Hi all! I've been fully into the financial independence thing since 2016 (and was lucky enough to have wound up vaguely Mustachian even before discovering MMM), but only recently started really paying attention to this forum. Our timeframe is no later than September 2021, at which point we'll be 33. We're currently in a big-ish coastal city, and will be moving to the midwest. (September is when our lease will end).
I'm currently hanging on in a job that I used to love, but has suUuUucked for like 6 months+ now. I've been job hunting for a couple of months. While it's totally possible that a new one might be no more enjoyable than this one, it would at least be a change of pace that should put a few more months on the "how long can I last" clock.
But, when I make myself stop overfocusing on all that, I have to admit my situation is pretty wonderful. For one thing, I've already taken care of the fear of the prospect of post-FIRE ennui: I took a month off a few months back, and it was as wonderful and productive as you could hope. On the financial side, my wife recently started at a job she loves, and makes just enough that we should hit our minimum target even if I stopped working now, and she stopped in September 2021. I'm really trying to avoid that, though. For one thing, I'd feel bad being a mooch before we are >100% FI. Plus, keeping my income going another year would make it vastly more comfortable to start the cute little cafe we want to run someday, which will take some startup capital and may well not do so great.
The technical details: we're targeting ~$25k annual spending, mortgage accounted separately. Our spending looks closer to ~$22k, but the wiggle room is really important to me for comfort (less so to her; I'm the planner/worrier!), not to mention not knowing what to expect with health insurance, which we've so far always had through school/employer. Our definition of "safe withdrawal rate" is EarlyRetirementNow's CAPE-based rule,
https://earlyretirementnow.com/2017/08/30/the-ultimate-guide-to-safe-withdrawal-rates-part-18-flexibility-cape-based-rules/, specifically with a=1.5 b=0.5. It will guide our spending cap, and is also what we're using to decide when it's safe to stop working.
Well, that's about it. It was nice to read about others' similar situations. I'll try to check in here regularly. It's a weird feeling being more or less in the home stretch, and I think it's only going to get weirder. Total freedom is really a massive change of perspective. I'm guessing several people in this thread are also experiencing that right now!