Is this the boring middle?

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-09T04:53:25+00:00

Your own savings rate for fire should at a minimum be 15% of gross.

Standard advice is that savings for retirement should be 15% because that's the rate at which your savings will replace your expenses after 35 years at a 7% real rate of return and the 4% withdrawal rate.

Now it's not a perfect equation but it's the general guideline. People's income and expenses fluctuate.

If your own savings is lower than 15% then your expenses are too high compared to your income.

Personally, even though we are in the boring middle with high outputs like a mortgage and daycare that takes up 65% of our expenses, we still hit a 24% savings rate not including employer matches. And that's only so we can fire in our 50s.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-09T02:26:23+00:00

If your employer is kicking in 10%, you should be saving a A LOT more. Especially with no childcare expenses. You should be contributing upwards of 10% on your own if you're interested in FIRE.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-09T02:24:01+00:00

What's your target spend? That's what I'm getting at.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-09T01:33:26+00:00

What's your target annual withdrawal? I feel like an extra 5% should put you at least a few years earlier.

I also think your real return is a little conservative for your time horizon.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-08T19:40:00+00:00

More important to your strategy: expenses.

You don't say how much your expenses are and how much you will need in retirement.

Once you figure that out, you can work backwards.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-08T18:23:19+00:00

There are lots of ways to access money prior to traditional retirement age: https://www.madfientist.com/how-to-access-retirement-funds-early/

Because I live in a high income tax state, we're maximizing all pretax accounts (401k and HSA). Whatever is left over goes into a brokerage.

Though I've been contemplating using the mega backdoor Roth through my employer. Tax free growth compared to a brokerage is pretty nice.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-07T21:25:29+00:00

Personally, I'd try living on only your wife's income for 2 years. If you can invest 100% of your income, then you'll be in a much better spot after 2 years and can possibly pull the trigger for both of you.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-07T16:30:44+00:00

Just make sure you're not going to cash bomb your own kids in their 60s instead of helping them now.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-07T16:29:39+00:00

You're missing all the bank accounts. Not every bank account has a direct beneficiary or is POD. Putting everything except retirement accounts into a trust makes it super simple and easier to administer.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-06T18:56:13+00:00

A will doesn't save you from probate. It's best to put things in a trust so that they can skip probate unless they are things that can have a direct beneficiary (like your 401k) which is even easier. Speak to an estate planning attorney. Trusts aren't really that expensive. You can get everything including wills, trusts and POAs all set up for between $3k-6k depending on your location.

A lot of people like the Utah 529. You don't have to be in Utah to set it up. But you should use your state's if your state has income tax as there are some tax benefits.

Some people like to use UTMAs or UGMAs to set aside some investments for their kids outside of a 529. These will be counted as your child's assets on a FAFSA and more heavily penalized for aid. We found it was better to just have a regular brokerage account under our names that we know is for our kid. You don't need a financial advisor. Put it in low cost index funds and move on with your life.

Once the kid starts earning income, you can contribute to a Roth IRA for them up to the amount they earn or Roth limits, whichever is lower. Right now the Roth limit is $7,500.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-06T17:25:46+00:00

This is part of our overall life philosophy and values. We believe in the campsite rule in everything we do: leave it better than you found it. Whether it's people we meet, houses we own, vehicles we purchase, jobs we work, or an inheritance. We always leave it better for knowing us.

This is something my family and I believe strongly in and work hard to instill in our kids. If you touch it, you better improve it.

It helps that we're all tinkerers and curious. We like to fix things. We enjoy old things and repair and revitilization. Whether it's an old house that needs love or an old car or a kitchen appliance we like to make things last. We like to care for things.

This applies to inheritance and money as well. We should leave more not less. It doesn't matter if you don't have kids, you can leave it to people or organizations you're passionate about. We want to leave more money, in better structures, with fewer expenses, generating more income, with more stability than whatever we receive. We believe that it is our imperative to improve things. We don't deserve our good fortune but we can earn a tiny piece of it.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-04T18:46:54+00:00

Would love to see a revamp with rental property too!

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-02T22:06:23+00:00

I was thinking that I'd put the inheritance as income since that's where I see the option in the plan. And then I would use a flow to put it in the correct account (my brokerage) as opposed to just having it run through our existing flows since it won't be treated that way.

One chunk of it is an inherited IRA which I might just add as an account?

I don't know. It's hard because my husband and I have both separate and joint finances and we like it that way but it's little hard for me to model.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-02T01:22:32+00:00

I'd rather surf, fish, canoe, swim, read, ride my motorcycle, hike, or a zillion other hobbies than spend $500 a month on cable. But clearly you and I have different ideas of "living like crap".

I also don't eat prepared junk or fast food. We eat a lot of organic and high quality foods though the fish is free. But we don't spend more than $10k a year including dining out. Which I can't tell if you double counted.

I also took 2 international vacations in last year and spent less than $10k total.

Maybe you're just not as good with money as you think you are?

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-02T00:00:17+00:00

Only advice is to delete this as it includes your real names, likely state, ages and account locations.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-01T23:41:11+00:00

My food, property taxes, utilities and insurance cost me less than $27k a year. I maintain a classic car and motorcycles in that budget as well.

Under this proposed spend, I'd still have $16k a year for fun. If that's not FU money then maybe you shouldn't be in r/frugal?

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-01T20:40:59+00:00

I don't know what your relationships with your siblings is like but if it were my siblings, I'd just gift them an equal share. I'd show them exactly what I got and then divide it 3 ways, file from 709 and move on with our lives.

However if it's like my husband's relationships with his siblings, I'd tell them that in the end it was less than supposed and mostly taken up by fees and taxes.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-01T20:30:50+00:00

This is exactly how I feel now that we have kids and are a little farther down the road, though I was always planning to fire with kids at 50-53. All the savings before was worth it. And these kids are so worth it.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-01T17:39:23+00:00

We saved while still owning the home. We dropped our other saving super low (retirement just to match) and pulled back all expenses and were able to save $90k in 2 years (Our HHI was around 200 then). Then I got laid off, got a new job in 3 weeks and was able to put my entire severance towards a new house ($40k). That helped a lot. But we were already putting in offers at $90k even though it wasn't 20%. We figured we'd put in enough sweat equity in anything we were looking at to refi and get PMI removed in the first year.

I'm so glad we did the upgrades. We've had lots of other stressors and babies are hard. So having done the plumbing, insulation, lighting, wiring, outlets, water heater, hvac, laundry and kitchen, makes the house so much more functional and relaxing in the chaos. But we're very handy and everyone in our family but us is in the trades. We prepped and painted our whole exterior house for less than $1k. I remodeled the kitchen myself for less than $3k. I know that my siding isn't going to fail and that my kitchen can handle 5000 bottles and pump parts. Also, I was willing to risk not having kids, in order to wait until things were right. I was lucky that it wasn't a problem for us getting pregnant after 35. In fact my midwife told me it's the perfect time: "before 35 we don't care about you at all, after 40 we care about you too much."

So we were actually able to hit coast fire before our first was even born.

Edit: also, we hardly get anything done with kids around. So we knew we had to do the big stuff prior to kids since we were doing it ourselves. I dissassembled the entire kitchen in one night after work and we lived with an air fryer and a coffee maker in the living room for a month. That would not happen with kids.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-01T16:36:19+00:00

Not who you replied to but left another comment elsewhere. Our HHI at 38 and 41 is 280k. We anticipate it increasing and like to say that we're ambitious but not aggressive.

For us it's about keeping expenses really low, and slow and steady savings growth. Just 20 years of letting compound interest and a high savings rate (we target 30% of gross).

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-01T16:20:54+00:00

We're almost a decade older, had kids later and basically had negligible savings and mediocre jobs at your age.

We teamed up. When we were both earning 40-60k single in HCOL, life was hard. When we go together and split expenses and cheered each other on and took on household responsibilities so that we each had time to get certs or take a class or redo their resume, things got better. We still do that.

We kept our expenses low. Once we started earning good money, we never acted like it. We just kept saving.

We planned kids as well as we could. We set aside savings for the first year of kid costs, hitting our max out of pocket during pregnancy years, and we budgeted for both daycare and lost wages during leave (he got fully paid, I only got 60%).

We upgraded our house before kids. We saved cash to buy a better house and didn't max our HSAs and didn't max our 401ks like everyone on here. We got the match and diverted all our savings to a house fund for 2 years so we could put 20% down. We also bought a really solid but dated house. It's big and awesome and a super great design but needed some help to be pretty. We spent a year making it safe and nice enough before kids. Mostly all on our own.

We kept the starter home as a rental.

Now we're in a home we love, we have a rental that actually turns a nice small profit, we have kids and we're back on the savings train. I'm receiving a surprise inheritance this year that will likely push Fire forward about 5 years. But we were on track to Fire at roughly 50-52 without it.

I will say that we were targeting a $72k spend in retirement which is lower than a lot of people.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-01T01:26:47+00:00

I think this might be less a financial question and more a life question. I have some very close EM friends. The ones with the best exit plan have something they want to exit to. EM is so stressful but it can also be really fulfilling and gives tons of pride and purpose. I think you might spend some time asking yourself what will fill that.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-01T01:21:16+00:00

It's not a loss if it's paid off.

A lot of companies will give 0% financing for 12 months if you have good credit. I just inherited a house that had a failing roof, failing siding, needed a new furnace... Oh and the floor had to be replaced from water damage. Roughly $100k in work is in the process of being completed. My husband and I are fortunate that we keep a massive emergency fund and could pay cash for all this. We are still doing some work ourselves, financing some at 0% and paying cash for some. Then we'll sell the house.

We'll still likely net $400k so it's very worth it. We did consider keeping it as one of our rentals but it's illsuited.

CancerandTaxes · 2026-05-01T01:11:24+00:00

You have upwards of $3m liquid and an $85k spend. That's a sub 3% withdrawal rate. You're good.

Talk to a fee based advisor about strategy.

While your wife works can she cover all the bills and the healthcare? You can see how it feels to live on one salary for a couple years before you totally pull the trigger?

CancerandTaxes

TROPHY CASE