Getting to say 6 million would make it a pretty sure bet. One recent development is I am getting headhunted a lot lately by big law firms, forcing navel-gazing: do I want to get out or not? Do I want to commit to working a few years in return for some big signing bonus (i.e essentially sell my firm)? Stay where I am? Pack it in now? Am I being too cautious? Guide me, anonymous sages and oracles!
I see this all the time in military veterans of your age approaching a 30-year retirement decision, and I've prepared a small wake-up talk for them. Are you asking for the tough-love approach? If you are, then here's what it would sound like:
First, [-]military veterans[/-] lawyers are notorious for having no reason to ER. Apparently you're doing what you love and would hypothetically only get better at it with age. There are lawyers on this board who are also ER or heading in that direction, but who perhaps accelerated their ER plans because their firms would not cooperate with specialization interests or part-time wants or telecommuting desires. They're willing to cut expenses and boost savings without a 101% guarantee of success. You do not seem to fit any of those criteria.
Second, you're not mentally or emotionally ready to ER. Don't even waste your time agonizing about it. You're not willing to reduce your expenses, you're not confident in the FIRECalc financial forecasts, and you're not focusing on what you'd do all day. Heck, you're even contemplating going after a [-]civilian career[/-] better job offer. If you really sincerely gave a crap about ER then you wouldn't have to consult your navel. If you hated what you're doing or just wanted more control over your daily life then those "non-discretionary expenses" would vaporize in a heartbeat. You have neither incentive nor desire to change your behavior.
Finally, your $6M probability logic is mathematically protected from a whole flock of black swans, but it still leaves room for error. Would you feel better if you waited until you had $10M? $8M? $6.5M? What's your real number? Right now you're just pushing the finish line back because you don't seem to want the race to end. You could read Bernstein's comments on financial forecasts, especially part III where he implies that any success guarantee over 80% is semantically meaningless:
http://www.early-retirement.org/for...ment-calculator-from-hell-articles-32828.html
You would be surprised at the number of ERs who have managed to accomplish their goal on about one-sixth of your portfolio, with the same size of family. Some have done it with even less despite having more kids. Cutting expenses and relocation would accelerate that ER goal but are not always mandatory. Good thing for you, because you don't seem to be motivated to consider either one.
You're not being overcautious so much as you're being "not ready". In that situation, your ER now would be a miserable failure exceeded only by your unhappiness. Heck, your family would probably be even more unhappy [-]with[/-] than you.
When the ER time is right, you can't expect to have the heavens part and for archangels to sound the trumpets. So... what would it take for you to truly emotionally and physically desire ER? Grumpy co-workers? Bickering partners? A loss of control over your time? A colleague's heart attack or a stroke? One of your own?
Start with a small ER-readiness cost-control experiment: try not to eat out for a week. Yes, yikes-- try to eat 21 consecutive meals from food that you've prepared at home. Just so that there are no misunderstandings, that means brown-bagging everything breakfast and dinner.
Then see if you can do it for a month.
Then see if you can persuade your family to do it for a week.
Maybe then you'll be ready to think about the threads like "city living without a car" or "expecting your kids to pay the extra college expenses above a public school" or "frugal cooking" or a subscription to the "Dollar Stretcher" weekly e-mail.
Or maybe you'll decide that you're not totally despondent over your current lifestyle and not unwilling to renew your membership in the "just one more year" club. Put away your dog-eared highlighted copy of "Your Money Or Your Life" (with all the notations in the margins) and read Marc Freedman's
"Encore". What, you don't have a worn-out copy of YMOYL? Well, QED.
Judging from my personal experience on a much smaller scale, I would suspect that 95% of the board's membership is not sympathetic to the travails and trials of ER'ing on a $4.5M portfolio, let alone the issues associated with getting to $6M.
But that's just the talk I give to shipmates who don't see how I could possibly have achieved ER on less money than they think they "need". If you're looking for something other than the tough-love approach, then "Never mind"...