@BikeFanatic sure.
Here is a summary.
Spending and Debt issues prior to 2012--wanted to give my kids a better life.
-One son was in multiple sports year-round including traveling soccer, some traveling baseball, basketball. So we would spend money on the club sports, entry fees for tournaments, driving up to 1000 miles for tournaments, hotels, eating out, ... half the weekends of a year.
-Another son was in traveling horse shows (hunter jumpers). Similar costs, except now we had to pay to feed, bed, and trailer a horse. So we had about $50K credit card debt and some equity in the house. NW was probably about zero--but we were spending every penny we had.
-These two were in college at the same time in the early 2000's. They racked up over $200,000 in loans/other costs (which thanks to FAFSA I was "lucky" enough to co-sign for, and ultimately had to pay off.
By 2012, I had the student loan debts paid off ( I figured out Dave Ramsey's snowball approach before I ever heard of him). But still had a home equity LOC and some CC debt. I had maybe $50-100K in 401k but was only contributing a few thousand per year in order to pay of debt (I wasn't even getting the full employer match). (Note, I worked for the US Govt, so when I say 401k, I am talking about TSP, just because most people may not no what TSP is--but it is very similar to 401k's from what I read).
Then, a miracle occurred. I had a job transfer, and sold my house. There had been enough appreciation for me to pay off the LOC and CC debt and still walk away with $100K. Having a reasonably large lump sum of cash is FREEING, and life-altering. All of the sudden I had options.
We planned to rent in the new city. However, the rent prices were very high, and housing prices were still depressed in FL from the great recession. So we bought a new construction condo. We stayed there 3 years, then sold the condo to free up another $50K of cash.
We moved to SOCAL, again for work, and bought new construction again. We put 20% down. By now, all 3 boys were off the payroll, and we had lots of money above our basic needs. So for 2 1/2 years, we paid an EXTRA $6000/month on the mortgage. This while also maxing out my traditional TSP.
Then in late 2017, I was introduced to the works of Dave Ramsey, Robert Kiyosaki (not sure of spelling), the BiggerPockets site. I bought my first rental property in 2018 and started learning about the FI community. So, I did some calculations and realized that we were in pretty good shape. And could retire.
We just sold our SOCAL home and are moving to a LCOL area in the southeast. Our equity was sufficient to pay cash for my wife's dream home and upgrades. 2 pensions will pay over $70K/yr. Then we have about $500K in TSP.
So, in the end, there were three major factors that offset 30 years of bad decisions (including being too conservative in my investing): 1) I was fortunate in choosing jobs (R&D) that I really enjoyed, and had a pensions; 2) Selling a house to harvest the equity--this really set us free; and 3) Once free, then we doubled down on paying off debt, investing and paying off the house ( I know there are strong opinions on whether this was a good decision or not, but for me, it lowered my wife's stress enough that she is at least mildly on board with the other investing tenets.
I really think that if anyone is STUCK, but they have some decent equity in their home, harvesting that equity should be very seriously considered as a mechanism to get you un-stuck.
