So as we continue on the "hurry up and wait" of our journey as mentioned above, today (and perhaps into the foreseeable future) looks like it may try our mettle a bit. Looks like the actual economic impacts of the coronavirus are really starting to take hold with a massive drop in US stocks at the opening bell, and I have several thousand dollars going into the market today as I am trying to work on how I will be funding our investments with our new work roles and having moved our college savings over and no longer saving for that. With 100% of our savings now going to our savings we are using a "strange" model, but it makes sense to my wife and I though it creates these large deposits (this one is about $2,700 going in today), along with the smaller trickles of a few hundred dollars coming into the 401(k) and our investments from the automated drips from my paychecks (the aforementioned 401(k) each paycheck to get my match as well as a set amount that has been flowing into investments for years of $90/week that is the difference between our old mortgage and our refinanced mortgage that we diverted to savings rather than adding into our spend years ago. Our 2029 data is the result of the glide path of just those trickles, so these extra $12K+/year that we are diverting from the college savings is gravy and pulls the date up up to 5 years if we can stick with it, but for our sanity we understand that adjusting to a 40% pay cut on my end a year ago still may necessitate some months having to dip into that savings. The $2,700 above represents the January and February contribution, which is actually running a good 35% ahead of that goal ($1,350/month) but one month was rally $900 and the other was $1,800 so you can see how I can a little disoriented on our trajectory as the variable income of my wife makes things harder to stick to and the savings valve is our variable "expense" so to speak. We only use $1,200 per month from her to cover our monthly expense and 100% of my salary, so we still need both jobs to cover our reduced lifestyle after the job changes, but still are unable to cut much more because of the kids and medical and life.
At this point we've had some heated discussions because of our communication style differences where I am just sharing information but my wife feels I am asking for change. I view my input pointing out added expenses that we could have avoided as food for thought, not decisions points. She thinks I am being passive aggressive, so trying to find a way to adjust the conversation. We do stay within our budget most times, but the disconnect seems to be my drive for high levels of optimization against her valid point that we are staying within the budget so stop pushing for more. At this point this disconnect is more like white noise because we have income and can adjust our plan, but once we hit FIRE it can become a raging storm, so I view this as something we need to be aligned on by that time. My wife and I have sat down and both seem comfortable with the FIRE expense level which obviously is crucial to set out 25x target, so all should be good, but the fact that we keep hitting this friction honestly has me a bit concerned. Her style (and where her frustration is being voiced from) is we have made decisions and we are following them so why are we talking about them over and over. I am more comfortable looking for more and therefore have little joy over when the kids waste a bunch of dinner because they can. Maybe I just need to figure out how to let it go and not lose the war by harping on the individual skirmishes. I have no idea if everything I just shared makes any sense to anyone not inside my head, as I do not know if I got them out clearly. Anyone else running into something similar that is able to comment?