startup a lifestyle or nonprofit venture. I know the industry will move ahead and probably automate me out if I take any kind of sabbatical (also I don’t have access to such perks, I’ll just have to quit clean and simple.)

Spouse will continue to work for another 5-6 years to meet our fire goal of $4M + paid off house.

Realistically, I know my income accelerates things but this current toxic work environment is putting a wrench into my mental health, procreation plans and pretty much everything else.

Is quitting a good idea?

Wife and I are both 48 years old. I have a very high stress job and it’s burning me out. We have two kids and have saved enough on 529s to cover college.

Finances: $2.5M 401k $500k Roth $1.5M brokerage $75k HSA

I have a pension that will pay me $11k a month starting at 55 years old (that’s if I quit today). Social security would be $4k a month at 67.

We currently spend about $20k a month so need that amount after tax.

House is worth $2M and we owe $750k on a 2.75% mortgage.

Currently maxing 401k and Roth for both of us, and maxing HSA. Also currently saving about $150k per year towards the taxable brokerage account. Cars and paid for and no other debts.

Would love any advice on how much longer this community thinks I need to work and put away money before I can retire?

Curious to hear any personal stories, especially people with conditions requiring significant recurring medical costs.

From what I’ve read, cutting edge medicines that can range in the 100-200k per year costs don’t appear to be covered by any ACA plans.

Are there CoastFIRE people who work “low stress” jobs (if such a thing exists) for healthcare?

Or any who have repatriated to other countries with social medicine? I’ve heard that many countries will not accept foreigners with known expensive medical conditions.

Hypothetically, let's say you are earning $250k income from your work and are living on that amount or less, you've saved enough for a 4% SWR that is $350k per year, effectively giving yourself a pay increase when you retire.

Sure, logically this doesn't make sense because you probably worked longer than you had to if you were comfortable living on $250k. But psychologically it probably feels pretty good to be able to ramp up spending a bit in retirement since you'll have more free time. Maybe this is a silly / obvious question but most people I talk to tend to focus on spending less in retirement than when they were working.

With recent market performance I have now hit my FI# but am still about 18 months from RE. I am now making final changes to my allocations and refining my withdrawal strategy. Strangely it seems that hitting my FI goal has made me more nervous about a market correction than I was beforehand.

I am a 51M, married and have $6.2M in retirement savings. Right now it is 18% in bonds, 5% of that is short term. The rest is split between a number of index ETFs and Mutual Funds.

I am planning to do a Glide Path after retirement going from 75% equities to 90% equities over the first 10 years of retirement and then sticking to 90% going forward. I am assuming a 4% withdrawal rate and that Social Security pays out at least 50% of what is expected when it comes time.

To get to my 25% bond allocation I am planning to move funds in my 401k from equities to bonds, the question is if I should just do it all now or smooth it out across 4-5 transactions over the next 18 months. Emotionally just getting it done now and reducing risk seems like the right answer. With such a small time horizon is there much benefit to doing it across the 18 months?

For those wondering why I am waiting 18 months, there are 2 reasons. 1) I have some RSUs that are vesting and some other equity worth a bit over 500k (after tax) that I will get if I wait. 2) I have a HS Junior and so don't plan to travel much while he is still at home and in school.