5 ms·
Sadly giving up on early retirement and going back to work
- kylehotchkiss 3y ago> However, the Fed needs to pivot by the end of the year to prevent a 10%+ nationwide decline in real estate prices. No they don’t! Think of how many couples are holding off on kids because of the housing prices.
- s09dfhks 3y agoSounds like the bigger listen here is if you want to fire, don’t have kids
- Giorgi 3y agoespecially two
- toomuchtodo 3y agoPer Brookings, it costs $310k to raise 1 kid 0-18. That doesn’t include college, daycare, and opportunity costs. If you want to FIRE, don’t have kids. I have kids, they’re expensive. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33991744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33991744
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoIf it's going to cost $1,500,000 for two kids to go to college in 12 years, the result will be that almost no one goes to college. At that point, any post-secondary education is going to look good to employers.
- listenallyall 3y agoSeems logical, but even today, how many families have $250-350,000 per kid to send to college? I'd argue, not many, even among relatively high earners. Yet college applications and enrollments seem to be at all-time highs.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoStudent loans and later calls for debt forgiveness are the enablers.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoYup, and I suspect that we're hitting the limit of what people are willing to put up with.
- listenallyall 3y agoJust curious what makes you suspect that now? When 4 years first crossed the six-figure boundary, people were in shock and said the rising costs couldn't continue. Same when tuition averages exceeded $50,000 per year. What, in your eyes, makes today any different?
- JohnFen 3y agoMore and more people are learning that the large amount of debt they're saddled with to go to college can set them back more than the advantage of a college degree can make up for.
- nomel 3y agoI only see this with people trying to check the “college education required” box, rather than trying to acquire a marketable skill. From my perspective, this was always the case, but there doesn’t seem to be any “cultural knowledge”. My naive assumption is that college recruiters/counselors are pushing people, who don’t have marketable interests, into debt, and the students don’t know any better, for whatever reason.
- listenallyall 3y agoI agree that more people think that way than 10 years ago. However I still think it's a tiny portion of the college-age population.
- oxw 3y ago“OK, this is my belated April Fool’s Day post[...]” The $1.5 million number is a joke
- BizarroLand 3y agoNot really. If your kids go to an Ivy League school that could be $75,000/year for tuition alone in 13 years, (assuming $40k/year/person for tuition now plus 5%/year increases), plus room and board and spending money for 5 years (assuming they both go for Masters Degrees) you're looking at maybe not $1.5 million but over $1,000,000 for 2 children.
- __lbracket__ 3y agoFeels like a trivial message ("yeah you need a regular job to raise a family unless you have FU money") packaged as a grand experiment. On the flip side, single folks or those without kids have been retiring for a long time (without calling it FIRE)
- ofcourseyoudo 3y agoI'm really uncomfortable with this guy's reasoning. One of the motivations for him to go back to work is to feel less rejected by his children. In this post and a linked post he says he thinks he's spent too much time at home with them and is deeply hurt that they prefer their mother over him. So he wants to go back to work to "protect his heart". I think that's a waaaaay bigger issue for him to address than the financial ones. Maybe there's truth to that experience but going back to avoid your children makes it seem like something is seriously out of whack here.
- ethicalsmacker 3y agoOdd to me, I have always been the "fun parent" the kids wants to play with constantly. My wife probably feels like he does, but she basks in it because it's finally time for her to be alone and recharge.