Hello everyone. It is nice to be here, I've been reading quite a bit and I like what I see very much. As you can tell, I am new here, but I am at a crossroads in my life and wanted to ask advice from the experts here.
Vitals:
I am 43 years old, married, no children but a dog that is effectively a child. :)
Live in southern Florida at the moment, but have only been here a year, having come from New York City before that where we lived for 20 years.
I work from home as a software developer for the company that I was working for in NY. I feel very fortunate that I was able to keep my position when we moved down here, but things have not been going all that smoothly recently.
I currently earn ~$105k in salary. We own the home outright, no mortgage, but property taxes of ~$7k/yr. We own our only car outright as well. We have zero debt currently.
We have approximately $525k in various 401(k)/IRA accounts. We have ~$50k in a brokerage account that we use to play around with stocks. Savings accounts are around $15k.
Now, the big one… We have $720k in a money market account earning almost nothing. This is primarily the proceeds from the sale of our home in New York City. We've been nervous about investing it (silly, I know) so it's just been sitting in the account for almost a year ( I know, I know, I've left quite a bit on the table).
The Setup:
When we lived in NYC, my wife and I both worked and our combined income was around $185k/yr. All of our living expenses were high, but manageable, but the stress of the daily grind in NYC really took its toll on us over the 20 years we were there. We made a decision to move to southern Florida to be close to her parents (great folks) so she could spend time with them and we could ostensibly have a simpler and less stressful life. She resigned her job of 15+ years and I was able to continue working for my company (remotely) from home in Florida.
We do like where we are, and we do feel that the overall lifestyle is less stressful, which is welcome. However, things at my company have not been going so well recently, and if things go badly, we will lose our sole source of income right now. There is really no way for me to do what I do in this location, so I would either have to look for remote work only which can be tricky, or we would have to move to somewhere that sort of meets the criteria of being both a good place to earn a living and a place of peace and stress-free living. I understand that places that fit both of those are very rare indeed.
However recently, we've been trying to figure out if there is in fact a third option, that being getting us on a path to FI/RE. This is where you kind folks come in. :)
The Question:
Given what I've told you (and if you need to know more, please ask), what do you feel is the best path towards getting us closer to FI? Any and all advice is welcomed. We both understand that we are quite fortunate and privileged to be in this position, and we are thankful for all that we have. At this point, we are simply looking for a quiet, simple life where we can be together and enjoy our time.
I thank all of you in advance for everything.
Best.