2030 is my ultra-conservative goal—as in there is no earthly reason we should not at least be fully FI by then, if not retired. My husband and I are both 33, working full time, with 2 small kids. We’re not advanced Mustachians by any means, but we’re high earners and have largely managed to avoid the lifestyle creep of our yuppie parent peers.
By maintaining our student-level lifestyle during our highest earning DINK years, we were able to do some significant saving. We’re spending more now, but a big chunk of that is daycare ($22K a year for both—which is actually a steal in our area) and paying down low interest house renovation and student loan debt. Our current retirement savings is $750K (401(k)’s and taxable investments—not including home equity or the kids’ 529s) and we’re contributing $48,000 annually. In the next 5 years, as the kids get into public school and the low-interest debt gets paid, we should be ramping up to $96,000 in annual savings.
According to FIREcalc, EVEN IF we maintained our contributions at $48,000 annually and never increased, and EVEN IF we never cut our embarrassingly un-Mustachian spending (restaurants and vacations, anyone?), we’d STILL have a 95.3% success rate of our Stache lasting 60 years. Good enough for me.
My husband is skeptical—worried about market volatility, taxes, health care, “but what about all the nice things?”, etc.—but I think 14 years is long enough to bring him around. There may be another kid in the mix, but I think we could still maintain our current saving level as we’d never have more than 2 kids in daycare at once. And, given that we’ll still be just 47 by then, I think the chances of earning extra income over the years is high.
So, yeah, if I still need to work for money in 2030, somebody please punch me in the face ;)