Hello my friends,
I've been running into a bit of a struggle with where to head next in our FI journey, so I'm coming to the only place with other like minded individuals I know of, the MMM forums.
A little about me. I'm 37 years old, marred with one 11 year old kiddo. We currently live in small town Kansas with a fully paid for home valued about $70k (decent house around here). We have no debt, $10k emergency fund, $25k in investments , $12K so far in a college fund (goal of $50k) and about $125k in a traditional 401K. We actively invest every paycheck and pull over any windfalls from selling employee stock or bonuses at work.
My wife retired this last year to focus on homeschooling our kiddo and writing. She worked child care before and brought in around $25k before taxes and such, so her early retirement to focus on the kiddo just made sense. I currently make around $80k pre-tax with stock options, employee stock purchase plan (which I take advantage of, of course), benefits, etc. Things are great.
We just paid off the mortgage on our home earlier this year and I'm running into a bit of a mental rut. What next? Do we simply stay the course, keeping expenses low while saving (we were both raised under the poverty line, so pretty easy), or do we look for additional opportunities that we can now take advantage of with our expanded funds and cash flow?
Things like education, land ownership, business ownership, EIT's, or something of the sort. My head is stuck thinking about preparing for early retirement. If I don't take the time to gain any additional education (I love building furniture, but have no training or background), will I be able to afford it when I retire early? Will I want land but not be able to afford it as the costs are too high and land too rare?
I know, lots of what if's, but I figure if anyone else has ran this gambit, they would be here.
And thanks in advance for your thoughts.
~~ Tim