I am currently 45 years old and I'm thinking about "shutting it down" to maximize time with spend with my three young kids (ages 7, 4, and 2), travelling, and just plain old relaxing on a full time basis. My wife wants to keep working for the foreseeable future (she loves her job and also has great health insurance coverage for our family).
Our monthly take home pay right now is about $12,000. If I quit working completely, we'd have about $4,000 take home pay from my wife's salary -- which would be enough to cover our monthly costs with a few hundred left over for savings, etc.
I know it's mostly only something I can answer for myself but, based on the below numbers, is this a wise overall decision for me?
Side notes - all three of my kids will have college funds taken care of by some inheritance, so that should not be an issue. Additionally, as a software developer, I can see myself dabbling in some side projects 10-20 hours per week and potentially netting around $40-50K per year ("walking around money"). I also have some small business projects that are starting to show promising signs of blossoming into passive revenue streams for me (on the order of $500-1,500 per month).
I have always lived a fairly simple life style. I can see myself easily just "bumming around" for the rest of my life and living relatively stress free. Maybe not? My wife seems to think I would get bored very fast.
Any advice is greatly appreciated!
DEBT:
Mortgage: $235,000
PORTFOLIO:
ETF: $250,000
Savings: $240,000
401K: $456,000
MONTHLY COSTS:
Fixed: $2,700
Flexible spending: $800