I am not sure I can cover all of your questions. I will try.
We (I and wifey) faced external circumstances (2008 recession, for us) that forced a re-take on our plans. The direction of change was similar to where you are trying to go together with your wife.
Thinks I am being ridiculous or lazy that I want to FI soon.
Very difficult to change someone's perception of "right" or "wrong". I'd say it is almost impossible. If your partner believes your station in life is to work till you drop dead, and her station in life is to be a "stay at home wife" - you can likely not change that. Given this, you can only try to "agree to disagree" here.
At this point, any action necessary to FI early *will* be perceived as unfair by your wife - with a spectrum of fairly predictable consequences.
Are you ready/willing to take these "predictable consequences"? If not, try to slow walk and try to change your wife's moral framework. I doubt that is doable. But that would be your only option.
If you are at a "come what may" stage of your determination of your "FI by 50" goal, then you can use your purse-strings to control things. Go all cash. Cash runs out = no more spending. If your wife wants to spend more in some category, she has to earn herself.
Remember, hard reset usually is the only way to do this. Slow walk does *not* work. Watch the Canadian TV show "till debt do us part" for some tactics that can translate across borders.
Food is a major cost: eating out, buying organic. Food is also in the complicated 'joint' category.
We have done some things:
- cut back on eating out. Approx once a week now.
- I have gone mostly vegetarian and asked to cut out meat and fish from home cooked meals. My spouse still buys meat and fish for me too, sometimes. This has reduced the most expensive grocery category of meat and fish by almost half. I have intentionally not asked my partner to do the same, to avoid conflict and focus on my span of control.
In my experience, cutbacks don't work. Cold turkey quits do.
Cutback means you will do mental gymnastics to borrow from future.
We, for example, eat only only to celebrate something. e.g. Someone's birthday (Except mine, because I don't like eating out at places we can afford, except in very expensive fine dining restaurants. And we have decided we can't afford the restaurants I like). We *will* like start going out to the $300for4 dinners out that I like *after* we reach FI.
Second to eating out, In my experience, inventory control is a big part controlling food cost. We are still in the process of mastering it. Our grocery bill was one of the ridiculous $1000/month ones. I am hopeful after we learn all the mustachian ways, we can drive it down to $500/month for 4 of us. We are not there. Still learning.
How do you tackle "joint" items like rent, children's education? Our rent is ridiculous by MMM standards, but ok by mainstream standards at approx one third of income. How can I convince reduce to MMM community levels?
Your rent does not compute for me. We have lived around NYC and I have always worked in NYC (except for times when I was a road-warrior with a base in NYC). We *never* paid more than 15% in rent. We married early. Even then, when I was earning < $80k/year (low by NYC standards), we never paid > 15% of our salary in rent. One third of salary in rent is especially unjustifiable if your kids go to private school. The only justifiable reason I can think of to live in a high-cost, high-rent neighborhood is good public school.
As of right now, I have a 2 hour one way commute, work from home a lot (thankfully, my work allows it), and have a house that costs 1/3rd of what my colleagues have.
You might need to think out of the box a bit here.
My partner claims that working in this expensive city will create more costs. More so than what the realistic salary will be.
I think there may be a lot of issues hidden behind this statement that needs peeling back.
Do you do you share of childcare activities? Diaper changes? Feeding the kids. Will they starve if they are with you at home one week when your partner is out for something?
If you do your share of childcare, then your partner can do college in the evenings, weekends etc.
Heck, my wife completed an MS in CS + 25 credits worth of pre-requisites (because she did not come from CS background) in 3 years flat with I working full time + travelling out Monday-Thursday for 2 out of those 3 years. So I *know* it is possible. I don't expect everybody to be capable of such superhuman feats like my wife (I know I am not). But that is no excuse for not trying.
This may be a very difficult and sensitive topic due to her sense of what her, and your station in life is. She probably thinks that it is her right to stay at home and your duty to provide for that. Trying to shaking her our of this may indeed bring your marriage to a breaking point, or indeed break it!
How is your progress to FI? I am afraid, even if my partner does work, getting both a) increase in come AND b) saving (asking not to spend that extra income) will put too much stress and pressure...
We are ready to lean-FIRE if we relocated to a low-cost area. We're not going to do that.
We are 60% ready to lean-FIRE in-place with 4% SWR. We won't lean-FIRE and I am not comfortable with 4% SWR.
Our house will be paid off in 2029, thereby reducing our monthly outgoing cash flow. At that point we should be truly FI. I still don't expect to voluntarily RE then. I'm a programmer by trade and I like my work. Wifey changed her career to become a programmer too. She used to say she would retire at the first chance. She has also started enjoying coding now - and seems to be changing her tune.
One thing I am learning, and have learned in this board is that you truly do *not* need to spend much money to enjoy life. So, the mustachian ways may seem very stressful from outside, but are far less so once you roll up your sleeves and really get into it.
On education, I am told I cannot sacrifice our children's future and "deprive" expensive private school education... which I did benefit from when I was a child...
You said your had agreed on domains - right? Education is not a "home" domain. So your wife should have just as much say about your children's education as you have about grocery shopping.
On splitting bank accounts - it is efficient to have 1 partner do groceries, than do it twice. Do you deduct groceries of 1 partner from one account, and vice versa? How can we improve here?
With a young family, it is almost certainly more efficient if one person controls grocery shopping.
Your best bet is money-jar, envelope etc. You will need to get your wife to cooperate for this + inventory control etc. to work. This *may* be the flashpoint that really precipitates your relationship crisis. So venture into it only if you are desperate enough in your resolution that you will not back down come what may.
Else, don't!