Thanks for all the feedback. Sorry it has taken so long to respond. Shortly after I posted this my daughter got sick (nothing big, just one of this 18 month old colds that can throw a house in turmoil) and then my wife and I followed suit and I just have had a hard time finding decent enough time to sit down and reply.
A couple of themes I wanted to reply to in the thread and respond to and include an update.
Did we buy too much house?
Obviously this is subjective, but in my opinion we did not. We certainly could have put more down payment then we did, but we got into a conventional loan at a 4% fixed rate with no mortgage insurance. Our PITI is roughly 14% of our gross take home pay and around 20% of our net take home pay. In my opinion it is not an issue of having too much house.
More generally speaking, the question of how a paycut would impact the household was raised. We have somewhat of a buffer in discretionary spending that we could cut back more if needed. A 10 to 20% paycut in base salary would be tight but likely doable.
Student Loan
Our bonus pays out in March and I took most of it to pay off a chunk of the loan. It's down to about $65,500 right now. I am hoping to make some extra payments over the course of this year to reduce it even more.
Will I make this kind of money again?
Several people raised the question of whether or not I could expect to make this kind of money again in the future if I took a paycut to go elsewhere. Honestly, I don't know. But I am willing to bet on myself to be able to make the kind of money I make now at some point in the future. Even if I never quite reach that level it would not be the end of the world.
One of my bigger concerns in my current role is that I work for a financial institution that could be directly impacted by the rollback in regulation. And my job is very closely (if not directly) tied to said regulation. So basically if Dodd-Frank goes away, my job could be in jeopardy. Even taking the potential change in the regulatory environment out of it, I just would prefer to be in a different type of role then a cost center/regulatory driven role.
Other Developments/Considerations
I initially wrote this post when I was hoping to get two job offers. One of them was with another megacorp where the company had strung me along for months. They had initially contacted me before Thanksgiving about making an offer for a position I had interviewed for, and the offer never came because their internal bureaucracy was never able to get the offer approved, and then they had an internal re-org and there was no longer a position for me. I also had been speaking to another company about a position that would have put me in position to do some consulting work in the data and analytics/big data space with a start up. I was excited about that potential opportunity, but it would have been a paycut. It never panned out, they went in another direction. I was disappointed, but I made it to the final round of interviews and it was between me and one other. Sometimes it doesn't work out.
Since then I have had a couple internal interviews at my current company that may pan out (I still contend I would prefer not to stay with my current organization but I also am trying to keep my options open about a new role). I also have one role that I am interviewing for with another organization to do the same job I am doing now. I will only take that position if the compensation aligns. It makes no sense to me to go do the same job elsewhere for less money. The one caveat being that I'm not sure the new employer would buy out my 30k of RSU. But I could probably be convinced with a big enough increase in base salary since that's guaranteed money.
The last thing, from a development standpoint I am trying to consider is that my current manager has indicated that my current employer would be willing to pay for some professional certification. Even though that would likely keep me bound to the company for longer, that has me considering sticking around another 2 years to pay off my loan, and leveraging additional training in the process. I am contemplating getting some Big Data certifications and/or coding training (SAS, R, Python) as a way to gain some credibility in that field from a technical standpoint. I have some experience that would translate well enough, but my technical skills aren't quite where they need to be.
The "Corporate Mercenary" concept
A couple folks mentioned the whole concept of being a corporate mercenary if my goal is to retire early. I would like to retire at 55. Or at the very least be positioned so that my wife and I can cut back to part time work. That is probably the more realistic/likely scenario.
She is going back to school to be a nurse pracitioner, which is nice because her career field gives us a little job security and flexibility if something would happen to my me in my career (downsizing, etc).
More generally speaking we have about $285k in tax deferred accounts (401k's, Roth, HSA, and her lump sum pension).
3-4 months of cash in an emergency fund, and almost about 2.5K (in addition to emergency fund) invested in taxable since we haven't used all of our taxable space.
We will see what happens with some of the roles I am interviewing for. I am kind of reaching the point where it almost makes sense to stay put to pay off my loan. Tomorrow is May 1, which means this year is almost half over. Our bonuses pay out in March, but they are decided in January. Basically, if I can't find a new position by end of the year I am just going to stick it out OMY and then focus on finding something different. By the time my student loan is paid off (2020) my daughter's daycare expense will be roughly $300 a month less. Or potentially gone if my in-laws retire. They have said they plan to move by us when they retire and have already offered childcare. That combined with paying off the student loan frees up almost $2500 a month for us.
So the TL, DR version is I am still looking for a job and considering taking less for the right opportunity. Those have encouraged me with their stories, but I also see the other side. The closer we get to 2019, the more I am focusing on "OMY" at my current employer to be debt free (except for mortgage).