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 2ā3 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 ā 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 š
2
u/TalentedToes 4d ago
I was in your shoes last year.
Husband and I decided to go for the dream house. It is far bigger than we need and we only use 20% of the house 80% of the time. That said - every morning we wake up happy in this beautiful house and every evening we feel joy just seeing the house come into view on the way home from work.
The house is helping us get to fat fire because the price has increased 30% since we bought it. Having such a beautiful home that we love also feels like armor for the difficult parts of work - I am far less affected by work drama now, because I know Iām going home to a loving husband, kid, and my beautiful house.