Thanks for all your comments and advice. We track our expenses fairly closely on Mint. We have ESplanner, one of the software programs that runs retirement scenarios. My DH is not as worried about a zombie apocalypse so much as he is worried about one of use become a zombie and needing significant care I think. Yes, he might be willing to go PT or retire and have me keep working, but that doesn't really appeal to me for any real period of time. I wasn't very clear in my original post, sorry. That 81k/year was the example from the article, not my specifics.
My situation: I am 35 (but, effectively 23 years until I reach the age I can take my sweet, fat government pension. Of course, nothing is guaranteed, but its the next closest thing, if I stick it out. If I leave early, I get pennies on the dollar once I hit traditional retirement age. And I give up the healthcare benefits into retirement. I think this is worth it to buy back my time.) My husband is 38 and works in the private sector, and we live in DC, so yes, HCOL. We have a child, plan for one more if it happens, and have the associated expenses of daycare and living a modest (all original! bad heating and cooling!) but good sized single family home in a good school district.
I think I wouldn't want to fully retire, but would work for myself 5-10 hours a week if we FIREd in 5+ years. I would be happy to move to a lower cost of living area and buy a house outright, hopefully in a good climate and close to places to bike and walk (pools, libraries, parks, grocery stores). I see our budget as shrinking at that point. But, I admit that my husband is right that right now, we do not exercise our frugalities muscles as much as we should. He is great with encouraging savings, maxing out retirement funds, stretching himself to try to fix things that break rather than hire someone, and he is the only reason I would even be able to think about retiring, to be honest. Without his earnings and his saving philosophy I would be a complete consumerist sucka (sp?) and, even if I found MMM now, it would be a long time before I got myself into a place where I could retire.
So it makes it hard to counter his fears that we shouldn't keep working and earning, at least until I hit that pension age, so we never have to worry about the what-ifs. He understands monte carlo theories, he crunches the numbers. And still he is unsettled. I guess I am thinking that true frugality now might sway him, but well, it might not. I could pare down our spending in a number of MMM-suggested ways, republic wireless, less car trips, less impulse buys at target, fewer trips to see family. I suppose it seems like a lot of denial when we are lucky enough to be saving significantly without doing so, and we are happy enough to keep working as we are for the next 5-10 years. And if we do cut back and he is still worried and unsure when we reach a point when we should get the 3-4% withdrawal rate that I think we could live on comfortable, then its all for naught.
Ok, enough complainypants from me. :) Any facepunches?