I never considered early retirement for DH and I. I still don't. I've always planned for 55 for DH to retire and I join him. I hate planning that far out because it seems weird to assume return rates and that we should have "millions" according to the savings calculators.

But rather I just have lived by the motto, save as much as you can, as early as you can, and see where life takes you.

So we've done that. I guess I should add I am soon to be 35 and DH will be 37 this year. Our financials are stable. But early retirement? We'll definitely hit it by 55. But any earlier? I'm not sure.

Let's assume we live on current budget of $60k/year. Right now that consists of half our mortgage and half our spending. At a Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR) of 4% we'd need $1.5M. To be extra conservative for retiring early perhaps 3% WR would be better so we'd need $2M nest egg. This is of course assuming we have no Social Security draw. We could split the difference since FIRE Calculator says we'd have 0% chance of failing a 50 year retirement with $1.75M and a $60k/year spend rate. Also I'm assuming we get to spend all $60k on health insurance, health care, car replacement, home repairs, and we'd have no mortgage.

How long would it take us? Well using $475k retirement starting balance, assuming a $30k addition to retirement annually and a 6.5% return we'd have after 10 years $1.3M. We'd be $200-400k short of the nest egg I'd need to be comfortable. However if we looked at 15 years we'd hit $2M, the high end of our number

However that's not looking at our taxable accounts and assuming we're mortgage free. I find it hard to account for all variables because we haven't settled in a final home. We have no idea what our spending budget would be in a final home or how much we could really have saved outside of retirement. I mean our annual spending could go up by a lot over the next 5 years. It could also go down depending on where we live and what sort of house and lifestyle we live.

Just looking at the numbers I'm pretty confident we are securely on track to retire by 55, and possibly by 45 we could "retire" or at least be financially independent where a job loss wouldn't matter. Sometimes it's the knowledge that you could walk away and not worry financially is the best feeling.

Would we retire at 45? I don't think so. While I think we'll be set to FIRE, it doesn't account for the college expenses we'd be looking at after we FIRE. I think we probably need to wait until 50 because our nest egg would be enough solely in retirement accounts and I think our taxable accounts and cash flow at that time will be going to college. Of course I have no idea if our kids will want to go to college or get scholarships. I'm not even sure we're done having kids yet.

But I'll reevaluate every year. Of course the other factor is everything I budget off of now is based on living where we live. That I plan on changing sooner rather than later.

As I mentioned in our previous post something had to be done to leave where we currently are. And I think at 34 and 36 we are going to "Early Retire" and switch from "high cost/high pay" to something else. Our current savings will give us the freedom to move.

It was mentioned that we may not want to move away from an exciting HCOLA, but I honestly I don't think any of the locations we are considering are "boring". I actually think they fit us better than NYC-BOS-DC does. We're more nature, outdoors, relaxation people.

This weekend we biked and hiked with the kids and I wish we just had better location to do it in. I was worried the entire time biking about being hit by cars. I'd like to also be able to take the kids to hike more somewhere closer. Perhaps one day.