Votes on this poll have been as low as $500K.
Assuming a 3% SWR, due to an early retirement that will last over 25 years, the family could withdraw only $15,000/year from a nestegg of $500K, and that is *before* taxes. That would be $1250/month before taxes, so maybe $1000-$1100 per month after taxes?
Kids are a responsibility and deserve more than that if you can provide it, IMO.
Seriously, who would pay tax on $15000 a year in income?
With child tax credits, the govt would probably be mailing YOU a check each year! And I imagine you could qualify for a number of low income government programs that don't test for wealth but just income (I think children's medicaid-based health insurance is one, for example).
With a paid off house and a simple lifestyle in a low cost of living area, it isn't that hard to imagine. Plus, if they are going to ER on $500,000, they may take a little more risk and draw more than 3% from the portfolio. 4% gets you $20,000 a year and isn't a lot less than our family of 4 spends right now (assuming a paid off house, again).
Time spent with children may be more important than money spent on children. Until they are teenagers, at which point they never want to see you and always want you to buy them something (so I have heard).
W2R, if we are talking about retiring in the US, I totally agree.
But we have posters living in all sorts of places around the world - places where $500k will go a long, long way. I can believe in some places this size nest egg could be enough to comfortably support a family of four for the duration.
The OP's hypo said "retiring in the United States", so I assumed we couldn't consider Plan A being retiring to a low cost of living foreign country. Maybe Plan A is retire in the US, then Plan B could be go to Thailand/Mexico/etc if the portfolio takes a dip.
In that case, $500,000 may be fairly reasonable for a modest lifestyle abroad for a family of 4 (as long as you didn't travel back stateside a lot).
For us, moving to a place where $500,000 would afford a nice lifestyle would probably be plan E, and be preceded by Plan D that includes "go back to work". The wife's choice, not mine! But we do speaka tha language of a few low cost retirement locations (spanish, thai, laos) if it ever came down to it.