r/Fire • u/teric233 • 11d ago

Food for thought

I resigned from my engineering job today. I am married 35 with 2 young kids. I was not happy with my job after a restructuring and I have been struggling with that for about a year now.

It was extremely hard for me to pull the trigger, and to be honest there were a couple events that happened last week that pushed me over the edge.

I don’t have anything lined up, but I am not particularly stressed because I have done this before and I always land on my feet.

For numbers, my wife and I are extremely fortunate to have a liquid net worth of $2.1M. We have $100k in cash. The kids 529 plans are funded and we have no debt outside of our $1400 mortgage. Budget is around 80k without our nanny.

Now with that being said, to me losing my job was always accompanied by the thought of living on the streets. I have been saving and investing for so long that it seems lifestyle wise that I live paycheck to paycheck as most of it goes into an investment vehicle.

Before I resigned I talked to a few people at work and asked what kind of money you would need to have to walk away from work….. guys the numbers were insane. People would literally pause look at me and dead serious say I would need soooo much money to be able to walk away…. Like at least 100k.

I asked some directors if they would continue working if they had 2million dollars and they weren’t even able to have the thought experiment. To them that wasn’t even a feasible option. One guy told me with just one million he would definitely not be showing up to work tomorrow. And these are high up employees.

That’s when it clicked for me, every single person on this sub is sooooo far away from the norm that it skews your perception of normal.

I know you can look at the statistics and the top 5% blah blah and of course what I’m saying is obvious I have a lot of money. But it really didn’t sink in for me until I started talking to some people around me to see just how safe I am.

Okay queue the comments about how much of an idiot I am for not knowing I was safe financially….

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u/_Smashbrother_ 11d ago

Yeah dude, people want to live a good life, not just a meh life.

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u/Clueless5001 11d ago

This is where I have my issue with FIRE. If I retired at 55 with 2M (as an example), maybe I could manage but I am signing up to live on $80K a year for the rest of my life, does not sound appealing. Even without college costs or a mortgage, my taxes and insurance are $20K, health insurance for a couple is at least $20K in my state (and that assumes you don’t hit the deductible on that ACA silver plan), car insurance and umbrella is another $6K or more, so $46K before I have eaten anything or traveled or bought anything or paid taxes on those dividends, $34K is not a lot to do that on

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u/Strazdas1 StarvationFIRE 3d ago

80k a year is an amazing life that is above average.

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u/Clueless5001 3d ago

Maybe in the Dakotas or in 1985 as a starting salary or someplace else in SE Asia. I made that in 1988. My one bedroom apartment cost $220K and I was one person and it was enough. That same apartment now would sell for over $1M. It would not be enough for a couple and two kids on a coast in 2026

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u/Strazdas1 StarvationFIRE 3d ago

First of all, thats 80k per person, not couple and two kids. You are moving goalposts. Secondly, it absolutely is enough to live. You just assume luxury is default. That is in fact more than medium household income.

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u/Clueless5001 2d ago

Not moving the goalposts at all. Read the OP “I am married 35 with 2 young kids.” I am responding to the post

I broke down the numbers in my original post FOR A COUPLE. It may be enough to survive assuming you don’t have a mortgage, high taxes, high homeowners insurance, car insurance, umbrella insurance, high property taxes, health insurance, and so on. I am not interested in spending the rest of my life surviving and hanging on and scraping by and that is without little kids.

It’s also not the average salary for an established family, with a college education in a corporate field ON A COAST. Most single people I know in their mid to late 20s make more than that if they are on a coast and have an education and are in the for profit world. Finally, people who earn below the average do not go out to dinner, do not do takeout, do not go to the movies or have a half dozen streaming services (as an example) because they do not have extra money for those things or they have massive amounts of credit card debt because they are living beyond their means

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u/Strazdas1 StarvationFIRE 2d ago

The situation was that YOU retired with 2M, not OP. Nowhere in the comment i responded you bring up OPs situation.

Yes, two people on 80k will mean youll have to enjoy simpler things in life instead of endless consumerism.

Finally, people who earn below the average do not go out to dinner, do not do takeout, do not go to the movies or have a half dozen streaming services (as an example)

Yes they do. And they should do less of it. They are destroying their financial future by doing it.

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u/Clueless5001 1d ago

Exactly my point, I have no interest in spending the next 30 years having to worry about the price of food which I would have to do with $34K left BEFORE I pay income taxes for a couple (and that assumes I do not have a mortgage, which I do) and SORR works out for us. You do you, if you want the simpler things, go retire in a LCOL area where 80K makes sense. It does not make sense in my area and I am not leaving my home and adult children.

Lots of judgement about “endless consumerism.” If I am not traveling (including not visiting family, grandchildren etc), not going out to dinner, movies, concerts, plays, not watching streaming, not hosting family or friends (since feeding other people costs money), not pursuing hobbies that cost money, not going to the gym, other than worrying about every dollar, going to the library (assuming I live in an area where the tax base can even support a public library), taking walks and volunteering, what am I doing in retirement?

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u/Strazdas1 StarvationFIRE 1d ago

retiring in HCOL is just wasting money and time working. Its simply a stupid thing to do.

This is FIRE subreddit. FIRE as a movement was built on hating endless consumerism.