gwraigty
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
It depends on if it would be affordable on the one spouse's salary. In our case, it would have been. If not, then I agree that life insurance on a SAHM might be advisable.
Is it possible to retire now (40's)?
- Thread starter AbbA
- Start date
It depends on if it would be affordable on the one spouse's salary. In our case, it would have been. If not, then I agree that life insurance on a SAHM might be advisable.
That's why I said "might".
The point is, more than doing his cooking and cleaning needs to be considered. As you know, SAHMs contribute to the family in other ways.
My wife is your age, and I younger - both work as DINK; with kids I would probably want to work awhile longer to bolster 529s based on #s you gave. I think $75K per child would be a better goal if possible. I have coworkers who are working quite a few extra years (into mid-late 60s) due to children education cost. In general its cautioned in books and sites as a financial no-no to take on your child's education burden to large degrees. And I get a wide range of answers from different coworkers on how they support their children's education from next to nothing to everything. I think its a personal choice.
I had a relatively large college savings luckily -- at the time about $80K that I managed fully in the mid-late 90s with Junior College and my own part-time work before luckily settling down in my career, but nowadays college costs have run-away depending on what school and process is selected. We don't have kids, but are helping our nieces and friends kids (529 feeders) while still quite young. I feel bad for kids nowadays, - going to college in mid-late 90s was still affordable, and its more than tripled in tuition costs at my public University I graduated. Its a bum-deal all around.
Dual Income seems necessary to allow for strong savings growth although I've met couples w/ kids on past vacations where 1 earner is an executive and would make enough to cover both. The latent benefit that you recognize is with dual incomes, if some tragic health state befalls your family or extended family even, it is much easier to have a current job than to have quit and need to find work. You have built-up savings, but nonetheless would not want that scenario, however unlikely. My wife had a fall-out with her direct line supervisor at her old job and changed jobs because of it (highly toxic situation for her). But it took us 2 years for her to find the new job, and alot of work to do so. She was miserable at the earlier job, and it wasn't fun, and that's without having to worry about children. Good luck.
I had a relatively large college savings luckily -- at the time about $80K that I managed fully in the mid-late 90s with Junior College and my own part-time work before luckily settling down in my career, but nowadays college costs have run-away depending on what school and process is selected. We don't have kids, but are helping our nieces and friends kids (529 feeders) while still quite young. I feel bad for kids nowadays, - going to college in mid-late 90s was still affordable, and its more than tripled in tuition costs at my public University I graduated. Its a bum-deal all around.
Dual Income seems necessary to allow for strong savings growth although I've met couples w/ kids on past vacations where 1 earner is an executive and would make enough to cover both. The latent benefit that you recognize is with dual incomes, if some tragic health state befalls your family or extended family even, it is much easier to have a current job than to have quit and need to find work. You have built-up savings, but nonetheless would not want that scenario, however unlikely. My wife had a fall-out with her direct line supervisor at her old job and changed jobs because of it (highly toxic situation for her). But it took us 2 years for her to find the new job, and alot of work to do so. She was miserable at the earlier job, and it wasn't fun, and that's without having to worry about children. Good luck.
I actually had an opposite event. My direct supervisor left the company yesterday
. When he announced his intention a few weeks ago (supposedly he got such a great offer after declining it the first time he couldn't resist and accepted), I welcomed the news. When I told my colleague who also didn't like him, said 'we might get a worse one'. I told her not 'to rain on my parade'
because we might also get a better one. Who knows who our direct manager will be but I want to savor this feeling of not hopefully not meeting such a hypocrite manager ever again. He expected us to be team players but he wouldn't extend courtesy to help with anything. Concrete questions and request for help would be met with theoretical responses that you can read in audit 101. After being with the company for more that 1.5 years he hardly knew how processes worked or whom to request for help. His direct employees stopped asking him questions after 2-3 attempts because they got no answers from him.
However, when he asked me about my pain points after being 8 months with the company and I described a few of them in our 1-on-1 meeting, he later emailed me a summary of our meeting telling me to pick a process and fix it and also stated that negativity will not be tolerated. Why did he ask for those pain points then? Pick a process and fix it? Yep, sure, there are teams of 10-15-20 higher on the ladder people trying to do just that and here a rookie low level employee comes in, snaps fingers, and does it single-handed
So, thanks to the latest development I've decided to stick around and work longer. If I'm kicked out for some reason then we'll reassess our situation then. But ideally I would like to stop working in a couple of years unless I love my work.
