I'm still new, but as I couldn't find any similiar topic via the search function, I thought create a new one.
An important issue in FI is of course tax. Without being an expert, people in the US appear to have pretty good circumstances regarding this (low income tax and low tax on capital gains and passive income).
I live in Denmark. Like many other European countries that tax conditions are pretty much opposite to what you have in the US. This allows other good things like free health care and education, but to state a fact, it is negative when it comes to achieving FI.
I'm 34, married with two kids, decent education and job. Without wanting to go into too many details, I have estimated that I _could_ stop working around age 50 if I went more extreme than I already have gone on MMM principles. I delibrately wrote stop working and not FI at 50, because I have calculated that I would at that point have a stash that would last until the earliest possible payout of my private/employees pension at age 63.
So no 4% rule, just enough to sustain my wife and I for 13 years.
That would be nice, but I am (I guess like many people) seriously impressed by the way that MMM has freed himself and his wife to spend time with their son.
In my case, stopping work at 50 would mean that my children would be grown up and probably left home at that point. Being "semi FI" at 50 would be great, but somehow I feel that this would be missing the whole "freedom with your family issue".
That got me thinking about working part time. In DK we have a kind of scalable tax system, meaning that in reality I receive only around 30% of my pay above a certain level. Effectively I could take a 20% pay cut without it seriously affecting my take home pay (especially after implementing some MMM principles on our fixed expenses).
It could be argued that that a 4-day work week now would be of greater value than the freedom from the need to work at the age of 50.
I can see the following drawbacks:
1. Part timers are very rare in my field (engineering), and if there were cutbacks at my current employer, I guess a part timer could easily be shown the door.
2. In terms of career advancement it would a white flag. But I've been in the business long enough not to be phased by this.
3. Getting another suitable part time job would be difficult. It would probably pay less and have less responsibilty, again I think I could deal with this.
Anybody had similiar thoughts?
Perhaps there are relevant online ressources concerning part time working?