Income: Me: 74k + 5% 401k company match --> ~78k
Wife: 65k
Current expenses:
Pets: 100$/mo
Cell phone: 200$/mo (know at least I can switch to Virgin mobile $30/mo plan - will talk to wife :) )
Rent: 1100$/mo (utilities included)
Car: 100$/mo (hardly ever drive and wife's car is paid off - just gas + insurance)
Public transit: 100$/mo (betw both of us - besides, baby on the way so may be biking less)
Food: 400$/mo (all luxuriously organic delicious raw ingredients - wife cooks incredibly, hardly eat out ever)
Gym: 70$/mo (my dumbness: 30$/mo work gym + 40$/mo golds gym - I know I need-to/can cancel both - wife & I are very active, race bikes - I can work out at home np)
Restaurants/bars: 100$/mo
Internet/tv: 0$ - we like podcasts & music
Baby: 300$/mo (not at the moment but projected from MMM's post on the cost of raising a baby)
Assets:
13k in old 401k
9.5k in new 401k
6k in Roth IRA
1k in brokerage
Debt:
~140k of wife's student loans
Specific questions:
Preamble: I know there's some kruft in the above - cutting gym memberships and lowering the phone bill - but it seems to me we're pretty on target. Moreover, my work as a software developer means I could probably score a new position of approx 90k pre-tax very soon. Our only goals are happy family and ER. I'm picking your brains to optimize for this in the context of:
(a) living very close to my parents (daycare!)
(b) possibility of wife working part time (unknown at the moment - but increasing)
Our options as I see them:
(a) Wife and I can continue to rent at about 3 mi from work for 1100k
Advantages: our own space w baby
Disadvantages: rent $ not equity, if not daycare then extra commute to drop off/pick up baby from my parents
(b) Wife and I could move in with my parents about 7 mi from work for sharing of food/bill expenses, cooking, etc
Advantages: built in daycare, ability for wife to pay down her student loans
Disadvantages: ?unknown? ease (from a getting-along standpoint) of moving back w my parents as we're having a baby; my parents are still very hands on and I could foresee wife/baby/I not having as much autonomy as we might like
(c) Wife and I could (supposing we're approved for mortgage, find something, etc etc) buy a 2 bedroom condo for up to 300k close (at most 1 mi) from my parents so that we have the benefit of building equity AND still get the built in daycare of my parents' place
Option B seems the most sensible to me and it smacks of the complainypants fears that might just need to be addressed head on with communication and a ton of gratitude for my parents providing that option...
That being said, what do you think?????