When can I FatFire?
Hi. Longtime lurker in this community, first time poster.
I'm debating taking time off from my career to spend time with my kids while they are young. Financially, I don't think I can fully FatFire, so my big hesitation is that I get paid so much right now (golden handcuffs), and with the pace of change in tech right now and the current hiring market, I can't imagine getting rehired in a few years and getting paid anything like I currently am. Can/should I retire (and when)? What would you do?
About me:
- 37M, married (stay at home wife), 3 kids ages 1-6
- Work in big tech and they pay me a ton (~1.2M per year, depending on stock). I don't hate it, but it does eat into my time as I can't turn my brain off whenever I want to.
Assets: 6.75M Net worth
- 2.25M taxable brokerage
- 1M Retirement accounts (401k, Roth)
- 1.3M in home equity (valued at 2M, with 700k left on mortgage at 2.5% interest)
- 2.3M in private equity (mostly anthropic stock)
Expenses: Currently ~250k/year including housing, day care for younger kids, and monthly contributions to college funds. We live a relatively comfortable lifestyle in a VHCOL area. Kids are going to public school when they are old enough.
My current plan -- Work for 3 more years (until I'm 40). Hope that with some decent market returns I can get to 10M. Then I FatFire for a while until I think of something I'd rather do. Still doesn't feel great because I'll miss the infant years with my youngest.