What affected your FI date the most?

[L2]

Negative: Graduating college with ~55k in debt. Family made too much to not get any financial aid but not enough to help me out. I will admit I definitely did live it up in college though...

Positive: Choosing a career with plenty of upward mobility (public accounting). 80k at barely 26 in a LCOL area isn't too shabby!

Still have a wife and probably a kid or two to go, though. Let's hope I choose wisely!

[TravelJunkyQC]

Positive: Getting out of university debt-free.
Positive: Finding a partner with the same mindset as me.
Positive: Finally getting a job that pays above average salary.

Negative: Spending the first four years out of university as a freelancer making less than 20k a year.

[Bird In Hand]

1.  Kids.  Kids in private school.  Staying home with kids.  My career just didn't advance the way it could have if I had kept working during those year.  Also medical expenses for kids.

If you're interested in sharing, I'm curious how much the private school has affected your savings/FI timeline.  How many kids, how much is tuition, how many years will you pay it (or have you paid it).

2.  Buying a house in 2006 and then dh getting transferred two years later right after the housing crash.  Ouch.

Ouch is right.  :(

We weren't forced to sell after the crash, but we were unlucky enough to put our house on the market in 2007 as prices were just starting to drop -- and foolish enough to buy our new house before selling the old one.  So we bought our new house right before the prices crashed (10 years later it's finally just about worth what we paid for it, not accounting for inflation).  And our old house sat on the market for a year before it finally sold, at about $100k less than its peak value in 2006.  Paying two mortgages for that year really stunk.

I guess our poor/unlucky real estate timing had us paying $100k more on our new house, and netting $100k less on the sale of our old house.  So $200k worth of "bad real estate luck" would take 2nd place among things that (negatively) affected our FI date.

[retired?]

1.  Kids.  Kids in private school.  Staying home with kids.  My career just didn't advance the way it could have if I had kept working during those year.  Also medical expenses for kids.

If you're interested in sharing, I'm curious how much the private school has affected your savings/FI timeline.  How many kids, how much is tuition, how many years will you pay it (or have you paid it).

2.  Buying a house in 2006 and then dh getting transferred two years later right after the housing crash.  Ouch.

Ouch is right.  :(

We weren't forced to sell after the crash, but we were unlucky enough to put our house on the market in 2007 as prices were just starting to drop -- and foolish enough to buy our new house before selling the old one.  So we bought our new house right before the prices crashed (10 years later it's finally just about worth what we paid for it, not accounting for inflation).  And our old house sat on the market for a year before it finally sold, at about $100k less than its peak value in 2006.  Paying two mortgages for that year really stunk.

I guess our poor/unlucky real estate timing had us paying $100k more on our new house, and netting $100k less on the sale of our old house.  So $200k worth of "bad real estate luck" would take 2nd place among things that (negatively) affected our FI date.

I have a good friend from high school.  He and his siblings went to a local private school......not boarding, and from what I recall, it wasn't too expensive.  However, I was wrong.  It is now 14.5k per student.  Or 43.5k for three kids....each year.  The friend and his siblings all went to a private (middle of the road) college. 

He now has 3 kids.  Says it's like buying a new lexus each year.  What I will never understand is when people choose private when the local public schools are same or higher quality.

From what I can tell, his friends turned out about the same as my friends at the public school.  Some did great, some did average, and some poorly. 

If your public school sucks, then I understand, but this has to be one of the biggest drags on wealth building.  Former neighbors pay 46k per year for two kids.  Their middle school not so good, but elementary and HS are fine to good.  And, there are cheaper high schools.  So, over K-8, they will pay about $200k per kid.  I would guess the dad earns around 200k per year, so well off, but not uber rich.

As for me, earning a lot and saving a lot, but dealing with the associated stress allowed us to reach FI earlier than otherwise.  Not that I would recommend that route.

[Step37]

The biggest thing that moved our FI date was learning what FI was, the 4% rule, that it could be done by regular folk, and that the old saw about having multiple times ones income was not needed. There was no major event, we had been doing the right things all along, we just saw the light.

This exactly. Basically good habits, starting early, avoiding lifestyle inflation, finding MMM/learning “how”.

[goatmom]

1.  Kids.  Kids in private school.  Staying home with kids.  My career just didn't advance the way it could have if I had kept working during those year.  Also medical expenses for kids.

If you're interested in sharing, I'm curious how much the private school has affected your savings/FI timeline.  How many kids, how much is tuition, how many years will you pay it (or have you paid it).

2.  Buying a house in 2006 and then dh getting transferred two years later right after the housing crash.  Ouch.

Ouch is right.  :(

We weren't forced to sell after the crash, but we were unlucky enough to put our house on the market in 2007 as prices were just starting to drop -- and foolish enough to buy our new house before selling the old one.  So we bought our new house right before the prices crashed (10 years later it's finally just about worth what we paid for it, not accounting for inflation).  And our old house sat on the market for a year before it finally sold, at about $100k less than its peak value in 2006.  Paying two mortgages for that year really stunk.

I guess our poor/unlucky real estate timing had us paying $100k more on our new house, and netting $100k less on the sale of our old house.  So $200k worth of "bad real estate luck" would take 2nd place among things that (negatively) affected our FI date.

I have a good friend from high school.  He and his siblings went to a local private school......not boarding, and from what I recall, it wasn't too expensive.  However, I was wrong.  It is now 14.5k per student.  Or 43.5k for three kids....each year.  The friend and his siblings all went to a private (middle of the road) college. 

He now has 3 kids.  Says it's like buying a new lexus each year.  What I will never understand is when people choose private when the local public schools are same or higher quality.

From what I can tell, his friends turned out about the same as my friends at the public school.  Some did great, some did average, and some poorly. 

If your public school sucks, then I understand, but this has to be one of the biggest drags on wealth building.  Former neighbors pay 46k per year for two kids.  Their middle school not so good, but elementary and HS are fine to good.  And, there are cheaper high schools.  So, over K-8, they will pay about $200k per kid.  I would guess the dad earns around 200k per year, so well off, but not uber rich.

As for me, earning a lot and saving a lot, but dealing with the associated stress allowed us to reach FI earlier than otherwise.  Not that I would recommend that route.

We have a larger than average family.  Braces and eye glasses for most of them.  Ouch.  Should have thought of inquiring into the dental history and vision history of my husband.  We sent them to Catholic school.  There were also years when I homeschooled them due to no good school options where we lived.  The schools usually had wonderful multi-child discounts - the second was half the price of the first, and then after three it was just a flat tuition.  I think the most we paid in a year was probably about 20,000.  Still have two in Catholic school and are paying less than 10,000 this year.  It is worth it too us.   I don't really think of them as private schools. Makes them sound much too fancy for what the reality is. Tuitions vary widely around the country.  We have been paying it for about  15 years - seven more years to go until youngest graduates h.s.  We also have helped with college expenses.  I think the most we have spent per year on that is about 30,000. This year we have two in college and are paying nothing!  The combined tuitions at the two schools they are at is actually about 125,000.  (Full ride, RA job, ROTC) Not too shabby.  We are slowing down to part time work now and will be fully retired in our mid 50s. We never really thought of Catholic school as optional.  Same with college assistance but we are not paying full price for any college they want to go to. So did not affect retiring timeline too much.  The house hurt much more as it sat empty for four years before selling at half price.  That was disastrous.  I think it also let me to learning more about finances and saving.  So - who knows maybe in some weird way it also had some positives too it.  The next house we bought I looked at with the idea of how easy it would be to sell.  Even though we thought we would live in for a long time.  Had to sell it and it was a piece of cake.  So - the tuition fades compared to a 700,000 house sitting on the market for four years.  But it changed so much about how I look at purchases and finance and life.  So - a very expensive lesson.  Luckily, we have the option of making good money and have actually climbed out and are moving forward quickly.

[Hula Hoop]

goatmom - out of interest, what made you think of Catholic school as non-optional for your kids?  Are you strong Catholics yourselves?  Did you go to Catholic school?

My husband went to Catholic school but was adamant that our kids just go to the regular public school down the street.  Older kid had some issues about a year ago and I thought that maybe the nearby Catholic school might be better (I'm not Catholic so no horse in this race) but he was really against it.  I think the nuns traumatized him.

[goatmom]

I went to Catholic grade school and public high school.  DH went to public school.  We are Catholic and want to support the Catholic schools. They are not perfect - usually being operated on a shoestring. Teachers are underpaid so the only reason they are there is sheer dedication. Parents are usually very involved - most have mandatory service hours. Many students are not Catholic and they are often more diverse than our neighborhood school. 

[nazar]

1) Doing the math at 25 and determining that at the time (a recession when real estate prices were way down) that the monthly mortgage payment plus escrow for a 3 bedroom townhouse was less than the rent on a one bedroom apartment in my HCOL area. 

2) A small inheritance the next year that allowed me to pay off 10k in student loans and an 8k car loan. 

3) Enrolling in 401k as soon as I was eligible at 23.  Not every employer has retirement plans. It makes a difference. 

[Dicey]

I was single and had never married. I lived in a HCOLA and wasn't a terribly high wage earner for most of my career. I was close to FI, but couldn't RE without health insurance. I was desperate to get out. I approached an acquaintance who was a widower. I asked if he'd consider making me his Domestic Partner so I could get reasonably priced health insurance. We started talking about it, fell in love, and got married! I quit my job soon after. Our five year anniversary is next week, and my five year FIRE-versary is in December.

Not exactly something you can plan, but we're so glad it happened. That's the Tl;Dr version.  I started a journal to tell the longer version, but haven't quite finished the story yet. Now you know it has a happy ending :-))))

[Megma]

Good: i bought a condo at the bottom of the dc market which i sold about 2 years later for a big windfall. This led me to figure out wtf to do with the money. I'd never had money before that and my search led me to MMM and the whole fire concept at a young age. This took me from normal retirement to I'm hoping early 40s.

As part of this condo sale i also left D.C. for a lcol area. And married a frugal man. I figure out what to do with our  extra cash and he contributes by basically never buying anything. It works. I'm a little more spendy than him but without me he'd have 20 grand in a checking account and no investments.

Bad: spent too much on my and husband's educations. But we both have good jobs as a result.

[ender]

So far, not doing a PhD and instead working FT.

That's contributed a considerable amount of $$$$ more to my stash over the ~5 year period it would have taken vs working FT...

[SpareChange]

Positive: Growing up poor/financially unstable. Instinctively frugal and gained an awareness of and interest in investing from a young age.

Negative: Going to school one too many times. Debt plus opportunity cost was huge. If I'd started my current career path at the same time that I decided to go to graduate school, I would have been completely FIRE'd by now.

[Helvegen]

Negative: Just bought a house. Sigh...

Positive: Massive gains in income over the past 3 years.

[dreams_and_discoveries]

The biggest benefit without a doubt has been upping my income by going freelance.