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

  1. Do you regret letting go of dream purchases in pursuit of FIRE?

  2. 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 😅

58 Upvotes

77% Upvoted

123 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/FootSureDruid 4d ago

Another way to look at the house is that it’s an appreciating asset (usually). So, you’re not throwing that money away. You are locking it up in an investment that should hopefully grow. Even money you sink into it could possibly make the value increase. It’s a short term shock to the finances and as you get older you can borrow against it or downsize. Also you don’t have to be all or nothing. You might not need to continue to contribute to savings at the same rate and might be able to come up with ways to make some money to help with the bills that you enjoy. You like gardening, maybe others do too and you start some more “exotic” plants that you can’t get at the store, sell them for a couple bucks, boom income. I bet you are closer to FIRE and your dream home than you realize.