Definitely having a bigger household makes it harder. Right now, we could be happy with a $500-$600K place in San Diego. But I could see how a family with kid(s) could quickly end up over $1mm (and thus 5-figures property tax). No doubt San Diego can be a place where even $250K HHI isn't enough.
If you RE in several years and your wife keeps working, are you both expecting that you'll become the full stay at home parent and house maker? If we have kids, I worry how that plays out -- I don't view full-time parent as retired...in fact, I consider it a full-time job.
Poor choice of words. I didn't mean that your or my DW's job was easy, just maybe a lot nicer of a situation overall than either of ours, and probably much less focused on the $ contribution it makes to FIRE.
If you RE in several years and your wife keeps working, are you both expecting that you'll become the full stay at home parent and house maker? If we have kids, I worry how that plays out -- I don't view full-time parent as retired...in fact, I consider it a full-time job.
Poor choice of words. I didn't mean that your or my DW's job was easy, just maybe a lot nicer of a situation overall than either of ours, and probably much less focused on the $ contribution it makes to FIRE.
I have a hard time with the property taxes here. We bought our home in 2011, and if we stay there for good, I can still move many other places with property tax rates 6% or more lower than what we have here right now, and the basis for those taxes would be about the same or markedly lower depending on where we move and what we buy. Even with prop 13 to our advantage, it'd take a couple decades of appreciation for those other areas to catch up... and that's in our very modest home right now, where I'm definitely not looking to stay long term and never have been.
When we look at different homes here that more meet what we'd like long term, even affording the house itself, you're still talking 5-figures of property tax every year for the rest of your life, not to mention some of them have HOAs that are half of my wife's former rent payment.
I've not reconciled those expenses where I'm basically lighting significant amounts of money on fire to get better weather for roughly four months out of the year than, say, Charleston, SC.
We'll see. No decisions need to be made today!
I wouldn't characterize her job as "easy" nor that she doesn't make pretty good money. She works hard, she brings home well above the median household income in the US on her own, but relative to me, she's making a little less than 50%. But she loves her job, and it keeps her happy when I'm gone, so I don't push against it. She could make more, but she's happy, and that matters.
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