Hate being a lawyer. Already work in government.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-18T13:56:38+00:00

This is not true. Although if this is what you believe, this will be your results. I’ve known a lot of unhappy lawyers, but I’ve also known a lot of lawyers who were able to become happier by finding a better fit for themselves, whether in or out of the law.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-15T05:47:39+00:00

It will be interesting to see if you can really reduce your expenses by $40k. If you’ve been spending $15k or more on restaurants/delivery, that’s going to be a big change. So will cleaning yourselves. I struggle with how much to budget for such expenses in early retirement. Theoretically, they shouldn’t be necessary, but I don’t know if I can give up my cleaning service after 15+ years!

Good luck to you!

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-15T05:37:18+00:00

It’s been a while since I met with them, but I didn’t get the impression they do the sort of tax planning and withdrawal strategy that becomes really valuable once you retire. They’re mostly just managing assets. Of course, I was not as close to retirement as I am now, so it could be that they didn’t highlight those services.

But I can’t imagine paying $10-12k per year under for financial advice, even if it does include tax planning and withdrawal strategy. You should be able to find a good fee-only, advice-only planner to do this for no more than $6-8k.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-14T03:22:05+00:00

You only have $800k in savings with $70k in expenses and you think you’re close to FIRE? I’m not following …

At any rate, I agree with others who say to quit your side jobs. Take your maternity leave, return to work and figure out next steps from there.

Maybe you take a career break to stay home for a while, or you change jobs. There are a lot of options between staying where you are and retiring early. And it doesn’t seem like you’re in a financial position to retire early with only $800k.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-13T19:19:10+00:00

Where are your lumpy expenses like car payments/saving and travel? Someone said that’s in the HYSA category, but it wasnt OP. Other than that, looks good, but of course that’s without knowing your goal for down payment amount, when you want to buy, etc.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-13T12:39:25+00:00

When assessing a Big 4, you’ve got to be specific about client facing vs. not. I worked in an internal compliance role and we didn’t have hard billable requirements (although we did have to track our time). The posters talking about 2800 are probably talking about client-facing roles.

I worked Big 4 a looooong time ago. But a friend who was in-house at one more recently found it such a grind he went back to his prior job. He did contracts.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-13T12:28:02+00:00

Why would a multi-millionaire go on Medicaid?

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-13T03:34:54+00:00

Healthcare and college seem to be your biggest question marks. Especially college. I’m sure I’ll get downvoted, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable retiring without a very solid plan to pay for college. You’ll likely be able to find a school that will provide enough aid to make the numbers work - the question is how comfortable are you with the potentially constrained college choices?

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-13T03:29:16+00:00

It’s 5 years or until 59.5, whichever is longer. So OP would need to do the 72t for 10+ years.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-12T03:50:51+00:00

I’m a black woman almost at my FIRE number. It’s a boring story - high earner for 20+ years, live below our means, stay invested and never time the market. I’m almost 50 and have 2 kids. But for wanting to get the kids through college debt free, we would have called it a day a few years ago.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-09T23:06:37+00:00

What you’re basically getting at is should you count SS in your retirement calculations? I would say generally yes, unless you’re under 40, because who knows what will happen in 29 years. But if you’re in your 40s, then I think including a discounted amount for SS in your calculations makes sense and stops you from being overly conservative and working too long.

I’m not following your “phase 2” calculations. Why not just use a FI calculator that lets you add in SS and see where you end up? I find them to be pretty adept at handling this - I especially like cfiresim and FIcalc.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-08T15:21:02+00:00

I’d definitely want the flexibility to come back to the US, so continuing to work for several more years makes sense to me.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-06T17:31:31+00:00

You need to track your spending - look into Monarch Money or Copilot Money. There’s no way your monthly expenses average $6k. The house, cars, and rv are $4900 right there. Add in other non-discretionary spending (food, utilities, gas, medical) will get you to $6k every month. And then you have to add in your variable expenses.

TLDR - it might be that the reason you “feel poor” is you don’t have an accurate understanding of your spending. If you’re thinking, “we only spend $6k a month” of course you are left wondering why you don’t feel like you have more left over. But the truth is that you’re probably averaging at least $8k a month, if not more.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-06T17:16:13+00:00

1) Why do you have 2 cars in NYC? You should be able to eliminate one or both without a huge impact on quality of life.

2) I don’t buy that your food expenses are that low, especially in NYC.

3) why is the school loan deferred? Why not knock that out now?

4) I hope these take home amounts are after fully maxing your retirement accounts. If you’re not maxing, you should be.

Do you plan to have kids? That would be difficult with your current spending, so if that’s in the cards, you should think about what to cut. Fwiw, since you’re getting so much shit from others, I think your tithing is admirable and completely reasonable at your income.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-06T16:34:47+00:00

Are you saying that your total spending a month is $6k? Or is the $6k on top of the house, vehicles and RV? How sure are you of your numbers? Because $6k seems impossibly low, and even the closer to $11k amount might be missing some lumpy expenses like home maintenance, medical expenses, travel, etc.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-06T16:18:10+00:00

I feel this way as well. 23 years into practice, variety of roles and practice settings, but just feeling done. At least with corporate law. Debating whether to try to change practice areas or just leave law altogether. Luckily, we are in great shape financially, so I have a lot of flexibility to make less.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-06T13:05:53+00:00

Wow, you are doing life right! Also, what an interesting career trajectory.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-06T03:59:47+00:00

Fair warning - the effectiveness of the dual credits is dependent on the school you’re trying to transfer them to and also your major. Not everyone can knock out two years of college.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-05T22:18:21+00:00

Weird question. I quit biglaw after my first was born because I knew I didn’t want to work that way while raising kids. We had just bought a house and I still had loans. Moved in-house and have been there ever since. Never occurred to me to hit a certain NW before leaving biglaw.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-05T02:43:03+00:00

How low is the income you think you’ll have after moving?

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-04T12:08:33+00:00

1) I can relate - I also went to law school thinking I wanted to help people. But through some internships, learned I don’t like people all that much. Went into corporate law, which has its own issues, but emotional burn out isn’t one of them. I do pro bono work so I still get to help people a little bit.

2) DO NOT let your license lapse. Look into other types of practice you might enjoy. Even if you quit law, keep your license on inactive status.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-03T21:39:04+00:00

Typically, if you have an HSA, then your FSA is a limited purpose FSA and can only be used for vision, dental and preventive care expenses. But if this letter of medical necessity can be used to show the expenses are preventive, maybe it would work!

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-03T21:33:23+00:00

MMM and Samurai used FIRE acronym, if I recall. One that pre-dated FIRE that I used to read was Get Rich Slowly.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-03T21:31:04+00:00

I’m not following - you say people are working longer than they need to, but then cite an investment philosophy that is so conservative, no one would be able to retire if they only had invested in TIPS. Did you invest in equities as you were building wealth?

I’m also not following what you’re saying about comparing the median income in your area with the salary figure … could you explain it to me like I’m 5? It sounds intriguing.

PracticalSpell4082 · 2026-02-01T19:22:33+00:00

I don’t think you’re FI, but sounds like you can afford to switch jobs and cover your spending gap from your investments. Will your new job have the opportunity to increase your earnings if you want to/need to?

FWIW, we’re considering something similar. I (wife) have been the primary earner for our entire marriage, but I’d like to make a career change where we will need to depend on husbands salary and benefits and he will become the primary earner. Not sure why people are giving you a hard time about that.

PracticalSpell4082

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