Thought it was time to join a cohort, and 2022 seems a good target. I've been posting my asset accumulation journal for a couple of years now, and another five years or so might very well put give us enough of a cushion to either quit work or work much less. By 2022 both kids should be done with school or almost done. Right now we have retirement accounts of about 80k, my wife has a tiny vested pension with the Cal State teacher retirement system, a paid off house worth about 380k, and another 385k which consists of ownership equity at the restaurant we work at, stocks, a REIT, and some personal loans outstanding.
So, assuming historic rate of return with my stocks, REIT and ownership income (I've had shares since 2010 so there is somewhat of a history by now) plus the interest on the loans my 385k in non-retirement accounts is netting on average somewhere in the low 3,000's per month, which is actually pretty close to our monthly expenses, if not a little more. But I wouldn't be comfortable retiring now, that cushion of extra earnings over the next few years will hopefully stretch out our passive earning potential substantially.
My wife is sort of on board. She's into savings for sure, but not fully convinced of the realisticness of the overall FIRE idea. I've gradually been educating her to the exciting realities. One question that is still outstanding is the status of my restaurant ownership shares if I wanted to quit, or close to it anyway, working. I don't think the majority owner would be too concerned. One idea might be that I could always help fill in for him when he wanted to go on vacation, or that I could continue to have a role in training new delivery drivers as I've been the main driver at the restaurant for 18 years now. Even if we moved away to somewhere cheaper, I could sporadically come back to town and help out every so often. The restaurant ownership income isn't huge but its the cornerstone of the passive income side of my income, and I'd like to keep it without too much friction. Its kind of like the best rental house a landlord has, steady rent, good tenants, nice property etc.
I hate to set an exact financial target for FIRE, or the date to hit it, but 2022 just feels right, in terms of our lives, our current investment trajectory etc. Right now our investment capital has been growing about 4 k a month, including new savings that we put into it and the growth of the investments on its own (with some obvious big monthly swings), and I'd like to think that my investment accumulation is in the top one percent of any currently working pizza/pasta delivery driver in the USA.