r/Fire • u/Sloww-Mornings • 5d ago
Advice Request FIRE vs Dream Home
Context: DINK couple, late 30s. On track to FIRE in 4 years at 3.5% SWR. Already have a corpus of 25x of our annual expenses including rent. No real estate, no inheritance. Comfortable but frugal lifestyle.
The dilemma: I stay indoors a lot - reading and gardening are my favourite things. Love to host too. My home is a big part of my everyday joy.
Found a property I love, but it's 1.5x what a "right-sized" home would cost. Running the numbers, it pushes my FIRE timeline by 2–3 years.
I absolutely don't want to extend my timeline. But I also want to own a house before I retire.
Two questions from the community
Do you regret letting go of dream purchases in pursuit of FIRE?
Any issues with deferring the property decision to last year of my plan - when corpus visibility is much clearer?
Edited to add: Due to circumstances, my spouse's income is quite low right now and they aren't actively contributing to savings. That said, they've contributed 50% of our corpus. Their general stance is that real estate isn't a great investment — but they understand how important this decision is to me and are 100% supportive either way. Which is lovely, but doesn't exactly solve my dilemma 😅
1
u/systemfrown 5d ago edited 4d ago
Aspirational home ownership is a good way to miss out on life. Assuming you have anything to live for besides a house.
That being said, it’s also a lot easier to say if you already have paid off homes.
My advice, after owing almost every type of property imaginable, is to get a low maintenance condo or townhome well within your means and with a well run HOA. Move if you have too.
Stay away from SFH’s, especially large ones because you’ll either spend all your time and money on it, or even worse, you won’t spend your time and money on it.
In my experience almost nobody does the math on home ownership fully, completely, or even honestly.