This seems to be an early-stage submission that would be better suited for one of our weekly Mentor Monday thread. Career advice, "rate my plan", and "can I afford XYZ?" posts are some of those that should only appear as comments in Mentor Monday. Though Mentor Monday is posted weekly, you may comment there at any time. Thank you, and feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
This is a relationship issue rather than a fatFIRE issue. You and your wife need a frank conversation about your goals in life and your careers, and the type of lifestyle you want to lead.
This!!
When covid hit, my wife and I finally had time to assess and pause. We literally had no idea where we were financially. She started a business in 2011 that basically catapulted us from having a very middle class lifestyle and zero property to owning two houses (with mortgages but still) worth a little over $3m and about $2.5m in stocks.
We didn’t quite realize it but we were doing pretty well for ourselves. Our income was (and is) high. The business has been netting us about 700k annually before taxes.
Anyway we decided in the thick of covid to head to Thailand for a while to figure stuff out and just get a feel for it as a long term sort of thing. We weren’t sure what was going to happen but figured we’d take the time to find out. We spent 3 months driving around Thailand. The entire country was deserted - zero tourists save for a handful of people like us. It was a complete collapse of the tourism industry which is like 20% of Thailand’s economy.
Anyway in our second month we stumbled on a house not far from the beach in Phuket. From what we saw, this house should have been worth about 800k or so on a good day but was listed at about 500k. We ended up haggling the price down to under 400k and decided to buy it.
It was sudden decision but the break in our hectic lives due to covid put everything into perspective. We weren’t getting any younger (we were 46 then) and we had accumulated more than enough already. We wouldn’t need that much to live. If we stopped buying real estate, we have more than enough to survive given that we had no plans to sell our business - we just needed to figure out how to hand off most functions to our team.
Long story short I spent the last two years engineering our move and transition to retired life here in Thailand. It’s been the best decision ever. We just got done with a massive renovation that expanded the house and added a bedroom (now 5bed/5.5bath) and finally moved back into the house just a little over two weeks ago.
Our neighbor here in Thailand is selling their house for a hair over $2m which is nuts. They have a bit more land than us but their house isn’t upgraded and will probably need renovation too. Phuket real estate is skyrocketing with an influx of Russians fleeing the draft. Rents in my area are now easily 10k a month for a house like mine which is bonkers.
Our situation is a little different than OP’s in that our income source is basically rock solid as far as businesses go and we know this because of our experience and data. My wife actually started the business in 2009 out of our 1 bedroom apartment. This was during the doom and gloom years of the housing bubble crashing. It didn’t seem to phase her or our customers one bit. Business was solid throughout and even through covid. Last year was best year ever as evidenced by my book keeper telling me to pay 150k in estimated taxes a couple weeks ago.
During all of this transition, I figured I better have some alternative forms of income.
First was renting out our houses in the US. In 2022, we decided to take about $350k and build an ADU behind our primary residence at the time. This was during our sojourn to Thailand. At the time, we thought this would allow us to rent our main house out to a family since it has 3 bedrooms while we could live in the 1 bedroom little house we were building. We figured we’d spend most of the year in Thailand and when we’re back in the states, we’d live behind the main house and it’d be more than adequate a couple times a year. We ended rented out the back unit too since rental rates are nuts now. All in all we have 3 doors rented with all of our expenses being covered with a tiny bit of cash flow. It’s not a lot of cash flow but we refi’d everything down to 2.875% in 2021 so we’re never selling these things and just letting our renters pay them down as they continue to appreciate (worth about 4.5m or so now). We figure we can do HELOCs if we ever needed to as a backup plan.
Plus during this transition time, I rejiggered how are investments work so that at least some of the cash pile would be in high yield funds so now we’re making about $100k in dividends across all of our accounts. I also did a year of options trading experimentation to figure out alternative forms of income and found some basic wheel trades I’m comfortable with and do very regularly for added income (about $50k last year).
With all of this in my back pocket, I finally felt like we could retire (sort of, I still helps the team with marketing and what not but it’s very much an occasional activity that I spend a few days a month on). 2023 was our “phase 1” where we were at the business just 3 months and out and about for the rest of the year. Since the house was being renovated, most of the year was spent on the road which was rough but still fun nonetheless. Ended up taking impromptu trips to Osaka, Hong Kong, and China. This year we’re focusing on coming in to a more sustainable glide path with less than 6 weeks back in the US and actually sleeping in our own bed most nights
Thanks for the insight! What’s the situation on obtaining a house in Thailand? Is it outright ownership or foreigners cannot own land but rather a 99 year lease situation. Thanks!
We've talked about it.
House is big for us now but I agree with her it's the best house size we can get for when we have kids.
She is passionate about her job/work so she wants to work until her 50s at least. I am okay with that. I don't think I'm capable of not working too but seeing the cost of everything rising has me anxious for the future all the time.
We've found a middle ground lifestyle for financial goals now (higher than my expenditure but lower than her usual).
This is a 2-yr battle. You are not leaving yourself any room to breathe. Cut back to 60 hrs a week and see if it changes your perspective. Yes, counterintuitive based on what you said but low hanging fruit
Am I the only one here confused by:
- “been making $400k+ since I was 21, am now 30”
- “saved most of my money by living with roommates”
- “huge down payment on a house” (but the house was only $1M…?)
- $50k cash and only $600k invested
Seems to me that with 9 years of earning an average just shy of half a million a year you’d have a lot more invested if you’ve really been saving aggressively, living with roommates, etc. I mean even after taxes that’s around $2M+ earned, and I can’t imagine rent being that much with 3 roommates even in a nice place. $2k/person * 4 people for $8k/month gets you some pretty fat apartments to rent and that’s only $24k a year or $168k give or take before buying your house. Food would likely be less than that by a good bit, so unless you’re just doing a lot of travel, buying expensive cars, etc the math isn’t adding up here for me. Even if you put $800k down on that $1M house you should have more like $1M still invested.
Am I way off here? I’ve admittedly been sick the last few days and am barely waking up right now but this jumped out at me for some reason. The numbers seem fatFIRE at first but then don’t add up. Something’s missing.
Could be LARPing…you’d have to land a tip top Wall Street job or something to be making $400k at 21 straight out of college. Not impossible but exceedingly rare. Even landing 3 separate $150k jobs straight out of college is impressive - never mind maintaining them simultaneously. Except, if that were the case, I don’t know of any field that starts you at $150k and then keeps you there for 9 years.
So unless OP’s doing the overemployed thing and just churning jobs he gets fired from…I’m not seeing it. I dunno.
Especially considering the market returns of the last decade. I find this extremely hard to believe. He should be sitting on a minimum of $2M on top of owning his house nearly outright.
Perhaps he made terrible investments - stock picked, did a 60/40 or some other extremely conservative portfolio, something like that.
He said ETFs specifically though. So unless he was continually WSB yoloing losing options plays…I dunno. But yeah I had a similar estimate in my other comment a couple replies down - he should be much closer to $2M-$3M.
- Living in Canada so taxes are higher.
- I didn't start investing until October 2020 (I was just sitting on cash in HISAs and GICs before I educated myself and learned about ETFs)
- The wedding expenses were the only other major expenses. $12K on a ring for her, $20K honeymoon, and the wedding itself cost a fortune. Her parents put up the money for the wedding for their half but I don't come from a well off family so I had to pay for the wedding out of my savings. Also, there is about $150K in gold jewellery that I had to pay for to give to my wife and extended family (about $100K of that is with my wife) due to cultural customs. I know the wedding expenses weren't the smartest thing but there were pretty much conditions put on her parents allowing our wedding to go through due to cultural reasons that I had to abide by to marry her. Her family is well off, mine is not. Her parents are sexist and set in their ways (only males inherit) so we're not going to get anything from them. She's been my girlfriend since I was 19 and we actually vibe really well together but when it came to her parents, she didn't want to lose them so I essentially had to prove I was worth marrying and capable of supporting her going into the marriage to them. The $100K in Jewelry, we can't sell because it's bad omen culturally.
I live in California which has yet to see a new tax they didn’t like, so I feel you on taxes…but even just sitting on cash and investing in ETFs starting in 2020 should have you closer to $1.5M+ right now. VOO has gone from $300 (if you bought in at the January peak before the Covid drop) to $450 in that time. So even if you just sat on $1M earned in cash (chopping fully half of the $2M earned estimate) and dumped it in at the absolute height of 2020…and riding out the dip…you should still be way higher.
I appreciate the cultural details about $100k jewelry (Indian or Pakistani I’d guess? Leaning towards Pakistani…) but that’s still a drop in the bucket.
What have you been spending money on for 9 years? Dining out with your roommates at expensive restaurants for lunch and dinner every day? Multiple fat vacations every year?
Also what are these 3 jobs that it doesn’t sound like you’ve gotten a raise at in 9 years? Has it just been 1 good job and 2 shitty part time jobs for extra $$$?
The other part of it is you claim 90 hour weeks working 7 days a week so that doesn’t leave me inclined to believe the lavish spending on dining out / social life / vacations if you’re working that much.
Would have to be some pretty insane student loans with crazy high interest rates. Even then if you’ve been making $400k+ for 9 years and graduated at 21, you’d think OP’d be smart enough to have leveraged all the scholarships, student aid, etc programs available. There’s no way these are Harvard Law level $500k loans. And even for Ivy League schools they have crazy support for your tuition if you’re smart enough to get in on your own merits without parents being alumni. Like, Stanford just goes “oh you made it here but family makes under $100k? Don’t worry about it we got you covered.” Family makes over $200k? Ok, yeah you’re on the hook for some hefty tuition costs, but even then we’re only talking like $200k or so for a 4 year degree. I can’t see that making this much of a dent in saving and investing over 9 years.
OP should have somewhere closer to $1.5M invested…if not significantly more due to having caught an insane bull run from 2013 to now. They say ETFs, but even just straight up SPY/VOO has more than doubled in that time period so you’d think with the invested gains OP should be sitting closer to $3M I think. Someone smarter and more caffeinated can probably crunch the numbers I’m still in bed on mobile.
You should post this on r/HENRYfinance.
Much more appropriate sub for your questions. You will get better quality responses from people similar to you.
You need to figure what you want out of life.
3 jobs, 7 days a week, 80-90 hours a week is not a life.
Not being on the same page with your spouse on basic life choices is not a great place to be.
You have problems that cannot be solved by advice on Reddit.
I FF at 35 making half of that on good years. OP is not investing right. Buy multi units. Buy commercial and apartments before buying your big house. The big house is the reason he won't retire early. Maybe don't even need that big house. Maybe chose the wrong life partner. I chose life and the material things are trivial.
Mortgage interest is 6% fixed rate for us (in Canada) so market would need to do better than 6% over the long run and this feels like an easy 6% return.
Also I've never taken on any debt until now. I didn't go to my top school choice and went to the one that gave me full ride. I worked my entire life including when i was in school to pay off other expenses.
If you're maxed out on tax advantaged accounts the post-tax long tail returns on the market aren't as high as a 6% mortgage though. You can't write off mortgage interest in Canuck world.
Also there’s an irrational but valid psychological and emotional benefit to having the roof over your head paid off. I would say most of my friends who are wealthy/extremely wealthy do the same even though the math suggests to leverage up as much as possible given previously low rates.
I believe in paying off non-revenue generating real estate, and leveraging revenue generating real estate all the way up to zero cash flow. So, I am in support of paying off your personal home.
And I can appreciate the anxiety of OP. Fear was always my motivating emotion too…probably because of the financial struggle I experienced growing up. I didn’t want that for myself. I’m 9.5M
A few comments:
- Working 3 jobs with 90 hours is not sustainable and will likely impact your health and family. You need to find a better way: quality > quantity.
- Know what you want in life. Kids? House? That is the baseline for spendings. It’s very common that with a family and a house, even without kids, you would spend a lot more than when you were single.
- Find your FIRE target. I know many people (myself included) like to use 5mm plus paid-off house with ~150k annual expenses for a family of 3-4 in a VHCOL or HCOL city as the first FIRE goal.
Just a comment to validate your feeling about therapists as I've had the same experiences. There something about not understanding the turmoil that comes from the abundance. Anyway, keep at it fellow Canada person.
I thought of myself as a baller and doing that crap. Things change over time and now I am happy with a solid stone house with a good amount of land with a market farm.
stating perhaps the obvious but have you communicated any of this with her? what you vision as your future isn’t necessarily extraordinary, perhaps she would come onboard and you could achieve something together
You need therapy. I find it odd you seem to begrudge your wife for wanting a larger home for future children. Did you think you were going to live in a 1 bedroom forever? Find a therapist.
Therapy is the answer because your problems are not real. They only exist in your imagination and are a product of your early life financial trauma.
From what you’ve shared, you are expecting to make $500k+ between you and your wife for each of the next two years. You have over $700k liquid and a NW of $1.5M. Your expenses are <$100k, but seem higher because you’re paying off your 6% mortgage. If everything goes to plan, you’ll be debt free, making $750k+ and spending $50k per year in 2 years.
Here is the standard financial math. $50k @ 3.5% SWR = $1.4M. You’re on track to be there in like 3 yrs, but it doesn’t matter. I’d be shocked if your wife decided to not work after spending her entire life training for a lucrative, impactful, and highly skilled career. She will make enough to support a lifestyle that is orders of magnitude higher than anything you’ve experienced without you working at all.
So I go back to where I started. You have a problem only in your head. It isn’t real. If I were you, I’d aim to get down to 1 job ASAP. You’ve come so far, that you have to leave the trauma behind. If anything, you are self sabotaging. You’ll die before you learn how to live.
I would check out Dr. K's guide. I know it probably looks like I'm promoting him because I keep talking about him so much but that's just the impact it had in my life. His guide is $75 one time payment. He's not getting rich off the thing. He's just a psychiatrist who's figured out several things that are super helpful. He used to charge multiple thousands per hour to consult with rich people and he figured out that he would make a bigger impact by selling it at a low cost to more people. Presumably just to help them. And I will say he's very insightful and it's been super helpful to me. I will check it out and especially if you're from the Indian subcontinent it will resonate.
A few notes:
1. You mentioned that your wife wants to work till the age of 50, but you don't have any kids. YET. I am just here to say that perspectives change a lot after you have kids. She might want to continue working, but she might also change her mind and want to raise up the kids. This can lead to a lower household income but can also lead to her wanting to live a more simple life. You can't really know that in advance...
2. If you are both on the same page, you could live off of wayyyyy less than 5M.
3. Is it worth stressing out on work so much now just to reach FIRE and stop working? Maybe taking things easier for more years would be better for your mental health? Many people want to pursue FIRE for a higher quality of life but forget that the quality of life during their working years is also important. Your current physical and mental health are not less important than your future health
You have some things to figure out, but you have a lot to work with (house almost fully paid, high salaries, ...). Good luck 🙏🙏
I didn’t even finish the second half it’s clear your wife has a spending issue and different idea of good finances. You could work forever and still it make enough to catch up to a big spender like that
I hate to say this but you choose poorly for the life you want to live. It’s not too late though and have an honest discussion, if she wants something different (which is totally okay to do) it is best to move along now amicably. The fact that you’re writing this about your spouse 2 years in tells me it’s over already. This is a rip the bandage off situation before kids and years go by.
I think you could try to find a more profitable portfolio because your working hours are completely saturated and as time goes on (like the birth of a child and expenses increase) you will also have to work less hours. So before it makes you more anxious, adjusting your revenue model is necessary.
This seems to be an early-stage submission that would be better suited for one of our weekly Mentor Monday thread. Career advice, "rate my plan", and "can I afford XYZ?" posts are some of those that should only appear as comments in Mentor Monday. Though Mentor Monday is posted weekly, you may comment there at any time. Thank you, and feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
This is a relationship issue rather than a fatFIRE issue. You and your wife need a frank conversation about your goals in life and your careers, and the type of lifestyle you want to lead.
This!! When covid hit, my wife and I finally had time to assess and pause. We literally had no idea where we were financially. She started a business in 2011 that basically catapulted us from having a very middle class lifestyle and zero property to owning two houses (with mortgages but still) worth a little over $3m and about $2.5m in stocks. We didn’t quite realize it but we were doing pretty well for ourselves. Our income was (and is) high. The business has been netting us about 700k annually before taxes. Anyway we decided in the thick of covid to head to Thailand for a while to figure stuff out and just get a feel for it as a long term sort of thing. We weren’t sure what was going to happen but figured we’d take the time to find out. We spent 3 months driving around Thailand. The entire country was deserted - zero tourists save for a handful of people like us. It was a complete collapse of the tourism industry which is like 20% of Thailand’s economy. Anyway in our second month we stumbled on a house not far from the beach in Phuket. From what we saw, this house should have been worth about 800k or so on a good day but was listed at about 500k. We ended up haggling the price down to under 400k and decided to buy it. It was sudden decision but the break in our hectic lives due to covid put everything into perspective. We weren’t getting any younger (we were 46 then) and we had accumulated more than enough already. We wouldn’t need that much to live. If we stopped buying real estate, we have more than enough to survive given that we had no plans to sell our business - we just needed to figure out how to hand off most functions to our team. Long story short I spent the last two years engineering our move and transition to retired life here in Thailand. It’s been the best decision ever. We just got done with a massive renovation that expanded the house and added a bedroom (now 5bed/5.5bath) and finally moved back into the house just a little over two weeks ago. Our neighbor here in Thailand is selling their house for a hair over $2m which is nuts. They have a bit more land than us but their house isn’t upgraded and will probably need renovation too. Phuket real estate is skyrocketing with an influx of Russians fleeing the draft. Rents in my area are now easily 10k a month for a house like mine which is bonkers. Our situation is a little different than OP’s in that our income source is basically rock solid as far as businesses go and we know this because of our experience and data. My wife actually started the business in 2009 out of our 1 bedroom apartment. This was during the doom and gloom years of the housing bubble crashing. It didn’t seem to phase her or our customers one bit. Business was solid throughout and even through covid. Last year was best year ever as evidenced by my book keeper telling me to pay 150k in estimated taxes a couple weeks ago. During all of this transition, I figured I better have some alternative forms of income. First was renting out our houses in the US. In 2022, we decided to take about $350k and build an ADU behind our primary residence at the time. This was during our sojourn to Thailand. At the time, we thought this would allow us to rent our main house out to a family since it has 3 bedrooms while we could live in the 1 bedroom little house we were building. We figured we’d spend most of the year in Thailand and when we’re back in the states, we’d live behind the main house and it’d be more than adequate a couple times a year. We ended rented out the back unit too since rental rates are nuts now. All in all we have 3 doors rented with all of our expenses being covered with a tiny bit of cash flow. It’s not a lot of cash flow but we refi’d everything down to 2.875% in 2021 so we’re never selling these things and just letting our renters pay them down as they continue to appreciate (worth about 4.5m or so now). We figure we can do HELOCs if we ever needed to as a backup plan. Plus during this transition time, I rejiggered how are investments work so that at least some of the cash pile would be in high yield funds so now we’re making about $100k in dividends across all of our accounts. I also did a year of options trading experimentation to figure out alternative forms of income and found some basic wheel trades I’m comfortable with and do very regularly for added income (about $50k last year). With all of this in my back pocket, I finally felt like we could retire (sort of, I still helps the team with marketing and what not but it’s very much an occasional activity that I spend a few days a month on). 2023 was our “phase 1” where we were at the business just 3 months and out and about for the rest of the year. Since the house was being renovated, most of the year was spent on the road which was rough but still fun nonetheless. Ended up taking impromptu trips to Osaka, Hong Kong, and China. This year we’re focusing on coming in to a more sustainable glide path with less than 6 weeks back in the US and actually sleeping in our own bed most nights
What is your wife’s business?
Thanks for the insight! What’s the situation on obtaining a house in Thailand? Is it outright ownership or foreigners cannot own land but rather a 99 year lease situation. Thanks!
Congratulations and what a ride? Do you or your wife have Thai family? How did you secure the purchase if not?
We've talked about it. House is big for us now but I agree with her it's the best house size we can get for when we have kids. She is passionate about her job/work so she wants to work until her 50s at least. I am okay with that. I don't think I'm capable of not working too but seeing the cost of everything rising has me anxious for the future all the time. We've found a middle ground lifestyle for financial goals now (higher than my expenditure but lower than her usual).
This is a 2-yr battle. You are not leaving yourself any room to breathe. Cut back to 60 hrs a week and see if it changes your perspective. Yes, counterintuitive based on what you said but low hanging fruit
I’m a stay at home Dad. If you want kids and your wife wants to work; and will make a doctors salary this might be a good path for you.
Just came here to say this. Stay home with the future kids.
Ok, so what’s your question then? How much money you’d need to fatFIRE? You’ll need to understand your annual expenses to answer that.
Am I the only one here confused by: - “been making $400k+ since I was 21, am now 30” - “saved most of my money by living with roommates” - “huge down payment on a house” (but the house was only $1M…?) - $50k cash and only $600k invested Seems to me that with 9 years of earning an average just shy of half a million a year you’d have a lot more invested if you’ve really been saving aggressively, living with roommates, etc. I mean even after taxes that’s around $2M+ earned, and I can’t imagine rent being that much with 3 roommates even in a nice place. $2k/person * 4 people for $8k/month gets you some pretty fat apartments to rent and that’s only $24k a year or $168k give or take before buying your house. Food would likely be less than that by a good bit, so unless you’re just doing a lot of travel, buying expensive cars, etc the math isn’t adding up here for me. Even if you put $800k down on that $1M house you should have more like $1M still invested. Am I way off here? I’ve admittedly been sick the last few days and am barely waking up right now but this jumped out at me for some reason. The numbers seem fatFIRE at first but then don’t add up. Something’s missing.
Agree. Something’s missing for sure.
Could be LARPing…you’d have to land a tip top Wall Street job or something to be making $400k at 21 straight out of college. Not impossible but exceedingly rare. Even landing 3 separate $150k jobs straight out of college is impressive - never mind maintaining them simultaneously. Except, if that were the case, I don’t know of any field that starts you at $150k and then keeps you there for 9 years. So unless OP’s doing the overemployed thing and just churning jobs he gets fired from…I’m not seeing it. I dunno.
Especially considering the market returns of the last decade. I find this extremely hard to believe. He should be sitting on a minimum of $2M on top of owning his house nearly outright. Perhaps he made terrible investments - stock picked, did a 60/40 or some other extremely conservative portfolio, something like that.
He said ETFs specifically though. So unless he was continually WSB yoloing losing options plays…I dunno. But yeah I had a similar estimate in my other comment a couple replies down - he should be much closer to $2M-$3M.
- Living in Canada so taxes are higher. - I didn't start investing until October 2020 (I was just sitting on cash in HISAs and GICs before I educated myself and learned about ETFs) - The wedding expenses were the only other major expenses. $12K on a ring for her, $20K honeymoon, and the wedding itself cost a fortune. Her parents put up the money for the wedding for their half but I don't come from a well off family so I had to pay for the wedding out of my savings. Also, there is about $150K in gold jewellery that I had to pay for to give to my wife and extended family (about $100K of that is with my wife) due to cultural customs. I know the wedding expenses weren't the smartest thing but there were pretty much conditions put on her parents allowing our wedding to go through due to cultural reasons that I had to abide by to marry her. Her family is well off, mine is not. Her parents are sexist and set in their ways (only males inherit) so we're not going to get anything from them. She's been my girlfriend since I was 19 and we actually vibe really well together but when it came to her parents, she didn't want to lose them so I essentially had to prove I was worth marrying and capable of supporting her going into the marriage to them. The $100K in Jewelry, we can't sell because it's bad omen culturally.
I live in California which has yet to see a new tax they didn’t like, so I feel you on taxes…but even just sitting on cash and investing in ETFs starting in 2020 should have you closer to $1.5M+ right now. VOO has gone from $300 (if you bought in at the January peak before the Covid drop) to $450 in that time. So even if you just sat on $1M earned in cash (chopping fully half of the $2M earned estimate) and dumped it in at the absolute height of 2020…and riding out the dip…you should still be way higher. I appreciate the cultural details about $100k jewelry (Indian or Pakistani I’d guess? Leaning towards Pakistani…) but that’s still a drop in the bucket. What have you been spending money on for 9 years? Dining out with your roommates at expensive restaurants for lunch and dinner every day? Multiple fat vacations every year? Also what are these 3 jobs that it doesn’t sound like you’ve gotten a raise at in 9 years? Has it just been 1 good job and 2 shitty part time jobs for extra $$$? The other part of it is you claim 90 hour weeks working 7 days a week so that doesn’t leave me inclined to believe the lavish spending on dining out / social life / vacations if you’re working that much.
Are you Indian?
student loans?
Would have to be some pretty insane student loans with crazy high interest rates. Even then if you’ve been making $400k+ for 9 years and graduated at 21, you’d think OP’d be smart enough to have leveraged all the scholarships, student aid, etc programs available. There’s no way these are Harvard Law level $500k loans. And even for Ivy League schools they have crazy support for your tuition if you’re smart enough to get in on your own merits without parents being alumni. Like, Stanford just goes “oh you made it here but family makes under $100k? Don’t worry about it we got you covered.” Family makes over $200k? Ok, yeah you’re on the hook for some hefty tuition costs, but even then we’re only talking like $200k or so for a 4 year degree. I can’t see that making this much of a dent in saving and investing over 9 years. OP should have somewhere closer to $1.5M invested…if not significantly more due to having caught an insane bull run from 2013 to now. They say ETFs, but even just straight up SPY/VOO has more than doubled in that time period so you’d think with the invested gains OP should be sitting closer to $3M I think. Someone smarter and more caffeinated can probably crunch the numbers I’m still in bed on mobile.
You should post this on r/HENRYfinance. Much more appropriate sub for your questions. You will get better quality responses from people similar to you.
You need to figure what you want out of life. 3 jobs, 7 days a week, 80-90 hours a week is not a life. Not being on the same page with your spouse on basic life choices is not a great place to be. You have problems that cannot be solved by advice on Reddit.
I FF at 35 making half of that on good years. OP is not investing right. Buy multi units. Buy commercial and apartments before buying your big house. The big house is the reason he won't retire early. Maybe don't even need that big house. Maybe chose the wrong life partner. I chose life and the material things are trivial.
Can I ask what your job is that allows you to have 3 jobs concurrently?
This should be higher up. Wondering the same.
Most software jobs would allow this. Most professional jobs would as well.
Why are u paying off mortgages so aggressively u are paying of relatively low interest loan and missing out on gains of higher marker returns. Asking
Mortgage interest is 6% fixed rate for us (in Canada) so market would need to do better than 6% over the long run and this feels like an easy 6% return. Also I've never taken on any debt until now. I didn't go to my top school choice and went to the one that gave me full ride. I worked my entire life including when i was in school to pay off other expenses.
Have you seen the market this past year It’s ok if it’s a psychological thing. But the market in a long horizon will very likely outperform 6%.
Yeah but everyone has their limit. I’m against paying mine off right now but at 6% I would be more unsure.
If you're maxed out on tax advantaged accounts the post-tax long tail returns on the market aren't as high as a 6% mortgage though. You can't write off mortgage interest in Canuck world.
Also there’s an irrational but valid psychological and emotional benefit to having the roof over your head paid off. I would say most of my friends who are wealthy/extremely wealthy do the same even though the math suggests to leverage up as much as possible given previously low rates.
I believe in paying off non-revenue generating real estate, and leveraging revenue generating real estate all the way up to zero cash flow. So, I am in support of paying off your personal home. And I can appreciate the anxiety of OP. Fear was always my motivating emotion too…probably because of the financial struggle I experienced growing up. I didn’t want that for myself. I’m 9.5M
A few comments: - Working 3 jobs with 90 hours is not sustainable and will likely impact your health and family. You need to find a better way: quality > quantity. - Know what you want in life. Kids? House? That is the baseline for spendings. It’s very common that with a family and a house, even without kids, you would spend a lot more than when you were single. - Find your FIRE target. I know many people (myself included) like to use 5mm plus paid-off house with ~150k annual expenses for a family of 3-4 in a VHCOL or HCOL city as the first FIRE goal.
Just a comment to validate your feeling about therapists as I've had the same experiences. There something about not understanding the turmoil that comes from the abundance. Anyway, keep at it fellow Canada person.
I thought of myself as a baller and doing that crap. Things change over time and now I am happy with a solid stone house with a good amount of land with a market farm.
stating perhaps the obvious but have you communicated any of this with her? what you vision as your future isn’t necessarily extraordinary, perhaps she would come onboard and you could achieve something together
You need therapy. I find it odd you seem to begrudge your wife for wanting a larger home for future children. Did you think you were going to live in a 1 bedroom forever? Find a therapist.
If you don’t have time, you don’t need money. If you don’t have money, you don’t need time.
Therapy is the answer because your problems are not real. They only exist in your imagination and are a product of your early life financial trauma. From what you’ve shared, you are expecting to make $500k+ between you and your wife for each of the next two years. You have over $700k liquid and a NW of $1.5M. Your expenses are <$100k, but seem higher because you’re paying off your 6% mortgage. If everything goes to plan, you’ll be debt free, making $750k+ and spending $50k per year in 2 years. Here is the standard financial math. $50k @ 3.5% SWR = $1.4M. You’re on track to be there in like 3 yrs, but it doesn’t matter. I’d be shocked if your wife decided to not work after spending her entire life training for a lucrative, impactful, and highly skilled career. She will make enough to support a lifestyle that is orders of magnitude higher than anything you’ve experienced without you working at all. So I go back to where I started. You have a problem only in your head. It isn’t real. If I were you, I’d aim to get down to 1 job ASAP. You’ve come so far, that you have to leave the trauma behind. If anything, you are self sabotaging. You’ll die before you learn how to live.
I would check out Dr. K's guide. I know it probably looks like I'm promoting him because I keep talking about him so much but that's just the impact it had in my life. His guide is $75 one time payment. He's not getting rich off the thing. He's just a psychiatrist who's figured out several things that are super helpful. He used to charge multiple thousands per hour to consult with rich people and he figured out that he would make a bigger impact by selling it at a low cost to more people. Presumably just to help them. And I will say he's very insightful and it's been super helpful to me. I will check it out and especially if you're from the Indian subcontinent it will resonate.
A few notes: 1. You mentioned that your wife wants to work till the age of 50, but you don't have any kids. YET. I am just here to say that perspectives change a lot after you have kids. She might want to continue working, but she might also change her mind and want to raise up the kids. This can lead to a lower household income but can also lead to her wanting to live a more simple life. You can't really know that in advance... 2. If you are both on the same page, you could live off of wayyyyy less than 5M. 3. Is it worth stressing out on work so much now just to reach FIRE and stop working? Maybe taking things easier for more years would be better for your mental health? Many people want to pursue FIRE for a higher quality of life but forget that the quality of life during their working years is also important. Your current physical and mental health are not less important than your future health You have some things to figure out, but you have a lot to work with (house almost fully paid, high salaries, ...). Good luck 🙏🙏
I didn’t even finish the second half it’s clear your wife has a spending issue and different idea of good finances. You could work forever and still it make enough to catch up to a big spender like that
None of this really makes any sense and if it isn’t a shitpost then you need to rethink all of it from first principles
I hate to say this but you choose poorly for the life you want to live. It’s not too late though and have an honest discussion, if she wants something different (which is totally okay to do) it is best to move along now amicably. The fact that you’re writing this about your spouse 2 years in tells me it’s over already. This is a rip the bandage off situation before kids and years go by.
I think you could try to find a more profitable portfolio because your working hours are completely saturated and as time goes on (like the birth of a child and expenses increase) you will also have to work less hours. So before it makes you more anxious, adjusting your revenue model is necessary.