Fuego, do you consider your case success or failure having to rely on blog (and spouse income ) at this stage ?
Can you manage without the blog income indefinitely given kids ages and inflationary cost of higher education , risk of ACA subsidy disappearing, etc? Your specific case always intrigues me !
Certainly successful so far.
I never planned on the blog income and I don't rely on it to any extent today. Icing on the cake, so to speak. Last year it was about 40% of our budgeted ER expenses, but I dumped all of the blog earnings into a solo 401k (didn't need it; didn't want to pay tax on it).
This year it will be maybe 50-65% of our ER budget, so we are in the ridiculous and uncontemplated position of not needing to touch our portfolio a whole lot if the income remains constant going forward.
I may also get bored with the blog and drop it all together. I never expected to make much more than the hosting fees, but it turns out I was very wrong on the income potential. If blog and freelance writing income dropped to zero tomorrow and the market dropped 30%, I'd still be feeling okay (but a little shocked!).
If ACA subsidies go away completely across the whole nation, I'm not sure what I would do. The easiest for the family would be to go back to work and stay in Raleigh. DW is still technically working (on a paid sabbatical till August), so she might keep working longer. She could go to half time and still cover all of our expenses too.
Moving overseas is also an option to take care of health care issues. We're in our 30's with zero major health issues for us or the kids. If I was 50 or 60 I would be more concerned about health care.
To summarize, our moat is pretty deep. But going back to pre-ACA health insurance markets with zero subsidies would stymie our plan somewhat. I figure there will be a fix or a Republican alternative that might not leave us sitting quite as pretty but will still allow us to stay early retired. Though I won't hesitate to hustle and make money somehow if we need it. In that case, I would declare myself to have suffered an ER failure due to financial reasons.
If I ever ramp up my blog and freelance writing efforts to the point where it becomes real work and do so primarily because I need the money, that'll also be a failure of my ER financial plan. Right now I spend very little time on freelancing and just a bit more time on the blog (posting photos, trip summaries, and interesting tidbits from our Mexico trip for the next couple months probably
).
In the future, I give myself a significant chance of doing something that pays at some point in my life. Probably after the kids are out of the house. I have no clue what that might be and it may never happen. Definitely won't be a regular 9-5 job unless it's incredibly interesting to me or I really need the money.