Hi dcnats. Congrats on being so frugal! I discovered MMM about 3 months ago and have done almost a 180 since then - so I wasn't as good of a saver as you were early on! I have a 2 year old and a 1 year old. I'm a physician and have worked long hours throughout my training, down to 50-60 a week right now. Once I found MMM I knew I wanted early retirement. However, I also want to enjoy time with my kids right now while they're so small (hoping for 1-2 more) and am hesitant to leave my job *too* early, in case I should need to go back, I'd rather have several years of experience under my belt. (I'm 3 years out of training.) I think I could probably retire after 3-5 years of full time work but I've decided after we have #3 I will cut back to 60%. Then I plan to retire in 9-10 years at latest. My husband did not have an advanced degree, specialized training, or a career that he loved, and wanted to stay home with our kids, and he does that. No concrete plans for him to go back to work so I guess he's been retired for almost 3 years now! We have the minivan too, and did the Montessori preschool briefly.
We both enjoy photography and plan to start a portrait photography business, probably pretty soon. I take portraits for friends and family, which I enjoy, and I think it will be a fun thing to do on a small scale for profit. I like the idea of going into business together, especially since it isn't exactly a business that requires two people to run, so we can divide the work and be available for our kids. I don't plan to stop working until we are able to support our annual spending with passive income, we are being very conservative here.
Other interests - I love playing music (fiddle, guitar, harmonica, hoping to learn piano and mandolin), crafts and quilting, yoga, hiking and biking, and reading books. I know I can fill hours upon hours with all of these things. But it has mostly taken a back burner to spending time with my kids and then trying to get sleep here and there so I am not a zombie.
For me, cutting back and working a few more years made more sense than continuing to work my tail off for a few more years. I would like more time to fully commit to them AND be able to do other things - not just hobbies, but clean and organize my house, etc, rather than trying to get things done while trying to have meaningful interactions with them at the same time. It just gets too frustrating.
As for retirement income, I am maxing out pre-tax contributions for our "old age" money, and if I do that until I'm 45, I will only need to have 15 years worth of income accessible until we can start to use that. When I retire we plan to start drawing interest/dividends off our investments, don't know the logistics of that but its a few years away. The sky's the limit as far as jobs you can do, be creative and think about the things you enjoy!
That's my background, I don't know if that answers your questions. You didn't post any numbers, but sounds like financially, you (and your husband?) are probably safe to scale back but maybe you're afraid of running out of money. MMM has a couple of posts that are relevant here - don't know how to link but there is one like "Do you have too much in your 401K?" and one like "multiple levels of safety". It also depends on your current job, how much you enjoy it, and what kind of options there are for alternative working situations. Could you possibly work part time? Would they be open to a leave of absence (if you're interested in some time off)? Do you hate going to work, and does it make you a miserable person? What are your husband's plans/goals? Feel free to post a case study in the "Ask a mustachian" forum area, people are very helpful there. Hope you get some good feedback here! :)
