One of the hurdles to FIRE that a lot of us face is general unease and anxiety over whether we really have enough to be secure and shouldn’t we really be doing something productive right now, and what about college in 15 years, and, and, and. It took me a full year to decompress and drop the constant uneasy feeling that I was forgetting something important. If you do decide not to go back to work for a while, I highly recommend you force yourself to take an entire year off before even beginning to search for a new job. Work through the decompression phase (which can be really uncomfortable at times) when your head has cleared, then make your decision about the long term.
In your situation here’s what I do.
Downsize the house, move out of the big city. Consider renting until you decide which town is right for you.
Diversify those investments! I’d feel very uneasy if my investments weren’t structured in a way that they were backed up by the Trinity study.
Take a year off, collect your unemployment, go on some trips with your family, get a feel for what your FIRE routine would feel like. Pay attention to what you love and what’s missing from your life.
Then if it were me, after a year I’d see if I wanted to work part time on a passion project. It’s pretty easy to make some money if you want to.
The math would work out something like this:
$2,335,000 - all money, including proceeds from the house invested.
$93,000 - amount you could withdraw at 4%
$80,000 - annual expenses (includes an extra $2500/month for rent over and above your current 50k projected expenses)
$13,000 - amount that your stash is growing each year, assuming a measly 4% rate of return.
After 3 years, when your child is ready for school, your net worth will be about 2,375,000 (probably a lot more considering you will likely do much better than a 4% return). Take 700k to buy your new home. Leave the remaining 1,675,000 invested. At a 4% SWR you’re now able to pull $67,000/year. You own your house now so your expenses drop back to $50,000/year. In 13 years when the little one is ready for college, your Net Worth will have grown to 1,958,000. Again, this is assuming that you never do better than a 4% rate of return. This is assuming you and your wife never earn money outside of your stash. This is assuming you never optimize your spending below 50k year with a paid off house. Even with all of this assumptions, you have plenty of money to pay cash for college and still never drop below a very comfortable FIRE number.
I’ll say again though, that despite the numbers, it can still be very unnerving to FIRE. If you do, and I highly recommend it, give yourself a lot of time to adjust before deciding that it would feel more comfortable going back to work and receiving a paycheck. Don’t let unfounded anxiety dictate how you spend your time.