Hello, fellow Mustachians!
I apologize as this may be long and a bit confusing post. I also apologize for any mistakes, English is not my native language.
We are late 30's-early 40's family with 2 kids: one middle schooler, one toddler. Our combined current income is about 230K/yr.
We have no debt, paid off house (current value about 550-600K), and another ~500K in 401K/IRA accounts.
My husband takes care of our finances since I am lazy and not as smart as he is, so he established an estimated retirement date as about 10 years from now (2 mil is our number).
The problem is--I really really hate my job. Truly, I just want to quit and stay at home with my kids. It is a healthcare position, so I work weird hours, weekends, 14 hour shifts, holidays, etc. I am both physically and mentally exhausted, and I know for sure my kids are affected by it too. But I can see that financially, it is probably not a good decision for us, since I bring home half of our income.
Another problem is that we live in a tiny house. We are quite close to the beaches, hense the pricetag. My husband, having mustachian tendencies, took over our oldest kid's room as his work room/work out room, because he also slashed his gym membership. So now, our oldest sleeps in our bedroom. We tried to put the kids together in one room, but that did not work out, because the toddler wakes up several times at night, and our oldest really needs his rest otherwise it affects his school performance. So, in theory, I am not opposed to moving away from this area and buying a McMansion for less than our current house is worth, because, really, we need 4 rooms to be comfortable at this point. I mean, if anyone has a success story putting 2 kiddos who are different genders with a big age difference in one room, please, share. The room my toddler is in is plenty big, but she wakes up so often that I don't see any other solutions...
I also don't particularly like the public school that we belong to. It is heavily populated with Spanish speakers, Spanish is everywhere, in the parks, on playgrounds...my son has big problems finding playmates because Latin kids tend to form a group and he is always excluded...so I am thinking maybe there is a more "American" suburb that is cheaper...
The downside of moving would be loosing family support (grandparents) who help out with the kids a couple of times a week. So I don't know whether factoring in a nanny may offset any potential savings on the real estate. Also, being a tiger mom, I would like to be close to an area that has good quality activities for school, such as ballet, rhythmic gymnastics, etc.
So, I guess, at this point, I would like some input on some inexpensive but areas in FL we can potentially move to that are hopefully not in the "boonies."
Also, any pharmacists out there are welcome to chime in and tell me about part time employment. For some reason, I am scared that part time may mean that I am not going to be getting any hours...but I don't know the reality of it...