Hello,
Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this. Basically my wife and I are both planning to quit our jobs in within the next 6 months or so and try to figure out what we really want to do with our lives. My situation:
31 y/o male, married to 33 year old lovely wife, no kids. Live in Manhattan, NYC. We are both 50/50 about having kids.
Income:
About $230,000/year total for my wife and I. Wife makes about $130k, I make around $100k.
Expenses:
Around 60 - 70 K, with the majority of that due to very high rent in NYC, we pay $2700/month to live in a one bedroom, decent hood. However, we are hoping to get eligibility for a co-op unit my wife's grandmother currently resides in that would lower our rent by about 50%. The rest is groceries, internet, cell phone, subway fares, going out and miscellaneous other stuff. We don't own a car. Health insurance is a bit of an unknown, as it's currently mostly paid for by my company for the two of us.
Assets:
Around $500K, about half in retirement accounts (Roth IRA, 401ks, Trad IRA etc) and half in post tax brokerage account and savings account. Basically all investments are in Vanguard ETFs/Index funds. (Before everyone berates us for not having more in assets, understand that we were not making this kind of money forever, taxes in NYC are very high, we had a lot of expenses for our wedding in 2013, were living separately for the first 3 years we dated so paying two rents etc...)
Liabilities:
None (we are debt free)
Anyway, we've basically both decided we want to quit within the next few months. Neither of us are happy at work. While I don't "hate" my job because I like the people a lot and there are nice perks, I hate the actual "work" aspect of it. I'm an actuary, and for all the nice articles about how it's the greatest job on Earth, after having done it for 8 years I respectfully disagree. My wife's job is at a start-up consulting firm where she basically runs the company and works incredibly long hours. Both of us are just burned out at this point.
Has anyone ever just walked away like we are planning to do, before being financially independent? If so what was your experience? Neither of us are totally sure where life might take us career/job wise after we quit. I guess we have what JLcollins would call FU money but not enough to actually retire. We are both "workers" and have always worked in some capacity, so I don't doubt that even if we take several months off to travel, pursue hobbies etc., we would eventually find some kind of employment, it is just likely to be much less than we are currently making. I personally would rather work part time than full time.
For me, there are many things I want to pursue that unfortunately aren't likely to generate income. I play guitar in a band and would like to devote more time to taking music seriously and improving as a musician. I'd like to do more volunteer work. I'd like to get into much better shape. I've found that it's been difficult to pursue these things in anything more than a superficial way while working full-time and just am generally not super happy that I can't find the time for these things that are important to me.
Just looking for any feedback from anyone that has done something similar. We've basically made up our minds at this point, but I guess just looking for some reassurance we're not making the worst decision ever :-)
Thanks.