Life Situation: Married, 34 years old, to a wonderful guy, 38 years old. We have a 1-year-old daughter.
Gross Salary/Wages: 140k
His Salary: 110k
My Salary: 30k (part-time, 9 months of the year. This has been ideal with an infant/toddler.)
Current financial overview:
We have no debt. We've had medium mustaches for the last year or so, and paid down $30k. So, I expect we could really grow our savings rate in the coming years now that we 1) pay attention to the budget, and 2) funnel more money toward investments.
We have a total retirement nest egg of $225k.
We have non-retirement savings of $30k.
We have about $30k in equity in our home and $130k left on the mortgage.
Question:
Should I continue to work? Should I worry? Should I do both? (Or neither??) :)
My husband and I are contemplating a move. He would stay with his current company and get approximately a 10% pay increase. The move would put us closer to family, but further from good career options for me. Since getting tuned in to MMM and other financially-focused communities, I have such conflicting values. On one hand, I think I could really crank up my earning potential and put us in an even healthier financial situation, but I would have to work full-time and be aggressive about it in our new location. On the other hand, I could stay home for a year or two (though I have no desire to be a permanent stay-at-home-parent). I feel guilty about the time we've wasted being not as focused on financial wellbeing as we could, but I also recognize we're in an okay place. It's hard for me to gauge how we're doing and if I can let go of my own worry about not increasing my earnings in the short-term (I read a lot of financial blogs where people our age have a million in net worth or more already). My husband says either is totally fine with him, but he is definitely encouraging me not to stress about it either way.
Basically: If you were in our shoes, would you be worried about our current financial picture? Would you choose to work and really boost the net worth picture? Or...other? Thank you all! It will help to have some other outside perspective.