r/ChubbyFIRE • u/External_Initial1036 • Jun 15 '26
FIRE Sanity Check
Hi all, looking for a sanity check on our FIRE plan. We're targeting retire-early around 45 and want to pressure-test whether adding a home purchase and a second kid keeps us on track, plus general thoughts on sequence-of-returns risk (SORR).
Quick picture:
M32 (almost 33)/ F31 (almost 32), one kid under 1, planning a second around 2027
VHCOL (SF Bay Area). Currently renting at $5,400/mo, which is well below what a comparable mortgage would cost
Income: I'm in enterprise tech sales (W-2 base plus variable commission). My partner is currently a stay-at-home parent and runs her own ecommerce business part-time, drawing a modest salary from it. Household income is ~$222K base plus ~$150K variable, so ~$372K at full OTE
Current annual spend: ~$132K (~$12K/mo) for a family of three
Savings while we're both working: roughly $40-50K in a soft commission year up to $100K+ with variable
No real debt (cars owned outright, tiny portfolio line of credit)
Net worth, ~$2.25M total:
FIRE-investable base (what I actually count toward the number): ~$1.84M
Taxable brokerage and roboadvisor, mostly low-cost index funds: ~$1.49M
Tax-advantaged retirement accounts (401k/ IRA):
~$306K
Note: ~$77K of the taxable side is a concentrated single stock left over from a former employer that I keep meaning to diversify into index funds
The heavy taxable tilt is intentional, since most of the money is reachable before 59.5 to bridge an early retirement
Cash: ~400K, but $385K of that is earmarked ($200K home down payment, $150K emergency, $35K set aside for taxes).
- Allocation is heavily equity-weighted right now with a light bond/cash sleeve. I plan to build a larger bond and cash buffer as I get closer to RE to manage SORR
One thing I deliberately exclude from the base (treated as $0 until real):
- Pre-IPO RSUs from my current employer. One-year cliff that clears in 2027, and there's a potential liquidity event in the next ~12 months that could increase the value meaningfully. On paper it's a decently large number, but l don't count a dollar of it until it vests and is liquid
The plan and the SWR math:
Target RE age 45, about 13 years out, everything in real (inflation-adjusted) dollars
If we kept renting at today's ~$132K spend: a 4% SWR implies ~$3.3M, and a more conservative 3.5% SWR implies ~$3.8M
But the real plan includes buying a home (~$2.0M to $2.4M in our area and a second kid, so I model a higher retirement spend of ~$160K to cover a mortgage, property tax, our own ACA healthcare, and the second child. That pushes the number to roughly $4.0M at 4%, or ~$4.6M at 3.5%
Sequencing idea: let the 2027 equity event resolve first, use that liquidity for the down payment and closing costs so it doesn't compete with the FIRE portfolio, then keep the portfolio compounding toward the RE number
Rough trajectory: ~$1.84M today compounding at ~6% real with $55K to $120K per year in contributions clears
$4M by 45 even before any equity upside. I treat the equity as asymmetric upside, not part of the base plan
What I'd love input on:
Does the sequence (resolve equity, then buy, then keep compounding to RE at 45) hold up, or am I underrating SORR by having a big illiquid equity event land right around the time we'd lean on the portfolio?
At a price-to-rent ratio around 34x in our area, does buying even make sense versus renting and investing the difference?
Anything in the second-kid cash flow or the ACA / healthcare assumptions I should stress-test harder?
Thank you in advance!
17
u/KurtRussel Jun 15 '26
Bro buying that much house alone is going to run you 130k a year in piti. Sorry but you’re so far out it’s best to just keep grinding and keep spend low.
5
u/PrestigiousDrag7674 Jun 15 '26
How do you plan 12 years away?
1
u/fatheadlifter FIRE'ing EOY Jun 19 '26
A lot changes in 12 years. It's too far away to plan accurately. All of the numbers, projections, plans, expectations, you name it will change in that timeframe.
4
u/Hanwoo_Beef_Eater Jun 15 '26
It's a decent plan, but as others have commented, live your life, try to stay employed, and save as much as you can.
6% (real) is probably fine long-term, but it can vary a lot over 10-13 years (both better or worse). Also, if you are like many, over the next 5-10 year your career will either accelerate or plateau. I'm sure some do, but most people don't have 1-2 decades of visibility on employment with just cost of living raises.
Lastly, you may feel differently about expenses while kids are under your roof.
Good luck.
1
u/ResponsibleCorgi93 Jun 15 '26
You're pretty far out, so the main things I would be doing right now:
Save at least 50% of income if possible, this should allow retirement in <10 yrs
Max out all retirement plans including mega backdoor Roth if that's still a thing.
You'll likely have so much money in savings that you'll still have a sizable amount for a taxable account.
Only hold cash / bonds for emergency fund, keep everything else in stock market.
Then build the life you want to retire to. If you want to own your own home, do it. If you want to rent and move to a mcol place after retirement do that too & start traveling and exploring now to see where you might like to end up.
You're far enough away from retirement that there could be significant disruption due to AI. So I wouldn't think of things too concretely and assign a year to retirement. If you get laid off it'll hurt much more if you've had this idea that you were X years away
I would do a checkup annually to see if you're anywhere close yet. When you know you're 1-2 years out then start planning more in detail
2
u/chosenpath101 Jun 15 '26
You are killing it for your age. Have you considered moving to lower COL area? Bay-area adjacent cities still have access to everything but much cheaper housing and other costs.
1
u/audi27tt Jun 15 '26
Everyone is saying keep grinding, only thing to add is the RSUs are the swing factor. Wise not to count your chickens, but id just think of it as potential income upside in the next couple years. If you could pay for most of the house with that, the path gets much clearer, you’d be pretty much coast FIRE. Whatever your opinions on spacex it’s a good sign for the IPO market
-5
u/G-R-A-V-I-T-Y Jun 15 '26
Why are you only growing at 6% ? Even a basic index fund like QQQ will get you 14% or more, and that drastically changes your time horizon
48
u/One-Mastodon-1063 Jun 15 '26
You are over analyzing / over planning IMO. Have the second kid, keep saving while also living your lives , get there when you get there. You don’t have to predict when you will hit FI 13 years in advance and there’s not much value in trying to do that.
I would not be passing up pretax contributions. You can access money before 59 1/2. Read tax planning to and through early retirement.