Hello all!
I am pretty new to the MMM community but I am so excited to find people who care more about their freedom than about their clothes, hair, and cars!
I filled out the info spread sheet and it can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AMv-suKnKvteNCgdC0-SLEIiy2SC3yrGWIev9pPTzrs/edit?usp=sharingOne thing I didn't know how to do with the spread sheet was enter that both of us pay into state pensions me TRS and him the municipal equivalent, but the amounts were basically the same as what the sheet figured for SS so I just left that. Other than that we have no retirement savings because we have been trying to Smash our debt.
My DH (25) and I (27) just got married in June, we live in Texas and will be married filing jointly this year. We have no pets or dependents, but do drive frequently to visit relatives as almost none of our families live in the same city we do (too bad TX is so big...). I have about a 30 minute commute, DH has about 15 minutes but he has to use his car for work.
Assets: = $21,550
$11,000 in HSA (currently non-investment but I need to fix that suggestions welcome!) (I am the only one on an HDHP as DH has fully covered HP at work)
$5,050 savings for SL that should be forgiven at the end of the month but in case something goes awry with the forgiveness I want to be ready to pay it off( will go to DH's SL if not needed for mine).
$1,000 savings for car repairs
$4,000 savings for emergencies
$500 in savings for upcoming family outings/events
Liabilities:
$20K in student loans (5K hopefully to be forgiven this month)
$2,304 to the orthodontist (no interest could have saved a bit if I had paid cash, but wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to stay in the area for 3 years so it seemed less risky to pay it out using the 30 month payment plan.)
2010 Honda Civic (paid for) with 71K miles on it,
2014 Jeep Patriot 11K miles (gift from DH parents will become DH’s upon Student loan annihilation)
Specific Question(s):
We want to start a family in the not too distant future (my side has a history of menopause at 35!), how do we balance that with the RE goal? I am the main bread winner and I know we could live off of DH income even at his current job (if we had no student loans), but I worry about the implications of maternity leave and child care for our goal of RE. I think ideally we would be at a point where DH could stay home with the kids or work part time, even if I had to work, but there is that tricky amount of time when they are babies… how do you manage through that (we won’t have any family nearby to watch them) without killing your RE dreams? Our other thought is that he should try and find a better job for a bit and then it wouldn’t be as big of a deal for me to take time off during the early kid years, then switch for a bit and then meet our goal of RE. But there seem to be a lot of “if’s”.
We would both like to find different jobs in the near future (I am pretty sure I want this to be my last year teaching, thinking of going into something techy trying to gain skills this year to make that happen) and DH is potentially looking to be paid more for his IT work.
We rent now, do we buy a house soon? How does saving for that look with saving for FI How do you choose a house and new jobs? Do you decide where you want to live and then find jobs and move there or do you find the jobs first and move close to them? Who finds the first new job? After the first job is found do you move close to there and decide on a radius for the other person to look for a job?
How do we balance saving in IRA type accounts with plain Index funds?
Do you think RE in 5-7 years is possible for us? I feel like we can, by February we are hoping to have killed the student loans which will mean we have paid off close to 100K in student loan/car loan and also cash flowed an 11K wedding and about $2,500 in gifts/help to my family who were having money troubles, and created our assets listed above. In 5.5 years and that was with me only making 37K the first three, then I went to 51K and we have added DH’s income since last April.
I am excited and also scared to make this work; I need some encouragement because so many people are critical of our lack of spending habit, and I really want to make good choices so that we can have the life we want, rather than the life others think we should have.
Thanks!!