So just a little update that we ended up announcing to some close family members and a friend. We decided we wanted to tell, at least our parents after some reflections, and on my part, after reading MMM's recent post on the passing of his father and realizing how close MIL is in age with him.. didn't want to regret not having told them since chances are it might make them proud, even if that is mixed with other emotions more on the negative side like judgement or jealousy.
For those interested these were the reactions:
MIL first said we were full of... well you know what (which is kind of funny because she is this proper little nice grandma type of lady lol) but yeah that was her genuine first reaction :P. Then she said ''Well what are you going to do with all your money!?'', we've explained our FI plans a few times to her and clearly does not compute with her mentality so we kind of just generally said, invest, get out of the rat race and be our own bosses to have more time with the kiddoes and of course more time with our parents as they get older and need a bit more help. She liked that and did seem proud.
Second person was a good friend of ours, his first reaction was ''Is this a joke?'' then he got teary eyed and said how happy he was for us and asked ''how did you do it? I want to do that, this is awesome!''. So yeah, awesome reaction which brought on talks of achieving FI, the 4% rule etc. We had spoken to him in the past of those various subjects but now he really seemed to be interested and realize that we were actually implementing these things and that it is possible to stash a good percentage of your income in order to eventually reach FI. He even sent follow up questions in the next week about investing and our thoughts on various strategies. Pretty cool to see we might be influencing a friend to reach for FI.
And third, the one I was most dreading was telling my parents but it actually went great. They both got teary eyed. We had bought sparkling wine to announce and it made for a nice celebration. My mom spoke to us in more details on investing, talked about how we were ahead of the game for our age and even popped out various formulas similar to the 4% rule that she was using to plan her own retirement although with lower % of withdrawal and higher spending but still similar stuff.
All in all, I'm glad we told them. Sure the whole expenses stuff might pop up with my parents in the future since they don't quite have the same mentality as us with regards to that but it was nice to celebrate with them and watch them be proud. Also opened up the discussion about our future plans which makes me even more motivated to achieve them.