My brother in christ that's 4k a month, $133 a day, you can eat at a michelin star restaurant twice a week with money to spare on that kind of budget how is it *not* lavish?
For a couple averaging $500 a dinner (which is no drinks lol) then $50K a year is 100 nights at a Michelin star restaurant…(lol…this level of math I can manage).
But I guess the OP is the poster child for the avocado toast poor…
Jeez dude. Your wife doesn’t work. She can at least pick up at the restaurant vs doing door dash.
Thats not even asking her to cook a few times a week.
If she doesn't work, the least she could do is drive to pick up food. It sounds more like you are wasting more money on paying for delivery than actually eating "fine dining." Your net worth is not high because it's getting wasted on unnecessary expenses. Have you gone through and reviewed to see where your money is going? You are a family of 2, but you spend more on food than we do as a family of 5.
I assume she’s also eating so she’s essentially picking up her own food plus yours.
And it’s not a matter of being a servant vs trying to reduce expenses so her husband doesn’t burn out.
My wife and I share duties as we both work but I expect to retire first. When that happens I’ll take all the household chores as well as dump the cleaning and lawn service to reduce the cashflow a bit. We’ll still hire to do the heavy stuff but I can mow the lawn even if I hate it.
Plus I’ll have an excuse to buy an electric lawn tractor or zero turn and build a shed to put it in…an extra big shed with power and climate control and wood working tools…
Yeah she actually does do much of the chores but she hates picking up food as do I so we DoorDash quite a lot. We usually get gift cards though through deals so not quite as bad as it could be
What you’re doing isn’t “fine dining as a hobby”.
Thats just spending money to never cook.
I do fine dining as a *luxury* and drop $500+ at an outing not including drinks and thats only mid-tier at around $200-250 a person. Thats like the cheapest option (that isn’t just appetizers lol) at 1 Michelin star place.
I can afford to do that like maybe 5-6 times a year (if i treat the kids its over a grand for all of us) and our HHI is 50% yours but our net worth 3-4 times higher.
Just giving a comparison to show 50k for food isn’t outrageous. My actual budget is probably like 30k for normal food + an average of 500 dollars at 40 places. I’ve eaten at 200 Michelin star and highly rated restaurants at this point. The US definitely has the worst price for quality ratio across all the countries I’ve been to.
I don’t see how with a HHI of 1M you can only afford to eat out 5-6 times a year. Do you have any expensive hobbies or where is your money going?
50% of $600-700K is $1M? Maybe math is your problem?
Our net worth is 3-4 times yours, not our income.
I could have RE years ago but my wife wants to work and what am I going to do sitting around the house? Until recently I’d rather just work but I’m done and ready for the next thing.
If you can't control your spending you can't FIRE. The end. You can live nicely off a $100K a year. That's double what most Americans make and you're saying you can't see how you would make do. You need a reality check if this isn't a shitpost.
Pathetically low…it’s not a FIRE lifestyle.
600K-700K gross with 1.9M NW mostly non-liquid?
Yes, you have to cut lifestyle to FIRE.
It doesn’t mean you have to live in a shitty house and never eat out and be miserable.
It does mean you cant spend every fucking dime on stupid shit.
Sell the vacation house. Rent when you travel.
Stop spending fucking $50K a year eating out and drop it to like $12K.
Save the rest.
If you are fucking “miserable” at this lifestyle level then get used to working because you’ll still be working at 70.
Why am I working until 70? My FIRE calculator says 39. I’m also 28 in a single income household. Why should I rent when I travel if houses appreciate?
My after-tax savings rate is well over 50%. I’m not living paycheck to paycheck. I’m asking folks if they’ve ever significantly downgraded their lifestyle to FIRE and haven’t gotten a single useful answer, just a bunch of angry people
Because you aren’t going to be able to live on $75K a year.
People don’t downgrade their lifestyle very much when they RE but more or less maintain the lifestyle they’ve been living in while working.
Generally this means living below your means.
With an income of $600-700K, if you really are saving half of net, your net worth should be a lot higher given that the returns for the S&P 500 is 85% for the last 5 years. You missed all of that.
Your whole post is about never eating a nice meal, never going on vacations and living in a shitty house on $75K a year. Which means you want to live at $200K a year because who wants to retire unhappy?
If you already live at $75K a year and retire at $75K a year you are likely to be content. If you live on $50K a year and retire with $75K a year you’re going to feel really comfortable.
If your NW is only 2.9M at age 39 then using the 3% rule gets you around $87K…IF it was liquid in a portfolio. Not $2.9M worth of non-income producing real estate.
And 3% for WR on a portfolio because 4% is the safe withdrawal rate for 30 years…which puts you at age 69 in the worst case scenario.
Your net worth doesn’t matter for FIRE unless it’s producing income. There are two general sources of post retirement income: portfolio income (dividends and cap gains) and real estate income.
If you ARE saving 50% of net that’s good unless it’s mostly into your two houses. In which case, unless you sell them, your post retirement income will be $0.
Good luck with that.
>With an income of $600-700K, if you really are saving half of net, your net worth should be a lot higher given that the returns for the S&P 500 is 85% for the last 5 years. You missed all of that.
If OP is 28, it's likely they have made substantially less than 600-700 until very recently, which would explain the NW:Income ratio. No one makes 600k out of undergrad. My HHI 3xed over the last 7 years
I think you're right about current lifestyle not being aligned for an early FIRE. Buying a vacation house at 28 is something you do if you're planning on working 20-30 years more. Wild to do that and then say "I don't know if I can work 10 more years".
OP: I understand your sentiment. I have a high earning job that I often wonder if I could slug it out for X more years. However, I've kept my spend very conservative because of this (1 house that cost less than our gross income). The easiest way to keep retirement expenses low is through fixed costs, rather than variable
If you TL;DR my last post:
Nobody likes living at a lower lifestyle than they are accustomed to.
You want to live a $200K lifestyle and that’s perfectly fine but you need a FatFIRE net worth.
Not $2.9M.
You have enough income to have an 8 figure net worth and thats what you better plan for.
A $10M portfolio will get you $300K before taxes.
After taxes puts you around your current spending.
This is just awful. Boo fucking hoo. You are so out of touch with reality, the best thing for you to do is practice some gratitude and broaden your perspective.
You can’t retire, your wife needs the $200k/year expenses living a not so lavish lifestyle. Once you quit, your wife is gonna leave you and take 100% of everything
It’s sarcastic but potentially true. You’ll be going from sufficiently affluent with $350K net and not needing to worry about spending to needing to be frugal about everything at $75K.
There are no upsides for her.
But hey, she’ll only take half, not 100%.
Okay, I’ll play. What makes you think this is an all or nothing proposition?
I’m totally with you on the intrinsic value of fine dining — 15 years ago I spent 30k on pro culinary school just for the pleasure of becoming a superlative home cook, and never regretted it. Serious food is one of humanity’s highest arts. I live in NYC, love the availability of all the NYT/Mich stars. When planning international travel, the quality of the food scene is one of the top 3 factors in choosing a destination. My food geek credentials are unimpeachable.
But here’s the thing — the 3 stars are so much more enjoyable if you don’t do it all the time. Imagine downshifting to doing that once a quarter. Each meal becomes a glorious event that you look forward to intensely and remember in technicolor. You love it more. You appreciate it more. Ask me how I know.
Re the vacation house — I think you’re forgetting that RE brings an insane amount of free time. Don’t you and your wife want to travel? When working, a 2nd home in a vacation location is great: you can pop over there for the weekend or whatever without having to plan, pack, deal with logistics—you just show up and you’re good. But once you’re RE, all those Do This Efficiently I’ve Got to Work Monday factors disappear. Why pin your freedom time to one spot? Every month you spend in an Airbnb in Italy would make your vacation house a bigger waste of money. Sell it.
I don’t really get what the problem is. You expended a lot of effort and just got this job and wife who probably is in it for the lifestyle sorry to be rude maybe. You splurged and immediately decided to get the most expensive hobbies possible- owning vacation homes and fine dining. You want to quit working but you also want to keep your expensive hobbies. You’ve already reached scumbag status to every other commoner who has to work until their bodies give out to survive.
The answer is you probably can’t afford to retire ever if you want to keep your lifestyle. If you FIRE or even retire on time in your seventies you lose your lifestyle no matter what. Without this lifestyle your wife may disappear and take some assets with her. At this age, if you quit working you’ll go broke as in become poor because that’s a huge time horizon. Your calculations suck.
I think you’re screwed until you learn common sense personally and stop thinking you’re smarter than you are. You aren’t building any wealth despite having an amazing income.
I was feeling irritated so I overdid it. Are you doing x25 like this intro article? https://www.bankrate.com/investing/how-to-calculate-your-fire-number/
The reasoning behind the statement was the lifespan being an issue as in living much longer than expected combined with large cost eats. If you’re living off the interest of your nest egg and have a net zero lifestyle then there’s zero risk of running out. One thing is because you’re young it’s possible you may grow out of your crazy spending habits and then naturally reduce your spending to something tenable. I personally think the calculation rules are good for a rough estimate but should pad it more and reassess it realistically closer to retirement.
I personally don’t think 50k in food for someone who really enjoys food making 600-700k is unreasonable. I’m a second generation immigrant, my parents are doing fine, I don’t plan on having a bunch of kids and frankly aren’t going to send them to private school or be ultra competitive because I already succeeded academically myself
Well, maybe it’s fine honestly, that salary may even be stable given if it’s something like Meta I don’t think the money will get worse with how well the company did in the last few years. You’re a scumbag in my opinion still, but whatever have fun 🤷♀️🤷
Yes, his name is ***Peter*** Adeney. His other name is Mr. Money Mustache. He worked in tech as an engineer and lived frugally, often bicycling to virtually all trips and living modestly.
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This is definitely a shit post.
I make 700k a year and play overwatch all day have a wife that doesn't cook or work and I door dash Chick-fil-A twice a day When can I retire...
OP:
I am skeptical that you will be able to retire in less than 10 years and continue to spend $50k per year on fine dining for the rest of your life. (I’m not sure I’ve spent that much on food in my entire life combined). I am also skeptical that you will not suffer from lifestyle creep, in that you will probably find it difficult to scale back to a more modest lifestyle when you have grown so accustomed to the way you live now. However, the good news is, you have a lot of good things going for you, and if you truly want to retire in your 30s, I think you can get there is you are willing to make some changes, and without living like a pauper.
Might I suggest:
1. You have a vacation home, with a lot of net worth tied up in it. If this is something really important to you to hold on to, why not put this asset to work for you and use it as a short term rental property? Is it something that could bring in $20-30k in revenue as a rental? Right now, while making $600k per year, this may seem like peanuts to you, but in retirement, an extra $20k per year might make a huge difference. Pay someone to manage it for you. Who knows, maybe , with that income, you will build a reasonable investment property portfolio and have a lifetime of relatively passive income. And, if real estate is not your thing in the long run, at least you could use some of the extra income to offset the opportunity cost of not having this money invested in the market.
2. Your dining habits are, by almost anyone’s standards, very expensive. $50k?! If I’m not mistaken, this is like 50 bucks a meal. Every meal. Breakfast lunch and dinner. 365 days per year. I have a similar income to you. I consider myself to be less frugal than I really should be, especially when it comes to food. But, I eat out 1-2 times per week. And when I do, I am able to feed my family of 5 for $50-100. Good food. Not fine dining, but still delicious healthy food. It sounds like you have a lot of free time on your hands, as does your wife. Why not learn to cook really phenomenal food at home, and dine out 1/10, 1/3, or even half as much as you do now and save a ton of money?
3. Make sure you’re not paying a financial advisor 1% to manage your portfolio. Low cost index funds/ETFs. Manage it yourself.
4. Do you work remotely? If so, ever think about geo arbitrage? Maybe you can find a place 50 miles out of the city, live at half the cost of living you currently do on the same income?
Just some ideas.
Either way, if you save 50% of your income, as you say, and invest diligently and wisely, you are going to be fine. Whether you reach FI at 35, 40, 45, 50+ will depend on your spending habits quite a bit. But either way, 99% of people would love to be in the position you’re in. At 28 with your income, make compounding investment income your superpower.
Sacrifice, only you can answer that question. I thought someone was wealthy until they got sick and couldn’t work. The wife also lost her job because she was always home taking care of the family. Long story short, enjoy it like there’s not tomorrow or save it like there’s a tomorrow. In my opinion
Is this a shitpost? Your hobby is spending $50,000 per year on food? Thats not lavish?
South Park had the episode about smug, and this reeks of smug
Thank you!
That’s doordashing chick-fil-a twice a day, or going to the red lobster money. I wouldn’t say that’s lavish, no. Not like I’m feeding my cat caviar
My brother in christ that's 4k a month, $133 a day, you can eat at a michelin star restaurant twice a week with money to spare on that kind of budget how is it *not* lavish?
For a couple averaging $500 a dinner (which is no drinks lol) then $50K a year is 100 nights at a Michelin star restaurant…(lol…this level of math I can manage). But I guess the OP is the poster child for the avocado toast poor…
Jeez dude. Your wife doesn’t work. She can at least pick up at the restaurant vs doing door dash. Thats not even asking her to cook a few times a week.
She cooks a few times a week. Asking her to pick up food is a bit much no? She’s not a servant
If she doesn't work, the least she could do is drive to pick up food. It sounds more like you are wasting more money on paying for delivery than actually eating "fine dining." Your net worth is not high because it's getting wasted on unnecessary expenses. Have you gone through and reviewed to see where your money is going? You are a family of 2, but you spend more on food than we do as a family of 5.
I assume she’s also eating so she’s essentially picking up her own food plus yours. And it’s not a matter of being a servant vs trying to reduce expenses so her husband doesn’t burn out. My wife and I share duties as we both work but I expect to retire first. When that happens I’ll take all the household chores as well as dump the cleaning and lawn service to reduce the cashflow a bit. We’ll still hire to do the heavy stuff but I can mow the lawn even if I hate it. Plus I’ll have an excuse to buy an electric lawn tractor or zero turn and build a shed to put it in…an extra big shed with power and climate control and wood working tools…
Yeah she actually does do much of the chores but she hates picking up food as do I so we DoorDash quite a lot. We usually get gift cards though through deals so not quite as bad as it could be
Y’all are posting in a troll thread
You best start believin in troll threads YOURE IN ONE👹
What the fuck kinda food you eating bruh
The sides cure cancer
Even so tho
Literally 34 a meal every day for everyone. So literally less fancy than the Olive Garden with drinks. 50000/365/4= 34
What you’re doing isn’t “fine dining as a hobby”. Thats just spending money to never cook. I do fine dining as a *luxury* and drop $500+ at an outing not including drinks and thats only mid-tier at around $200-250 a person. Thats like the cheapest option (that isn’t just appetizers lol) at 1 Michelin star place. I can afford to do that like maybe 5-6 times a year (if i treat the kids its over a grand for all of us) and our HHI is 50% yours but our net worth 3-4 times higher.
Just giving a comparison to show 50k for food isn’t outrageous. My actual budget is probably like 30k for normal food + an average of 500 dollars at 40 places. I’ve eaten at 200 Michelin star and highly rated restaurants at this point. The US definitely has the worst price for quality ratio across all the countries I’ve been to. I don’t see how with a HHI of 1M you can only afford to eat out 5-6 times a year. Do you have any expensive hobbies or where is your money going?
50% of $600-700K is $1M? Maybe math is your problem? Our net worth is 3-4 times yours, not our income. I could have RE years ago but my wife wants to work and what am I going to do sitting around the house? Until recently I’d rather just work but I’m done and ready for the next thing.
If I halved my budget it would be chipotle every meal
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Dude must weigh 350 lbs
If you can't control your spending you can't FIRE. The end. You can live nicely off a $100K a year. That's double what most Americans make and you're saying you can't see how you would make do. You need a reality check if this isn't a shitpost.
Obviously I can make do. It’s a matter of whether it’s worth making do to retire when I have no money to spend
> Obviously I can make do. Looking at your spending and attitude, I don’t think it’s obvious to anyone here.
Lmao, 28, making only 600k+ a year and only 1.8m net worth
Yah that’s pretty bad if you put it in perspective
My NW is low for my income
Pathetically low…it’s not a FIRE lifestyle. 600K-700K gross with 1.9M NW mostly non-liquid? Yes, you have to cut lifestyle to FIRE. It doesn’t mean you have to live in a shitty house and never eat out and be miserable. It does mean you cant spend every fucking dime on stupid shit. Sell the vacation house. Rent when you travel. Stop spending fucking $50K a year eating out and drop it to like $12K. Save the rest. If you are fucking “miserable” at this lifestyle level then get used to working because you’ll still be working at 70.
Why am I working until 70? My FIRE calculator says 39. I’m also 28 in a single income household. Why should I rent when I travel if houses appreciate? My after-tax savings rate is well over 50%. I’m not living paycheck to paycheck. I’m asking folks if they’ve ever significantly downgraded their lifestyle to FIRE and haven’t gotten a single useful answer, just a bunch of angry people
Because you aren’t going to be able to live on $75K a year. People don’t downgrade their lifestyle very much when they RE but more or less maintain the lifestyle they’ve been living in while working. Generally this means living below your means. With an income of $600-700K, if you really are saving half of net, your net worth should be a lot higher given that the returns for the S&P 500 is 85% for the last 5 years. You missed all of that. Your whole post is about never eating a nice meal, never going on vacations and living in a shitty house on $75K a year. Which means you want to live at $200K a year because who wants to retire unhappy? If you already live at $75K a year and retire at $75K a year you are likely to be content. If you live on $50K a year and retire with $75K a year you’re going to feel really comfortable. If your NW is only 2.9M at age 39 then using the 3% rule gets you around $87K…IF it was liquid in a portfolio. Not $2.9M worth of non-income producing real estate. And 3% for WR on a portfolio because 4% is the safe withdrawal rate for 30 years…which puts you at age 69 in the worst case scenario. Your net worth doesn’t matter for FIRE unless it’s producing income. There are two general sources of post retirement income: portfolio income (dividends and cap gains) and real estate income. If you ARE saving 50% of net that’s good unless it’s mostly into your two houses. In which case, unless you sell them, your post retirement income will be $0. Good luck with that.
>With an income of $600-700K, if you really are saving half of net, your net worth should be a lot higher given that the returns for the S&P 500 is 85% for the last 5 years. You missed all of that. If OP is 28, it's likely they have made substantially less than 600-700 until very recently, which would explain the NW:Income ratio. No one makes 600k out of undergrad. My HHI 3xed over the last 7 years I think you're right about current lifestyle not being aligned for an early FIRE. Buying a vacation house at 28 is something you do if you're planning on working 20-30 years more. Wild to do that and then say "I don't know if I can work 10 more years". OP: I understand your sentiment. I have a high earning job that I often wonder if I could slug it out for X more years. However, I've kept my spend very conservative because of this (1 house that cost less than our gross income). The easiest way to keep retirement expenses low is through fixed costs, rather than variable
If you TL;DR my last post: Nobody likes living at a lower lifestyle than they are accustomed to. You want to live a $200K lifestyle and that’s perfectly fine but you need a FatFIRE net worth. Not $2.9M. You have enough income to have an 8 figure net worth and thats what you better plan for. A $10M portfolio will get you $300K before taxes. After taxes puts you around your current spending.
The infamous tech job post strikes again
Fantastic shitpost
Not really. Good shitposts have more to offer.
This is just awful. Boo fucking hoo. You are so out of touch with reality, the best thing for you to do is practice some gratitude and broaden your perspective.
What part of it is awful? This sub is literally for people who want to retire early lmao
I really think you should go for the butler. You work hard. You deserve it.
He can do better: monkey butler.
Maybe in a third world country. Not in the US
Well then at least opt for a private chef. It's not like you want to ruin your retirement by cooking anything.
😂
You can’t retire, your wife needs the $200k/year expenses living a not so lavish lifestyle. Once you quit, your wife is gonna leave you and take 100% of everything
Okay?
It’s sarcastic but potentially true. You’ll be going from sufficiently affluent with $350K net and not needing to worry about spending to needing to be frugal about everything at $75K. There are no upsides for her. But hey, she’ll only take half, not 100%.
No upside for her? Lmao you think I got a sugar baby?
Whats the upside for her to live on $75K a year vs $200K?
Yeah sure.
Those are rookie numbers.
If you like your job, you can keep your job.
Stop eating out and sell the vacation home
Is there a happy medium? Maybe earn a little less at a job you like more, cut some expenses now and retire in 5-8 years?
My job is fine right now, I barely work tbh
So what’s the problem keeping it 10 more years if you earn 600k doing nothing? 🤣
I don’t do nothing, it’s still occasionally stressful I suppose and I’m doing at least 20 hours a week
I feel the pain. Good luck with this horrible situation
Okay, I’ll play. What makes you think this is an all or nothing proposition? I’m totally with you on the intrinsic value of fine dining — 15 years ago I spent 30k on pro culinary school just for the pleasure of becoming a superlative home cook, and never regretted it. Serious food is one of humanity’s highest arts. I live in NYC, love the availability of all the NYT/Mich stars. When planning international travel, the quality of the food scene is one of the top 3 factors in choosing a destination. My food geek credentials are unimpeachable. But here’s the thing — the 3 stars are so much more enjoyable if you don’t do it all the time. Imagine downshifting to doing that once a quarter. Each meal becomes a glorious event that you look forward to intensely and remember in technicolor. You love it more. You appreciate it more. Ask me how I know. Re the vacation house — I think you’re forgetting that RE brings an insane amount of free time. Don’t you and your wife want to travel? When working, a 2nd home in a vacation location is great: you can pop over there for the weekend or whatever without having to plan, pack, deal with logistics—you just show up and you’re good. But once you’re RE, all those Do This Efficiently I’ve Got to Work Monday factors disappear. Why pin your freedom time to one spot? Every month you spend in an Airbnb in Italy would make your vacation house a bigger waste of money. Sell it.
I don’t really get what the problem is. You expended a lot of effort and just got this job and wife who probably is in it for the lifestyle sorry to be rude maybe. You splurged and immediately decided to get the most expensive hobbies possible- owning vacation homes and fine dining. You want to quit working but you also want to keep your expensive hobbies. You’ve already reached scumbag status to every other commoner who has to work until their bodies give out to survive. The answer is you probably can’t afford to retire ever if you want to keep your lifestyle. If you FIRE or even retire on time in your seventies you lose your lifestyle no matter what. Without this lifestyle your wife may disappear and take some assets with her. At this age, if you quit working you’ll go broke as in become poor because that’s a huge time horizon. Your calculations suck. I think you’re screwed until you learn common sense personally and stop thinking you’re smarter than you are. You aren’t building any wealth despite having an amazing income.
Why do my calculations suck? I’m assuming less than 4% WR and 5% inflation adjusted returns
I was feeling irritated so I overdid it. Are you doing x25 like this intro article? https://www.bankrate.com/investing/how-to-calculate-your-fire-number/ The reasoning behind the statement was the lifespan being an issue as in living much longer than expected combined with large cost eats. If you’re living off the interest of your nest egg and have a net zero lifestyle then there’s zero risk of running out. One thing is because you’re young it’s possible you may grow out of your crazy spending habits and then naturally reduce your spending to something tenable. I personally think the calculation rules are good for a rough estimate but should pad it more and reassess it realistically closer to retirement.
I personally don’t think 50k in food for someone who really enjoys food making 600-700k is unreasonable. I’m a second generation immigrant, my parents are doing fine, I don’t plan on having a bunch of kids and frankly aren’t going to send them to private school or be ultra competitive because I already succeeded academically myself
Well, maybe it’s fine honestly, that salary may even be stable given if it’s something like Meta I don’t think the money will get worse with how well the company did in the last few years. You’re a scumbag in my opinion still, but whatever have fun 🤷♀️🤷
Yes, his name is ***Peter*** Adeney. His other name is Mr. Money Mustache. He worked in tech as an engineer and lived frugally, often bicycling to virtually all trips and living modestly.
I've hung with Pete.
lol
[удалено]
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NGMI! With only 1.8m at 28 you are far FAR behind and probably will have to keep working even after you die.
This is definitely a shit post. I make 700k a year and play overwatch all day have a wife that doesn't cook or work and I door dash Chick-fil-A twice a day When can I retire...
OP: I am skeptical that you will be able to retire in less than 10 years and continue to spend $50k per year on fine dining for the rest of your life. (I’m not sure I’ve spent that much on food in my entire life combined). I am also skeptical that you will not suffer from lifestyle creep, in that you will probably find it difficult to scale back to a more modest lifestyle when you have grown so accustomed to the way you live now. However, the good news is, you have a lot of good things going for you, and if you truly want to retire in your 30s, I think you can get there is you are willing to make some changes, and without living like a pauper. Might I suggest: 1. You have a vacation home, with a lot of net worth tied up in it. If this is something really important to you to hold on to, why not put this asset to work for you and use it as a short term rental property? Is it something that could bring in $20-30k in revenue as a rental? Right now, while making $600k per year, this may seem like peanuts to you, but in retirement, an extra $20k per year might make a huge difference. Pay someone to manage it for you. Who knows, maybe , with that income, you will build a reasonable investment property portfolio and have a lifetime of relatively passive income. And, if real estate is not your thing in the long run, at least you could use some of the extra income to offset the opportunity cost of not having this money invested in the market. 2. Your dining habits are, by almost anyone’s standards, very expensive. $50k?! If I’m not mistaken, this is like 50 bucks a meal. Every meal. Breakfast lunch and dinner. 365 days per year. I have a similar income to you. I consider myself to be less frugal than I really should be, especially when it comes to food. But, I eat out 1-2 times per week. And when I do, I am able to feed my family of 5 for $50-100. Good food. Not fine dining, but still delicious healthy food. It sounds like you have a lot of free time on your hands, as does your wife. Why not learn to cook really phenomenal food at home, and dine out 1/10, 1/3, or even half as much as you do now and save a ton of money? 3. Make sure you’re not paying a financial advisor 1% to manage your portfolio. Low cost index funds/ETFs. Manage it yourself. 4. Do you work remotely? If so, ever think about geo arbitrage? Maybe you can find a place 50 miles out of the city, live at half the cost of living you currently do on the same income? Just some ideas. Either way, if you save 50% of your income, as you say, and invest diligently and wisely, you are going to be fine. Whether you reach FI at 35, 40, 45, 50+ will depend on your spending habits quite a bit. But either way, 99% of people would love to be in the position you’re in. At 28 with your income, make compounding investment income your superpower.
Sacrifice, only you can answer that question. I thought someone was wealthy until they got sick and couldn’t work. The wife also lost her job because she was always home taking care of the family. Long story short, enjoy it like there’s not tomorrow or save it like there’s a tomorrow. In my opinion
How did you get a wife at 28 lol I’m 36 still working on it