I’m struggling a bit right now and thought some perspective from folks on this forum might help.
My wife and I have always been more frugal than the majority of our friends, which enabled us to build a decent nest egg. Four years ago, while doing some research on retirement planning, I came across this community. As someone who is financially hard wired, I was quickly drawn into it.
I made all the mistakes others have, sharing too much too quickly with those around me, then falling back into just educating myself, then trying a more nuanced approach that led to responses from my wife like “we need to focus on now, not worry about 10 years from now.” We made the decision to have her quit her job to stay home with our second baby, something she didn’t do for our first, and I was happy to have her do it because her high-powered career was not making her as happy as our kids. Two years later she wants to go back to work because I make her “feel like a teenager having to ask Dad for money”. Yeah, I haven’t done as good a job as I hoped painting the picture of what can be. I had hoped that by giving her freedom she would want to enable mine. I think what she’s been going through is similar to someone that made the FIRE leap without knowing what post-work life would be like – it’s been tough on her and she’s thinking part of getting her mojo back will be going back to work (which is fine if that is really going to make her happy, but I don’t get that impression).
Today our savings is getting in the range of 25x spending, at least the spending I estimated four years ago, and we have zero debt (house, cars). I’ve compromised over time and bumped up my estimates, and figure we are 3-4 years out from having a very comfortable financial situation. We do have two young kids and while I’m not into brand new cars (anymore) I don’t want to be divorced so I need to give her what she needs.
My job is very good by most standards – I make a lot of money, I have freedom to not be chained to my desk. I also have pressure, it’s difficult to be not “on call” and I’ve been doing a form of this work for 20 years now and I know I’m getting burnt out. The idea of FIRE is very appealing, but I need to straddle my needs and the needs of my wife.
OK – so I’m not looking for internet counseling – but I would be interested in what others have done. I’m thinking now I need to go and paint that FIRE picture more vigorously – set up time and go through it with her. As MMM says in his articles about "Is MMM ruining my marriage", it's about being in sync on life goals (short and long term). I really feel we are more in sync than she thinks, other than my focus on long term financial planning (not a bad thing, just more my thing) and my poor reactions to her ideas about spending (which are practical however more fancy than what I would do on my own).