Everyone, thanks for the great replies.
Willn, my wife and I don't plan on purchasing a home while I'm in the military. I'm looking to leave the service by the end of 2015. It's been a great ride, but it's time to put down roots for my family in a nice community. Once we've found a place to live, then we'll search for a house. Definitely hoping to have a significant down payment saved up by then.
AJ_yooper, thanks for the ideas about managing the money to minimize tax expenses. It's definitely an area I need to learn more about. Can you recommend any books or websites that could help me get spun up on the topic?
CDP45; first, love the name. 45 is the only way to go. I'm not too worried about downsizing in the military; I'm fortunate to have been recognized above my peers for promotion. But as I mentioned, I'm looking to leave active duty shortly.
I will give you my logic on the college funds; my time horizon for my kids going to college is 18-20 years. I figured that if I began with a larger principal at the beginning of the investment period (18 years), I would actually need to contribute less over the 18 years than if I broke up my payments into smaller monthly chunks to get the same future value.
Now that I'm hooked on MMM, my retirement horizon has shortened quite a bit, but to be honest, I'd delay ER a few years if it meant I could get my kids through college.
I actually just asked this same question regarding the 529s in the Investor Alley forum. Basically, everyone agreed with you, CDP45, that my wife and I have saved enough and should just let it ride.
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/kid's-529-when-is-enough-enough/new/?topicseen#newOur TSP is a little bit lower than we would like because we've decided to allocate more of our disposable income to our 'housing fund'. My wife and I will set a target for the down payment, and once we reach that we'll up our TSP allocation.