1) Somewhere between the age of 50-53, which is not very far in the future NW is currently ~1.6m, and should be around 2m when I pull the plug. Wife early retired a couple of years ago, which has made my working easier as I have less to deal with.
2) My Dad had retired at 52, and impressed upon me the magical nature of compound interest, so I started investing soon after I got a real job. I discovered MMM around 2013?, when I was at a job that didn't suit me well, but was "too good to give up". I was aiming for LeanFIRE ASAP.
Luckily, without intending to take chances, I happened to invest in some things that have consistently beat the market over a long time frame (Apple, Google, Cdn Banks, etc). I was trying to pick stocks and build a portfolio of good companies, and just got lucky. My returns for the past few years have been:
- 2013: 21.1%
- 2014: 26.7%
- 2015: 9.3%
- 2016: 13.1%
- 2017: 11.8%
- 2018: -3.7%
- 2019: 27.7%
- 2020: 28.3%
Then, just as I hit my LeanFIRE number (about 3 years ago), I finally got a job where I had been trying to get hired at for a few years. I definitely wanted to give it a try, and ended up liking it pretty good - even better than I expected to. Working because I was choosing to, and not because I have to, makes a big difference, in addition to the job itself just being way more interesting. So the LeanFIRE goal has turned into FatFIRE, and the combination of a) kind of liking my job (as much as I believe it's possible to do so, anyway); b) logistics of kids in school; and c) nice amount of vacation time means I'll stick with it until my eldest graduates high school.
3) Goals... I guess I try to be a good husband to my wife (almost 25 years!) and Dad to my kids, and follow the Dalai Lama's simple advice: "If you can, help others. If you can't, at least do not hurt anyone." I guess I want to expand my circle of friends slightly, but that's on pause until this pandemic is over. I also want to do some of the travelling that we never seemed to get around to doing. Our dream now includes a camper van, with a lot of time in it seeing other places in Canada, and also global sights. We had a plan to finally do a family trip to Europe in 2020, but that got COVIDed. A long journey seeing the sights in New Zealand would be pretty awesome, too. Finally get into meditation, take some more time for my health and hobbies.