Main motivation:
--Spend as much time as possible with DH and our future children (I also miss my DH during the workday).
Big motivations:
--Freedom to choose how I spend my own life energy - proper sleep, travel, relaxation, projects that interest me
--Provide a financial safety net to more easily navigate rough waters - I worry about automation, changes in demand for our skills, etc
--Fund cushy, high quality end-of-life care (Ending up in a dingy, miserable nursing home at the end of my life is my own definition of hell)
Optional, but DH and I really want these additional consumption items "on top of" our FI number:
--Have the funds available to take advantage of advances in medical care as we age - CRISPR is fascinating to me, and if a therapy was created that could eliminate risk for heart disease and alzheimers and other diseases, it would save us money and joy over the long run. Again, this comes back to my primary motivator, spending as much time as possible with family. Dying early cuts into my time!
--Build our own house, with all of the things we want, where we want to live
--Provide a debt-free start in life to our children if possible, but even partial coverage if we can't reach 100% would be great legacy
So really, it will be a balancing act during our working years between wanting to spend as much time with family as possible, and building enough of a stash to fund the big consumption items. Our plan is to hit 50% of our FI number, have kids, then scale back our work schedule to 60% time (work 3 days per week, 4 days off, enough to just fund our $40k/yr lifestyle); we are both confident that this schedule will give us the balance we want, where we can keep working for as long as needed. At 50% FI, we know we are within a decade of FI even if we never contributed another dime to our investments, so family time can take precedence, and we can slowly grow our assets past our base FI number to support our additional goals.