Reached CoastFIRE without realizing it, can't share it anywhere else
Spouse and I are mid-career with 3 elementary aged kids and have just been trucking along since 2018 feeling like we are mostly treading water but "at least we aren't falling behind like so many others."
Accidentally having 3 kids within 2 years meant that for about 4 years, we were paying the equivalent of 3 mortgages to get through daycare. And yet we were still grateful to be "treading water but not falling behind" because I could afford to work about 0.75 FTE while having them in full time care. Money always felt a little tight at the end of each month but we had enough savings to keep our emergency fund and do things like drive to the beach and stay at an AirBNB once a year.
Neither of us has expensive tastes or hobbies - mostly board games, computer gaming, gardening, keeping freshwater fish, reading. We paid off both cars while the kids were babies knowing we would like to drive them into the ground (and both vehicles continue to go strong with at least another 100k miles if we're lucky). Our biggest expense has always been eating out, especially when we are in survival mode and the kids don't want to have the same meal we would have cooked otherwise. Our house that we purchased in 2016 will be our forever home, and it sits at a miraculous 2.875%.
I had pushed us to maximize our 401ks whenever possible during this same time. Spouse squirrelled away all available money into our HSA, and we were fortunate through his work to also have a childcare reimbursement account which took the edge off.
All that to say - because we've been in survival mode for so many years and just automatically saving, the seemingly little post-tax money left over was hiding our real progress.
Right now at 39 and 43, our combined retirement accounts are at $858,000 and could project to $2.35m by age 60 if we stopped contributing at all. That's the part that blows my mind, because we have minor children and we do want to continue having workplace-provided insurance so we will at least work another 15 years and contribute enough to get employer matches, so that number will likely only go up. Having 90-100k income each year with paid off cars, a paid off mortgage and our same hobbies is a little unfathomable to me.
I know none of our peers are anywhere in this same position so we can't talk about it in real life, but I did want to allow myself a little pat on the back online. By far the biggest factor was aggressively starting my 401k the moment I had access to it and never letting myself get sucked into lifestyle creep by reducing my contributions.