I'm assuming our house will be paid off by the time we "retire." Although, my current plan is to semi-retire before I retire. Retire from the psycho 70 hour a week job and work a part-time 20-25 hour a week semi-retired job before I actually pull the trigger and retire for realz. I'm waiting to hear back from my 70 hour a week employer about a part-time option as I'm currently on LTD (with income replacement, thank God) and won't physically be able to even do a 70 hour week even if I wanted to for probably a year. If they say no (I'm coming up on the end of FMLA protection period), then I'll freelance from home and be self-employed. Either way I can make a really good income being semi-retired.
Until I got hurt, with employee and employer contributions to our 401(k)s, we were able to sock away about $40k a year for the last 3 years (in addition to what we had saved in our plans before those 3 years), but we still have student loans. So, we're dialing back the 401(k)s to pay down the SLs.
I had never calculated our savings rate, just kept maxing out the 401(k)s and not really worrying about the rest - just assumed that if we were contributing the max we'd be fine. But, I've been educated in the MMM ways. So, we're working on increasing our savings percentage. We've started tracking our expenses in Mint. August was our baseline month.
I've got lots of things to research like reducing our insurance expenses and utilities, which seem very high compared to MMM. Grocery budget got slashed for September. Eating out got slashed. Entertainment, buying books and movies, etc. have been slashed. Childcare got slashed (no more after school care since I'm not currently able to work full time and my husband's job has some flexibility). The child care alone saved $620/mo. But, the COBRA is new, so healthcare went way up. We've already maxed out our out-of-pocket deductibles for the year and everything else is covered at 100%, so to jump over to hubby's insurance (which isn't very good) we'd be starting all over and it doesn't make financial sense to do so. But, we'll move when open enrollment begins.
Anyway, I'm learning tons in the forums, so thanks a bunch.