This is super long, sorry about that but thanks for reading and any advice !! Been a hard core lurker, first time posting. I have a question/problem that deserves many face punches and a serious sigh from longtime Mustachians. I only came to the light just this April after stumbling on the MMM blog. I'm going to give a broad picture of our current status and my questions at the end: My issues are admittedly not in any way the norm and deserving of no pity so here goes ;)
We are a couple with 4 kids. One child (17) leaves for boot camp this summer and I we have also 8, 4, and newborn (found the light while on maternity leave).
Our income is very high. We have multiple streams from several places, totaling 11-12k monthly more on that in a minute. We adopted oldest child when he was 14 so 1k of this disappears when he turns 18, it's a supplement from the state. Our only debt is what's always sold as "good" debt (I know...lies)
Mortgage 1, the house we live in (and barring financial ruin never intend to leave...this is the dream house we plan to die in) 380k
mortgage 2, a house we used to live in in another state but haven't been able to sell 168k
Half my husbands student loans (the ones that qualify to be wiped out by being in public service for 10years, we paid the rest off already) 50k
1 car (we drove the other until it was totaled in an accident and bought new...ugh) 25k
Since finding mustachianism, I'm on track to halve our monthly expenses with little effort... Seriously lifestyle creep...it's evil. Hubby has barely noticed changes other than switching grocery stores and me firing all the services (maids, lawn care etc) we both like to clean and garden and we pretty much just had these people coming for the sake of it because their work just redid stuff we were doing anyway.
So here's where we get too sad panda land because obviously despite the overspending, our income could plenty support it. We have about 40k in various assets- checking, savings, 401k. We are already technically retired. 6k of the above income is military pensions. Husband and I are in our 30s and will receive this income forever. Husband is currently in law enforcement, which I may never convince him to retire from. He would be doing it even if we won the lottery. He is already vested for the Leo pension too. If he goes a full 20 with them, he will draw a third pension starting the day he retires. I work entirely from home (as a teacher for our states online k-12) now and am also in the same pension pool as hubby but chose the 401k instead because he was taking the pension. The OLD plan was to work another 20 years (into our 50s) and then draw 3 pensions and have a nice stash in the 401k for fun money. By this point all the mortgages and student loans would be gone too. And if we picked up social security later in our 70s even better. If I was still seeing the world through normal glasses this plan wasn't half bad.
But I have obviously discovered the error of my ways. 1) unlike hubby I am not overly fond of my job. It's easy and it's very flexible (which is why I took it, i am insanely overqualified but I write books in my spare time and wanted to be home with the kids) and it's hard to quit when I make a pretty good salary for doing only 3-4 hours of work 5 days a week. But it's annoying and I also pretty much have to always have my smartphone on to be "available" to my students. I would rather just write and do the children but between lifestyle creep and debt that hasn't been a feasibleoption until I recently came to the light. As I said above, hubby is unlikely to retire early. He LOVES his job. He has even talked about staying on the reserve force for 2 or 3 days a week after he officially retires and draws pension.
Anywho,
Right now about 5k goes to service the above debts. Ironically, mortgage 2 and mortgage 1 are only a few hundred bucks apart because mortgage 2 is a 15 year and 1 is a 30 year. We are actively trying to sell the second home. It's rented out for less than the mortgage presently. And it's an older home in another state that is a money pit because we have to pay someone else to do repairs. I can see cutting expenses down even further until I'm mostly in line with MMM beyond servicing these debts until they are paid. But we have complications ...
So these are my 2 BIG questions-
1) how do you get a frugal but non-converted to mustachianism spouse onboard when you don't really have any financial issues or negativity surrounding work to motivate them? I can definitely sell hubby on aggressively paying off the mortgage and student loan and car because he hates debt. And even building the nest egg, but some of his consumerism (he likes gear people...military Leo stuff and he eats out a lot even when I pack him food because he eats all the time, he's that chronically fit guy who eats 100 times a day). I don't want to lower spending temporarily, I want to cut the lifestyle creep permanently. I'm not sure how to sell that. Or what books I could get to sell him on that. We are heavy readers.
2) what should my goals and investment target even look like to officially FIRE? (I'm sure some will say I'm really almost already fired since we could live off our pensions with extreme frugal measures, but at a bare minimum to consider myself truly FI, I would want all debts including our mortgages paid off and some kind of sizebale nest egg so we can live on the pension income and rely on the nest egg for our extras like travel, potentially helping children etc). And I want to quit my job without making hubby uncomfortable. It's the FU money. See I still kind of care that getting 55j a year to do almost nothing even though I hate it isn't money I can quite let go of yet. I want to be able to roll my eyes and drop my 2 weeks notice and say whatever and then roll over that 401k
To some VTSAX.
With the spending even slightly more in line, and especially if I can get the other property sold we will have a ton of money to throw at stuff, so help me !!! What's my best game plan??
