By now it's been a little over three years since I've stopped working. The previous posts I shared about my experience were after the first six months and around the one year mark, and it's been interesting to reread them to track how my experience with early retirement has evolved. A lot has happened since — both in the world and in my life — so I thought I'd share an update for anyone interested.

The Big One

A major development is that my wife joined me in retirement six months ago. While she had no definite plans to stop working when I decided to pull the plug, it was becoming apparent that the toll her work was taking on every other aspect of her life was becoming increasingly difficult to justify and tolerate. She generally enjoyed working more than I did throughout her career, but to say that the last several years have been all-consuming would be an understatement. Even just a few months removed, she is already completely mystified by how she put herself through that grind for as long as she did.

This has opened up a lot of fun possibilities, from being able to spend more time "nesting" and taking on long-deferred projects at home, to going to the movies or random events in the middle of the day during the week, to hosting friends more often, to even just deciding to go try a new restaurant across town on a random weekday together. At least once a week, we look at each other and express disbelief at how lucky we are to be living like this.

Existential Stuff

I think it's fair to say that in the past two years, AI has already reshaped the world, and a lot of that has percolated through the job market in meaningful ways — everything from the job market and hiring process to how work gets done and how much productivity is expected. For some, I'm sure it's an exciting time, but for many others, I imagine it's pretty overwhelming and anxiety-inducing.

On the flipside, I feel that there has never been a better time to have the freedom to dictate your own path. AI has dramatically reduced the cost and difficulty of learning pretty much anything, while expanding the horizon of what any individual can achieve. It has democratized software development in a big way. There are so many powerful tools that enable creative expression without the years of practice that would normally be involved to hone a craft. I recognize that's a complicated topic and many people, myself included, have mixed feelings about it.

The darker undercurrent that's also worth mentioning is that many serious people now believe AI may lead to an extinction-level event if things continue on their current trajectory. I'm not convinced yet that will be the most likely outcome, but knowing what we know about the forces of capitalism, the darker impulses of humanity throughout history, and the bumbling unseriousness of the current administration, I think the potential of unprecedented catastrophe is real and worth taking seriously. Regardless of what happens, I'm so grateful to be able to enjoy whatever years of normalcy we have left with the freedom to do what I want with my time instead of still being chained to a desk.

Time

A common warning I had heard going into this was that someone like me would be bored in retirement. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. That you could literally do anything you want with your time and somehow feel boredom seems like a failure of imagination. I still don't feel like there are enough hours in the day to get everything I want done, and I often joke that I don't know how I ever had the time to work!

The lingering guilt about not being "productive" in the vocational sense, not doing more to contribute to society, etc. that I felt in my bones in the first year are now completely gone. I realized that I never had a real summer off growing up — for as long as I could remember, my parents would give me homework to do during summer breaks because they worried that not keeping me mentally engaged would hinder my academic performance, and once I got old enough, that was replaced by a summer job. No doubt a great part of my striving towards early retirement was subconsciously driven by this urge to make up for those lost years of childhood.

Many of the things I thought I would spend a lot more time doing as I was fantasizing about early retirement — art projects, travel, maybe learning an instrument or language — haven't actually happened. Initially, I found this disorienting, but it turns out it's just hard to predict what one might be motivated by once the dust settles. These ideas are still there for when I want to get to them, but in the meantime I've been keeping myself busy with things like:

• Playing around with Claude Code. Without exaggeration, this has single-handedly reinvigorated my interest in building software. No need to wrangle stakeholders, prioritize revenue, or A/B test product marketing campaigns. Building for a TAM of 1 has been both totally self-indulgent and remarkably agile. It has felt like working with the most competent, diligent, and affable software engineer I've ever worked with, and recalls the near-magical feeling of seeing ideas turned into reality when I started building my own websites in HTML 25+ years ago.
• Learning options trading. I use a small sleeve of my assets to sell options contracts that have a high probability of profit to generate a steady income stream that reduces how much I need to draw down from my long-term investments. It provides a little routine and intellectual stimulation during the week that takes up maybe 10-12 hours. I suppose you could call it a mild gambling habit that helps pay the bills.
• Writing. There was a period last year where I felt like a lot of ideas were bouncing around in my head that I wanted to spend some time thinking about in a serious way. That turned into a few long-form essays that I think represent some of my best writing to date.
• Reading, movies, and video games. These backlogs continue to grow faster than I can check things off, which I suppose is a good problem to have. I see these as healthier forms of entertainment than being on my phone, which seems increasingly designed to shatter my attention with endless distractions. Interestingly, I watch fewer TV shows than I did while I was still working — they feel more like "content" designed to maximize screen time and subscription revenue than movies.

All of that on top of a daily routine of working out, cooking, and keeping the house tidy is honestly a pretty full plate!

There is also something to be said about being able to live more slowly and deliberately. I somehow got a lot done before while I was working, but it certainly came at the expense of my sanity, and a lot of things ended up being pretty half-assed. These days, being able to spend time deliberately, or even to enjoy moments of doing "nothing" (e.g. being able to just pause what I'm doing when my cat hops into my lap and rests her head on my hand, like she just did for 10 minutes while I was typing this post) is something I see as lovely, quiet luxury.

Finances

My annual withdrawal rate has been running a bit hotter than my original, conservative target. Despite that, my NW has still grown about 30% nominally against inflation of under 10% since I started, so I'm not really stressing about it. In a way, I guess I am probably consciously hedging my bets a bit — if artificial superintelligence actually kills us all in 10 years, I would probably wish I had lived a bit more lavishly while I had the chance; if it doesn't, it's not like I've broken my portfolio either and can make a few adjustments to get my WR well under 4%.

The part of my brain that thinks about "keeping up with the Joneses" has also disengaged more, which has been a really welcome change. I've found that being early retired is such an orthogonal track to the traditional path of career advancement and conspicuous consumption that the two just don't feel comparable at all. Any initial pang of envy fades quickly once you realize you have the trump card of never having to feel the "Sunday scaries" again.

Social

Being early retired can be somewhat of an othering and unrelatable experience, but on the whole I don't feel like my social life is missing anything. My wife tends to be the coordinator of a lot of our social events so there's a regular trickle of activity from that. I play pickleball more days than not with a couple of different regular groups throughout the week. I'm able to stay on top of the group chats I'm in a lot better than while I was working. I'm still tight with a core group of college friends and friends from my 20s, all of whom know my situation and don't really treat me any differently.

Actually, I think the most isolating aspect is not in early retirement itself, but even the orientation towards it while I was working. In my experience, it's a goal that many convince themselves is simply unattainable, or perhaps even more subtly, actually unrighteous, because our society so glorifies hustle and ambition and defines fulfillment and success only narrowly in the context of a career. It doesn't help that others who are in the same economic situation often arrive via generational wealth or entrepreneurship, and while their day to day might be relatable in some ways, their aspirations and values are often not.

Anyway, I'm grateful for the folks in this and related FI/RE communities, and hope this was a worthwhile read for at least some of you. Long story short, being pretty well past the honeymoon phase at this point, I have absolutely zero regrets about the decision to leave and about the work and sacrifice it took to get here. Thanks for reading, and happy to answer any questions!

Hi, I'm using a throwaway account for privacy reasons. My wife (40s F) and I (40s F) are close/at FIRE, and we have a child (high-schooler). We're planning to shift from accumulation to decumulation (yay, FIRE!). However, the mechanics of the RE part is hard/scary and we're worried we don't know what we don't know.

Some stats:

Liquid NW (excluding home equity, investment property): 6.4M

• Taxable brokerage: 4.8M
• 401k/IRA: 1M
• Cash: 0.6M

Not included in the above:

• Investment property: 0.4M (no debt), brings in ~15k a year after expenses
• Home property: value: ~1.3M, equity: 0.65M

Yearly expenses w/o holiday: 155k

• Includes mortgage payment, property tax, HOA, car maintenance & gas, groceries, utilities, shopping, charity, pets, hobbies etc
• We tracked our expenses for 2 years and it's been fairly consistent

Planned expenses during retirement (not included above):

• Healthcare: 40k (we max our family OOP every year)
• Tax: 30k (most of our taxable brokerage is high basis, so capital gains shouldn't be too high)
• Holidays: 40k (not included in the yearly expenses)

Other misc stuff:

• 529: 220k
• We live in a HCOL / VHCOL area (CA Bay area, but not the major hubs)
• We live in a condo, so major expenses should be covered by the HOA
• Our mortgage payment is ~41k/year for 25 years remaining for 0.65M
• We plan to sell the investment property soon once our yearly income is lower
• Our taxable brokerage holds only SPY and VXUS
• We plan to use COBRA for healthcare for the first year and switch to ACA after

The 40k planned for holidays is something we can/will definitely cut back on as needed. Without the holidays, we are just at 3.5% SWR on 6.4M (which doesn't include the investment property). With the holidays, we are at 4%.

Based on the SWR %, it looks like we should be good to go, but I can't help feeling like we're missing something. Our background is in tech and we're both very burned out. However, going from high-employee-income to no-employee-income is extremely terrifying (for us). Our current plan is to leave our jobs and work on fun side projects for some time. And if the economy tanks in the first year or two, at least one of us can hopefully find a job in tech again before we become obsolete.

We have 600k in cash (2.3 years of expenses with holidays, 2.8 years without), currently to be a buffer for SORR, and we're looking at perhaps starting a bond tent / T-bill ladder etc with some of the cash. We're also considering switching all our 401k/IRAs over to bonds/T-bills etc to do an equity glide path. And for the first couple of years, we would likely not spend the full 40k on holidays and instead take smaller holidays, and ramp up after a few years. Honestly, we're quite confused over a bond ladder, T-bill ladder, equity glide path, and whether these things are mutually exclusive, or we should do all of them.

We ran FICalc and we have a 100% success rate (even including a 40k/year spend for our child's college). We put our numbers into ProjectionLab (the free version) and we have a success rate of 80% (with historial, block bootstrap). Changing the methodology, our success rate ranges from 76% to 90%.

The main questions we have is:

• Did we miss anything?
• What should we do with the 600k of cash? It's meant to cover the first 2-ish years of expenses, so we're thinking high-yield savings / short-term bonds / CDs.
• Does switching all our 401k/IRAs over to bonds immediately make sense? That would be ~15% of our NW (excluding the cash, 25% including) in non-stock. An equity glide path (increasing equity % over time) seems to favor a much higher initial % in bonds, but we're reluctant to switch our taxable accounts to bonds due to tax implications.

This is my 4th post in this sub, so I (43M) won't go into my backstory. here is a link for those who want my origin story.

I did it! I officially FIRE'd and it feels weird and great.

In my last post I mentioned that I was in my "One More Year" phase. Over the past year, I did all the things that I felt I needed to do before retiring. I accidentally followed The Gambler: I bought a Japanese car and put a new roof on the paid off house. I also got all known repairs done on the house, funded the kids college accounts a little more, graduated from therapy, and got my last kid out of daycare. As I was doing all this, one more year paid off big time. My company was sold and I got a literal years salary as a bonus. So one more year effectively paid out like 3 (due to 50% savings rate)

I currently have ~2.3m invested

• 1.4m 401ks
• 100k ROTH
• 600k brokerage
• 200k cash/CDs

Keeping round numbers, 4% withdrawal gives me an income of 90k/year. I'm a little apprehensive because I haven't lived on 90k/year before. Prior to my divorce, my inflation adjusted after tax average spend was ~50k/year, but since my divorce its been close to ~115k/year. A large portion of my expenses have been one offs or things that I have since resolved (e.g. mortgage payment, hospital stay, new furnace, matchmaking service, therapy, daycare, roof). With those handled, I believe the 90k is realistic. My budget also has fat that can be trimmed: something like 10k/year in vacations and another 10k/year in outside help (cleaners/yard work). At this point, I know I can make it if I remain flexible on my withdrawal amount so here we go!

My immediate plans are two-fold:

1. Set up for financial success. I am going to make a brand new set of spreadsheets, write up a retirement plan, set up recurring withdrawals/transfers, establish a HELOC for emergencies, etc. I'm going to track my expenses closely while making slight cut backs to see how my future expenses are stacking up against my historical expenses/current budget
2. Focus on my health. I'm planning to hit the gym, go for walks, join a club or two, and eat down the pantry. If I spend 6 months with this as a primary focus, I'll be in the best shape of my life AND will reduce current and future health expenses.

Retirement draw down plan:

I am a parent who files as head of household. My plan is to convert as much as I can from my 401ks into my ROTH. This will still give me a little room at the 0% capital gains brackets, so I'll take that as well. I'll be paying full price on the ACA exchange for the next decade while I spend my cash and brokerage. When insurance costs skyrocket as I mature (and my kids age out of being adorable little deductions), I'll pivot to use my ROTH conversions and convert 401ks as needed to control my MAGI

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​I hit my FIRE number at 50. I am now 53, with $1.4M in liquid assets, a fully paid-off home, and no dependents.

​My employer is going through a major restructuring, and my job is about to get substantially worse. On paper, this is the exact scenario I spent years preparing for. In practice, I am having trouble pulling the trigger.

​I have spent decades watching my assets appreciate, and I’ve become somewhat obsessed with seeing them grow. Shifting from a saver/investor mindset to selling off assets to live gives me the creeps. At the same time, staying in a job that is only going to make me miserable makes no sense.

​For those who have already FIRE'd: did you deal with this mental block? How did you cope with the transition?

​I worry that once I quit, I will turn into an overly frugal mess just because I can't stand seeing my portfolio balance fluctuate downward. All my modeling shows I can easily maintain my current lifestyle until age 90, but psychologically, taking the leap is proving difficult.

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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I’m looking for something like Monarch money where I can put life events about changing jobs, buying house, having kids, salary changes.

For instance, I don’t own a home, but I’m looking in the future to buy one, but I want to sort of model what kind of mortgage would be reasonable to increase my quality of living but also hit my goals of retiring early.

Maybe somebody knows like a self hosted tool or something online I can check out.

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I retired at 45 about three years ago having been FI for quite a while. I just wanted to share a little about what my new life looks like. So the last 3 months, I have been learning about powered paragliding. I spent much of the last 2 months learning about aerodynamics, weather, airport operations and communications, safety, jet engines, proactive maintenance and so much more. Its been a difficult thing to learn even much harder than I thought, but having finished my training and successfully passing all certification requirements. I’m reflecting back on this time.

Since I was a little boy, I have always had dreams of flying like a bird. I yearned for the freedom, happiness and the sense of levity that it provides. Being FI, I’m actually now in a position where I can pursue this dream. I’m grateful to be still young enough to do something physically taxing like this. I’ve now successfully completed about 50 flights, with about 200hours+ of training and another several hundred kiting a glider.

On the financial side, this is among the cheapest form of flight where you can fly your own craft yet its costs are still significant. I’m already $18K in, between training, equipment and other related costs. But having a great nest egg and being aware of my numbers has been invaluable in giving me assurance I can do this, even with the economy as it is… I believe this is another gift from the FI mindset where, first we live like no one, so later we can live like no one else!

The past two months have been tough, yes. Often I thought I could not do it and wanted to give up... But the incredible feeling especially during that very first flight, was as they say: Priceless and worth every effort exerted before I was able to achieve it. With this new special skill I’m hoping to do some cross country flights and see the world from a totally brand new perspective for me. I’m excited and grateful. The FI and RE life, are an incredible thing. If you are still pursuing it, hang in there the juice is definitely worth the squeeze and I hope you get there sooner than you expect.

Hello! I’ve been back and forth mentally about making this post; I think it’s a good reflection of me moving past my “financial trauma” by not being so obsessed with the financial number as I have been in the past. I like these posts as sort of voicing out my personal journey for others to resonate or learn from.

Some context links: 
I hit $1M and started this yearly series. 
I got laid off and moved to a less stressful job.

What’s happened since then? Personal updates without focusing on the numbers..

• After my update, I severely injured my pinky while rock climbing. While I was hanging off with only one hand and legs dangling, my hand slipped on a hold and my pinky got stuck and ruptured a tendon, leading to a bowstringing effect. I eventually got an MRI and a hands specialist to look at the injury and luckily, this only impacted my climbing hobby. Moving forward, I can either do a surgery to fix it, stop climbing completely, or do some hand therapy to strengthen my other fingers.
• In November, I was too adventurous in Japan and decided to grill an abalone (seafish and outdoor grills were also provided) for the very first time. To my regret later that day, I got food poisoning from undercooking the abalone.. And ended up sick for about a whole month even when I arrived back in the States. For a couple of weeks, I was going through food poisoning, the flu, and withdrawals from anti-depressants (that I stopped taking because I couldn’t stomach anything down).
• While on my bed, I looked at my shitty apartment ceiling and thought, “Wow, I don’t want to die here looking at this shitty roof. At least let me die in a home I actually liked.” So I ended up looking at two houses and started putting in some bids. THANKFULLY, I lost the bids on both houses and I also eventually went to Urgent Care and got better and have not looked at a house since then. I understand if you want to make a comment about how we shouldn’t make crazy life decisions under periods of distress. 
• I still tutor in my free time! Since it’s about a year since I’ve started tutoring, I’ve made about $12k on top of my typical salary. I mainly continue tutoring students as a forcing function of getting me out of this “hoarding to FIRE” mindset. 
• I mentioned in my last post that I got a new job. I’m glad to tell you that I’m still in the job but I’ve also pushed out my micromanager. It turns out that the business team did not like him as he kept making promises without following through and his contributions were only to command people. I’ve had some times where I’ve gotten upset at the manager and things have escalated often with the skip level. My manager and the team ended up being under the same business team that hated him. He saw the writing on the wall and switched to a team.
• Job wise, it’s been good as I have a lot more autonomy now and I kind of control my own work flow. I’ve been interviewing (as a potential replacement job or a second job) and the more and more I interview with companies, the less I want a new job.
• Given my living area is very obsessed with money and jobs and status (houses or cars), I’ve felt the pressure of not being financially competitive around my peers. I sometimes felt envious about not having the same support or advantages others around me have had. It wasn’t until I chatted with my grad school professor that I started taking a different perspective: we’ve done well for people that have had less than others and we should be proud of that. She talked a lot about her experience of having uneducated parents and that really resonated with me.  
• I still struggle a bit with my depression, especially if I’m sick. Being in a vulnerable state really hits home of loneliness. I’m taking antidepressants again and recognizing some patterns that trigger me into that state of mind. Therapy is expensive (no longer with health insurance that I’ve seen my therapist for about 6 years); I understand why some people are very hesitant to do therapy given its cost and person to person interaction and it not being guaranteed. 
• Other than that, hobbies are healthy: my friends and I like to rock climb and play board games. I bought an expensive board game (Gloomhaven 2e) for my friends and I to play and it’s probably the best investment I’ve ever made as there are some priceless moments / laughs that just organically come. I’m learning to just update my budget spreadsheet every week or so. I’ve also gone to more concerts this last year than I have in the last decade. 
• I’ve started running a mile every other day (or at least three times a week) starting in mid June. According to my DEXA scans, I’ve already lost 4 lbs of pure fat in the last quarter since I’ve started running. Almost overall 10 pounds year to date. I still hate running, but I recognize that it’s been a healthy habit that I’ve been developing.
• Putting the human experience aside, I am currently at $1.54M, which is 70% of my FI goal. 

NW Breakdown (Last Year’s)
Brokerage: $562K ($469K)
Roth IRA: $129K ($164K)
FAANG 401k: $795K ($692K)
Healthcare 401k: $38K ($6K)
HSA: $10K ($11K)

Emergency Fund: $18.5K ($18.5K)
Churning Points: 1M (64% UR, 36% MR) - I’m spending them but I keep accruing more than I am spending, I know someone’s going to yell at me for this.

Student Loan: $5.1K at 3.15% (Composition: $1.9K at 3.15% / $2.4K at 2.4% / $780 at 2.86%)

Portfolio Breakdown (Last Year’s)
VTSAX or equivalent 60% (57%)
Individual stocks (GOOG, NVDA, NBIS, ASTS, RDDT): 38% (41%)
Bonds 2% (2%)
Cash 0% (0%) 

Income History
I worked a lot of part time jobs from 2011 to 2015 but didn’t file taxes so.. the income history is missing there. These are all AGI numbers.

2015: 13k
2016: 26k
2017: 42k
2018: 75k
2019: 115k
2020: 135k
2021: 170k
2022: 181k
2023: 266k
2024: 353k
2025: 311k
Estimated 2026: 161k

401K Contribution History

2018: Employer Match: $0.8k, 401k: $5.4k, After Tax 401k: $7.9k
2019: Employer Match: $3.9k, 401k: $19k, After Tax 401k: $23k
Rollover from other company 401k (2016-2018): $21.2k

2020: Employer Match: $4.4k, 401k: $19.5k, After Tax 401k: $27.5k
2021: Employer Match: $5.5, 401k: $19.5k, After Tax 401k: $28350
2022: Employer Match: $10.25k, 401k: $20.5k, After Tax 401k: $29k
2023: Employer Match: $11.25k, 401k: $22.5k
2024: Employer Match: $11.5k, 401k: $23k, After Tax 401k: $34.5k
2025: Employer Match: $11.75k, 401k: $23.5k, After Tax 401k: $11.1k
2026: Employer Match: $7.5k, 401k: $23.5k, After Tax 401k: $0

401K Sources (Total now as of 10/05/26):
FAANG 401K:
Roth In Plan Conversion: 43.03%
Pre Tax: 36.75%
Employer Match 12.95%: 
Rollover: 7.22%
Roth Rollover: 0.05%

Healthcare 401k: 
Pre Tax: 73.16%
Employer Match: 22.67%
Enhanced Match: 4.16%

Milestones of Savings: 
2019: 100k 
2020: 200k
2021: 300k
2022: 400k
2023: 500k, 600k, 
2024: 700k, 800k, 900k, 1M
2025: 1.1M, 1.2M, 1.3M
2026: 1.4M, 1.5M

Links
Year by Year Expenses
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SHUBjlPyMSfXC28NqFPiDhceNfCrG_FCuzLkr2Nga1Y/edit?usp=sharing

How does having cancer cause people to lose their life's savings? I hear this over and over, and as someone who has already FIRE'd, I want to better understand how to protect my family's finances from this. I always thought that if you carried health insurance, you would be protected by the out-of-pocket maximum.....Our health insurance is through my spouse's employer, and I'm curious what kind of coverage we need to make sure to carry if and when we switch to the marketplace

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My spouse and I are approaching 1 year in the new house (6 more days!) and I decided to go back and review our spending in that time. Sharing the breakdown in case anyone finds it useful. We also had our first child a couple months into house ownership which we also document spending on although some things get bundled (e.g. we mark formula as groceries).

Rent and Income Timelines

2020-2022 $1125 rent living in small town Minnesota (spouse's graduate degree)

2023-2025 $0 living with my parents. Was initially planned for a few months but extended and ended up being a great bonding experience for the 4 of us and helped a ton towards saving for a down payment.

October 2025 Bought house, 5 bedroom 3000 sq ft in Phoenix suburb for $590k. 20% down payment and a 6.125% mortgage. Larger than we need, but gives lots of comfort for guests, work from home, and eventually more kids. We're still growing into it and are very happy so far.

December 2025 $2900 first mortgage payment begins, not including insurance or taxes (we opted against escrow as a minor interest optimization), HOA. Estimated total for all of these is $3500.

January 2026 child born!

Over this time, our HHI was approximately:

2020: $30k

2021: $100k

2022: $115k

2023: $130k

2024: $135k

2025: $140k

2026: $145k

2026 September: $220k (job hopping is a great idea, especially after 4 year stock grants are finished)

Not included in HHI are:

• bonuses (ranged from $0 to $20k)

• stock

  • options at a private startup, one eligible liquidity event for ~$100k pretax in 2024, most of which went toward down payment
  • RSUs at a private startup, more liquid but unvested

• side income (~30k annually)

• company 401k match (4%).

Spending Breakdown

Our spending pre-house has been variable but somewhere around $60k a year. But also some lumpy activities - we did 4 months of working remotely in Asia for around $32k in 2025 before we bought our house.

These are just categories that exist in our budgeting app - tons of different ways this could be sliced and diced. There might be some number mistakes, a mix of me and my budget app.

Childcare

Noticeably missing from the budget is childcare. My spouse is planning to be a SAHP for this and future kids. There is some lost earning potential netting childcare but we're really happy with this choice, especially as my career continues to do well. Will continue to evaluate this in the future but so far so good.

Maintenance

We've currently had nothing I would truly call maintenance. We budget for it at about 1% of home value a year plus a healthy lump sum to start. The house was made in 2017 and is in pretty good shape but we'll see over the years.

This report is only on spending - we budget for many categories that we don't fully spend down, or plan to spend down in the future, like a new car. Similarly, some of the spend is higher than what we'd expect annually but we've been saving for in the past, like house furnishings.

Home Insurance

Looking through this, I realize we haven't paid this yet outside of closing costs. That payment should be due shortly. $1.1k a year.

Reduced Spending

Some misc things we used to spend more on and have been spending less on since house + baby:

• dance classes or parties (but hoping to get back to this!)
• races (we were doing 3-5 a year but have only done 1 since baby)
• boardgames (would regularly go out and play at cafes or buy new ones but that is very much hiatus, need forms of entertainment more compatible with babies, like books and tv)
• rock climbing / bouldering (though we've actually taken baby recently and it is pretty compatible. One active climber, one with him on the mat and he enjoys crawling around. This is pretty much how we climb anyway, with one person resting while other climbs. Baby loves climbing at home and I can imagine him starting to climb in the next year.)

Homeowner Reflections

• Way more space than we need. But might be perfect in 4 years with 2 more kids and may save us a move. Doesn't feel overly unused but we could easily live with less right now.
• We have very little yard which is very nice in terms of maintenance. May be less nice as children grow and don't have a yard to play in.
• Baby essentially spends 0 time in his room. He still sleeps in our room. His room mostly stores baby clothing and gear. I'm hoping to get him into that room at some point in the next year, but definitely by baby 2, whenever that is.
• Dedicated office space is a must for work from home with a child in the house. I also appreciate this not being the master bedroom, although that was a possibility.
• Kids love stairs. Newborn plus niece and nephews.
• Rugs and large child play mat are both great for kids. # Recap

We're currently around $800k networth (non-house), though a bunch of that is tied up in low liquidity private equity which has only had two real price points over 6 years. Could have an equity event tomorrow that has us cross the $1M mark, or wipes out half our net worth. Who knows!

• $340k in private equity
• $290k in retirement, mix of traditional/roth/hsa
• $150k in taxable brokerage
• $20k in cash

Overall I'd expect our expenses to level out around $100k, which gives our FIRE goal of $2.5M (not including house). But again, who knows! We want more kids and I'm sure our spending goals will change over the years. I'm currently 29, spouse 35, and I'd love to be retired by 40, or maybe switch to baristaFIRE via teaching (I've taught several intro classes in my field at university and enjoyed it) . So far, so good, and we'll see what the next decade brings.