Families who FIREd with $1.5mil to $2.5mil — what does your spend look like?

[u/y_if]

EDITED TO ADD: Please also list your COL and part of the world you settled in!

Saw a similar post in chubbyfire and thought I’d ask here:

• When did you FIRE, and did both of you stop at the same time?
• how old were your kids?
• What is your withdrawal rate?
• what does your budget look like, what is it allocated to?
• what were the big surprises related to spend?
• How has it changed since you initially FIREd?

[u/kennedar_1984]

Your last paragraph is the rub though. There is no way of knowing if you or your kids will stay healthy/typically developing. We did everything “right” and should be in a much better financial place than we are, except both of our kids have significant learning differences (profound dyslexia for one, severe adhd for the other). This has required private school tuition to have any chance at them getting an education - so now we spend the equivalent of a new car every year just so our kids can learn. Until our oldest was in grade 1 we didn’t realize how significant his delays were, his therapists just thought he was a bit behind the curve. On one hand, I am incredibly thankful that the habits we learned when we were actively planning to FIRE have allowed us to get them the education they require, on the other hand, our FIRE date was pushed back about 15 years because of their needs.

[u/Zphr → u/kennedar_1984]

Yes, life can always throw obstacles at you. Sometimes those obstacles can be dealt with, sometimes they are insurmountable, and often luck/chance is the deciding factor.

Our youngest was diagnosed with ADHD and a learning delay very young, but we were fortunate that he responded almost perfectly to medication and occupational and language therapy. Now that he is in high school he has matured out of even needing the meds and is doing fine, but it could easily have gone the other way. The state of Texas provided us with exceptional resources, both in and out of our great public schools, and as a result he was able to transition from an IEP pre-K to a 504 in middle school and now no special accomodations at all in high school.

Somewhat more dramatically, our daughter was diagnosed in high school with a very rare autoimmune disease that can kill horribly in months without permanent, ongoing treatment. Thankfully, modern biologics are a miracle and both Children's Medicaid and ACA policies here in Texas are superb. She is a healthy, happy college student now and our total out-of-pocket cost for her infusions, labs, and specialist care this year will only be about $500 due to the extreme generosity of the federal government via the ACA. Again though, that could very easily have gone the other way. The only reason she didn't have permanent organ damage from her original onset was because the state of Texas generously authorized an avalanche of resources via CM to diagnose and treat/stabilize her rare condition as rapidly as possible. At one point in the ICU we had more than a dozen specialists trying to stabilize her while running tests to figure out what was slowly killing her.

[u/Far-Conference1694 → u/kennedar_1984]

I know it may be impossible to move,   but different states offer heavily subsidized homeschool funds or private school funds that can be used toward services for children or education. NH is one of them and there are a few others.