Sounds like you're making the right moves after a couple of years of gambling.
1)
"My major debts are just my house, car, and the normal expenses with having a wife/child."If you'd like to become wealthy, never refer to debt as normal again. Your house debt is probably fine if you bought before 2022, but I'd like to know the interest rate on your car debt or the "normal expenses" debt which I presume is on credit cards.
2) That said, credit cards can be hacked to your advantage if you pay off your balance every month. I have a CC that pays 6% cash back on groceries and has a $95 annual fee. My household spends an embarrassing $10k/year on groceries, so the math works out and I gain about $500/year from this strategy. I have another card that pays 2% cash back and I use it for non-groceries, earning a few hundred per year that way.
3) There are no investments with as good a ROI as investing in your career. Certifications in particular are a cost-effective way to score raises and promotions. If you can keep your lifestyle inflation in check, you can plow these raises into savings and retire early.
4) VTI and VOO are good funds, with low expense ratios and great diversification. However, given the recession warning signals such as inverted yield curves, rising rates, and a high National Financial Conditions Index, there's a good chance they'll be cheaper later. You can offset some of this risk by dollar cost averaging or by selling put options on these funds until you get assigned on a downswing. Maybe you make a couple percent return before buying the shares at a lower price than you'd initially planned. SPY and QQQ might be more ideal ways to implement this strategy because their options markets are more liquid. Just don't make a lifestyle out of unlimited-downside/limited-upside positions! Especially don't do it during a recovery. Been there, done that.
5) $50k is good money, but it's a drop in the bucket compared with what you'll have upon FIRE. Therefore, don't stress out if you lose 10% or 20%. Those paper losses are routine, and with $50k invested now is not the time to freak out and go to cash in response to some market zig zag. Think about what your routine correction losses will be when you have $2M invested, and how you'll have to be able to tolerate those kinds of fluctuations in order to stay independently wealthy. I.e. one day you'll have to lose $400k in a month on paper, shrug your shoulders, and not alter your strategy. Imagine yourself there! Read the following to obtain this perspective:
https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2022/01/how-often-should-you-expect-a-stock-market-correction/6) Really it's a game of preventing lifestyle inflation. If you can't stand living in a smaller house than your peers, driving a cheaper car than your peers, having a more basic fashion sense than your peers, etc. then you'll never catch up to your own escalating spending. There's a reason why most 40 year olds have practically nothing to their name, and it has something to do with spending. You need to decide right now to be an outcast or iconoclast of sorts, or else you'll get pulled into the lifestyle most people live, which makes FIRE impossible.
7) Unless you really got a bad taste in your mouth from trading options, the temptation to gamble will return. Paper trading accounts and small play money accounts are one way people on this board scratch the itch. However you run the risk of developing a gambler's mindset instead of an accumulator's mindset.
