Hi all,
I discovered MMM in the last month and have been devouring everything on the site and on many other similar sites. I'm 46 and my wife is 44. She can retire in 10 years with 30 years of service to the state of NC. She'll receive a pension that'll pay her about $55k/year gross. Thinking about her retiring in 10 years got me thinking, "hey, I want to retire in 10 years too - maybe sooner." We're a bit older than many pursuing FIRE so we won't have as many years in retirement, but at our age we're not starting from scratch. We have about $360k in retirement accounts (not including wife's pension), have no debt other than 2 mortgages, have one child (boy 11), and live close to both of our jobs - less than 5 miles for both of us.
Looking at the numbers I know we can do this. The thing standing in our way is our vacation cabin in the mountains. I'm not looking for input on whether or not selling the cabin is the right thing to do to get to FIRE - that's obvious to me. Selling would drastically reduce our expenses and drastically increase our savings rate. What I'm interested in is from those who've been through something similar, what was your experience like? How did it feel to let go of a vacation home? Did you have trouble convincing your spouse/SO? If you have kids how did they deal with the change? Our son was 2 when we bought the property, so it's always been part of his experience. Did you have feelings of regret? If so how did you deal with that?
If anyone has any ideas on how to minimize capital gains taxes I'm all ears on that too. My thought is to use the sale proceeds to get into rental property investing - something I've always wanted to try - but I'm not quite sure how the timing of the sale and reinvestment needs to work in to not get hit with CGT. Are there other investment options I should consider?
Thanks to all for your feedback. This has been weighing heavily on me. I think it will help to hear from those who have been through a similar experience.