I often say we are really more "Boglehead" than "MMM", but I really prefer the advice and vibe here. I was stunned by the person who made this comment:
Expensive mortgage
Retirement at 63 and 60
2x college
You can afford two of those things. Just not all three at the same time.
I would plan on retiring later.
Um, I think I'll stick around here where the advice would be "ditch the expensive mortgage and fix your priorities"...the travel they reference in that thread while still having a HELOC, and a student loan of 58k left, and evidently a fleet of cars is amazing to me.
For reference, my husband and I combined make almost 300k and we have the same giant mortgage as this poster (worse, actually, at $4145/mo, but with 3.25% fixed interest rate, and over 50% equity due to our original downpayment and appreciation). We aren't at fat-FIRE yet, but our NW including our equity is 1.6M, so we could downsize and retire in a LCOL area today. We are super spendy-pants compared to average around here, but we maintain at least a 40% savings rate (over 50% this month, woohoo!) and drive Hondas (Civic and CRV). I feel their pain of the extra $2200/yr adding son to car insurance...ours has a very reasonable Nissan Sentra, and adding him more than doubled our car insurance.
We also have a high school senior going to college next year. We agreed to pay for in-state public or equivalent. He got a scholarship to an out of state private school that drops our cost down to in-state public. We will cash flow college the next four years while we stay in our giant house until youngest is done with elementary school, and then we plan to downsize and possibly retire at that point. It means we'll cut back on our exorbitant travel we've enjoyed the past few years...travel hacking will have to be the heavy lifter for a few years. Reading that thread made me so stressed for them, and super thankful that we have made better financial decisions ourselves.