I have never played the lottery - the odds arent even close to being in my favour
I think the odds of winning the lottery are approximately the same whether or not you actually play. :)
My FIRE expenses will be around 45k. I expect to make significantly more than that income-wise (I'm shooting for a 50% savings rate in FIRE in a normal year, with that dropping to no savings at worst in the rare bad years).
Doesn't that imply a 2x safety factor? If you're using the oft-discussed 4% SWR as your basis, you're actually planning on a 2% SWR, right?
Anyway, to answer the original question: personally, I don't think I could do it. But in your case, all the "hard" factors suggest that it's a reasonable thing to do. But, so many have called into question the "soft" factors.
One other "soft" factor that I don't think anyone has brought up: might your perspective about the numbers change once you actually have children? I mean, there have already been a ton of responses along the lines of "Are you
sure you have enough safety? Are you
that confident in your FI number?" I don't want to be yet another parroting those concerns---I truly believe you can confidently say "yes!" to those questions
now. But how can you be so confident about how you'll look at things post-kids?
I didn't start learning about FIRE until after my first was born, so I can't draw on personal experience looking at FIRE from a
before kids viewpoint. But ignoring all the FIRE stuff, I can say life is
very different before and after children. The first was a huge change. The second was a "huge-squared" change.
I do think that child-raising would be easier post-FIRE, simply because they demand so much of your time. Especially young kids (which happens to be my only experience, I have a baby and a toddler). (If you've read many of my posts, you know my constant complainypants perspective is the challenges of
time in working towards FIRE, in particular with young kids and full-time employment.)
On the other hand, maybe planning all this out
before kids puts you in a superior position: you can theoretically make a more objective analysis without being affected by "baby brain". Still, after you have kids, do you have the tenacity to stick to the (presumably rational/objective) plan you came up with before you had them?
As a side note, FWIW: regarding conception, my wife and I were in the 25-34 age category for both kids. The first took about six months to conceive, the second two (or three?) I think. We don't plan on having any more, but now we're pretty sure about the timing, and confident we could git-r-done much more quickly
if we wanted another. I will note that with the first, those six months were
very emotional for my wife. We hadn't even been at it a year, and she was already worried we wouldn't be able to conceive, even though the doctor said six months is what she typically sees for the first conception. Obviously every woman is different; but in my case, I think my wife is generally pretty rational and level-headed, and we
knew going into trying for the first that if it took a year to conceive it wouldn't be unusual. Despite that, and constant affirmation from the fertility doc that everything was fine, there was a lot of tears after about two or three months of trying without pregnancy.
Poll
