Well, my original thread is too old to update, so I've started a new one. The original thread is here--
http://www.early-retirement.org/foru...ent-82147.html
It's been about 3 years since my last update. I'm now 47, wife is 43, kids are 6 and 8.
Things have been going pretty well. Our financial snapshot-
$480k house with a 178k mortgage outstanding
$40k cash emergency fund
~300k in taxable accounts ( all stocks )
~2.0 million in various retirement accounts (roughly 50% stocks/50% short term treasuries or stable value)
I've been trimming stocks from the taxable accounts to pay down the mortgage ( and fund the Roths ) as the market has gotten higher and higher. So my taxable account balance is about the same as it was 3 years ago, but I've made pretty good progress on the mortgage.
I've been dialing down the stocks and dialing up the stable value as well over the last few years. Our combined asset allocation is now about 65% stocks / 35% stable value. That feels about right to me right now. The market seems really frothy. I feel like I've gotten the risk down to a level that will let me ride out another 2008/2009 without losing sleep while at the same time not feeling like I'm missing out on getting rich fast when the market goes up
The girls are now both in school ( 3rd grade and K ). That saves a lot of child care costs. We still pay for after-school care, which is about $800/month total for the two of them, and we'll have full-time costs again in the summer, but it makes the budget feel a lot better that it was for awhile.
As far as big life events, the last three years have been much smoother than the three before them ( knock on wood ). We've been a safety net for some issues that my wife's family has had, but nothing dramatic. The guest bedroom has gotten some use
I feel like retirement at 55 has become a possibility, but there are a lot of variables that I feel are impossible to predict comfortably at this point. Health insurance availability seems impossible to plan for currently. We'll just have to wait and see how things play out.
I'll start feeling my wife out on the possibility of her continuing to work while I retire since she has great benefits
Retirement at 60 still seems like the most likely plan.
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