42, 4 kids, shooting for retirement at 58

[UncommonSense]

Hello All,

42 yr old married father of 4 here. We live in the Midwest and my wife in I work in the insurance/financial services industry.

I joined to get a better idea of how we are doing financially, learn more tax savings strategies, and I could definitely use a bit more thriftiness in my life.

My wife and I several years ago took several Dave Ramsey courses and did a really good job tracking our spending for a couple years. I would say for the last 3 years we got burnt out on DR and allowed our spending to grow more than we should have.

I am not a believer in "buy and forget" investing. I am been a mild market timer (moving balances 2-3 times a year) for the past 15 years with pretty good success.

Enough about me, I look forward to learning and sharing ideas on the forum

 

[MBAustin]

Welcome, UncommonSense! If you haven't seen them yet, there are two excellent resources here with a lot of good information for planning:

http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f47/some-important-questions-to-answer-before-asking-can-i-retire-69999.html

and

Early Retirement FAQs - Early Retirement & Financial Independence Community

You'll find lots of support for tracking spending and being frugal, and although many of us are buy-and-hold mutual fund types, there are a few market timers who share their strategies as well.

Look forward to hearing more from you - we can always use more good sense around here!