My apologies. I did not mean to suggest that anyone in this thread had said that. I was referring to other types of financial forums and some people I have met IRL who are obsessed with saving just for the sake of saving and refuse to spend on anything "frivolous" until they have met their goals.I don't think anyone has suggested putting off traveling (or other fun things) entirely until retirement. In fact, the word "balance" has been used quite a few times by multiple posters -- me included.
That's why I mentioned that I enjoy this thread-- because the participants seem more interested in balance (living well beneath your means in certain areas so you can spend on those you enjoy) rather than just saving as much as possible.
Hi, new to this thread (and FIRE), it seems interesting I was curious how early everyone is intending to retire? Isit a retires in your 40’s? 50’s? When you turn 60?
I’ve never done fire, but my current retirement savings and plan have me retiring at 55.... the idea of earlier is tempting, but I’m not sure how much of my lifestyle I’m willing to sacrifice to get there.
For us, it's more about putting ourselves in a financial position to be able to do things we want without being limited by a FT job rather than just "retiring". Our kids will all be out of the house within the next 4 years and I will have just turned 43. We won't be in a position to retire by then, but we have strategically set ourselves up to have the least expenses as possible (drastically downsized, no mortgage or debt, etc) so our current jobs would not be necessary at that point. We would still need to do something to earn some income, but it could be something less stressful, something with fewer hours, or something where we could take long periods of time off to travel.
As to the bolded section of your post, everyone is different, so you would have to evaluate your own priorities. What aspects of your lifestyle do you think you would need to sacrifice to save more? How important are they to you? Would the value of the benefits outweigh any negatives? Is there anything you can do to minimize the impact of the change?
We have made two major lifestyle changes in the past year influenced our financial decisions:
1. I started working FT+. This is probably the most significant but we were able to find something that worked for our needs and still has some flexibility. I'm running a company, so it's stressful and it's not a 9-5 kind of thing, but I work mostly from home and I can still coordinate my schedule so I can take kids to doctors appointments and things during the day when needed. The biggest impact has been that our house is not as clean and our meals are not as well planned as we are used to. But, our kids are teens/adults so they are fairly self-sufficient (can cook and be manage their own responsibilities)
2. We moved to a house that is less than half the size (and half the price) of our previous home and in a different town. This is one area where people thought we were crazy and where I would have assumed our "lifestyle" would suffer. But, it really hasn't. This house is perfectly comfortable. All three kids say they prefer this house over our previous one; that this one is more "us". If anything, it's a lifestyle increase because we have more money that we can use for things we enjoy.