You’ve already gotten good feedback from some of our heavy hitters — waltworks, RWD, ysette9. Sure, according to FIRE standards, your expenses are exorbitant, but you are also a high earner so people aren’t really going to face punch you too much, because you already live well below your income.
If you’re really serious about the whole FIRE concept - simplifying/optimizing life expenses, minimizing your carbon footprint, DIY-ing, etc. — there’s a lot more you can do. For example, we make quite a bit more than you and spend about $1500 a month in living expenses. But that required drastic changes to our lifestyle, which most people here on the forums are not interested in doing.
Wow, can you share how you go about spending only $1500 per month?
I really wish I felt our expenses were exorbitant. I look at what we have and we have nothing fancy, in reality. We have far less materially than the fellow parents at our kid's school. Most of them have boats, really nice vacations, kids have nicer cars than us, bigger houses, fancy toys, etc.
I just can't reconcile the numbers of what we spend, what we have, and what we see, from people that I believe mostly make less money than we do. We live in an decent middle-class neighborhood and a good public school system, but I feel we may be making a lot more than my peers based on the types of jobs I hear that they have - a lot of mundane, regular office type jobs that max out around $70k - $80k. Even with dual incomes at $80k they are making less than me, and yet manage to have a lot more shiny toys and stuff that I could never imagine buying.
That’s because you’re comparing yourself to the wrong folks. You have a house in a middle class neighborhood. That’s fancy (I’m assuming your house has more than 2 bedrooms.) You spend $1.5k a month on phones. That’s fancy. You have pets. You have a vehicle. You spend $14k a year on food. You also spend on travel, memberships, and clothing - a lot more than we spend.
I can share how we do it. Again, it’s drastic and most people would never do what we do, but then again, most people don’t save 80-90% of their take home income.
First, we use geographic arbitrage. We’ve moved to the other side of the world on expat packages. Cost of living is cheaper here. This allows us to househack. The company pays for our USD$5 million condo, tuition, travel airfare, and health insurance. Meanwhile, renters pay our mortgage at home.
We chose a home that was close to work and school, which gets rid of the need to have a car. We purchased bikes and push scooters. For longer distances, we use Uber or taxi. We try not to go long distances. The grocery store is across the street from our apartment. We buy produce that are in season and minimize purchase of exotic out of season fruits/veggies. We don’t eat much meat.
We have iPhones (which DH won at a raffle). If he hadn’t won it, I’d be using a basic smartphone. We are on the cheapest phone plan. No data plan. I go to Starbucks or a mall with free wifi.
Our clothing comes from the thrift store. We drive to wealthy neighborhoods and shop at thrift stores there. That we can get name brand, good quality, gently worn clothing for a fraction of the cost. All our furniture is secondhand. Our expensive electronics - computer, camera, etc - are either provided by work or are secondhand.
So because we found ways to hack our major expenses, the $1500/month just involves food, a couple taxi rides, utilities, and phone and internet.
Because our savings is high, we purchased a cottage. It gets rented out when we are not using it, so it mostly covers its own costs.
When choosing a vacation spot, we sometimes choose Southeast Asia (Thailand, Cambodia) because flights are cheap from Asia where we live.
So basically, on the surface, we live in a $5 million home, fly and travel multiple times a year, spend summers at our lakefront cottage, own expensive gadgets, but really get these things for “free” or for very cheap.