u/Sweaty_Newt_

My husband and I (both 30) want to work towards complete retirement around 55. Looking at our finances this weekend, I think we may be able to do that, while also making me a SAHM / part time worker when we have kids. I'd plan to do this in the next couple years. Do our numbers make sense for this?

- Combined Roth 401k + Roth IRA: $600k

- Current monthly expenses: $6k

- Assuming monthly expenses at retirement: $12k

- Husband's income: $150k before bonuses

- House down payment savings: $130k

- Other brokerage savings: $40k

- My employee stock shares: $50k

- My HSA: $13k

Our plan moving forward would be to keep saving/investing at our current rate ($4k/mo), but in a brokerage account we'd be able to access before 59 1/2. We kind of realized we're likely on track for early retirement, but wouldn't be able to access the 401k or IRA money without penalty.

Does it sound like we'd be on track for this? If I were to become a SAHM in a couple years, we'd drop from saving our current $4k/mo to roughly $2k/mo solely from my husbands income. Once kids are school aged, I want to do something part time to cover some expenses.

I've been in VDC/BIM for about 7 years, and lately I've been questioning whether some of the problems I run into on every project are just "normal construction" or if there are better ways to manage them.

For context, I learned under one person for most of my career. He was incredibly intelligent but also about as unorthodox as you can get in the BIM world. My first major project was a multi-billion-dollar design-build, which, looking back, wasn't exactly a typical project environment.

These are the issues that seem to come up over and over:

• Unrealistic BIM durations in the project schedule. During precon and bidding, BIM coordination often gets a fraction of the time it realistically needs. We typically aren't consulted during this phase, so I'm not sure how the durations are being developed. By the time I get assigned to a project and provide a realistic BIM schedule that accounts for the inevitable conflicts and RFIs, I'm usually told to make it shorter.

• Pressure to start coordination immediately after award. I'm constantly told that coordination needs to begin as soon as subs are under contract, but many times they don't even have detailers assigned yet, only a handful of RFIs have been submitted or returned, and we end up coordinating incomplete information. A lot of issues only get uncovered because I start asking questions during coordination that nobody had considered beforehand.

• Coordination getting held up by RFIs. We uncover numerous design issues that require RFIs, which pushes both the coordination schedule and sometimes the construction schedule. We then have to justify those delays later through owner change documentation.

• Starting coordination before product submittals are reviewed. I've had projects where we're halfway through coordination and then equipment submittals come back with different dimensions, stub-up locations, embed requirements, etc., causing major recoordination. Often the detailers modeled based on assumptions instead of verifying that their work aligned with approved submittals, despite us repeatedly emphasizing this in meetings.

• Managing huge initial clash reports. When you first run MEP vs. structure and get thousands of clashes, how are people actually managing that? Whether it's Navisworks or Revizto, I can't realistically create thousands of issues manually, and the auto-generated issues in Revizto are often unusable because the viewpoints are terrible.

• Subcontractors modeling outside of Revit. Despite our BIM Execution Plans and subcontract requirements, we still get models in Civil 3D, AutoSPRINK, CAD, etc. Then I end up spending a ton of time converting files, fixing coordinates, and creating usable models for everyone else to reference.

• Recording as-builts. I'm also the go-to person on site for control, surveying, layout, and as-built documentation. That alone feels like a full-time job. How are people holding trades accountable for keeping their models updated to reflect field conditions? We've made it a requirement that models be updated within 7 days of installation—which I know is pretty unrealistic—but we've had enough issues with crews hitting existing work that we felt we needed some kind of requirement.

For those of you who have been doing this a long time:

1. Are these issues just part of the job and impossible to fully eliminate?

2. What processes or contract language have you implemented that actually improved things?

3. At what point do you refuse to start coordination because prerequisites aren't in place?

4. How do you handle massive clash reports efficiently?

I'm genuinely trying to figure out whether our expectations are unrealistic or if there are best practices out there that my teams simply haven't adopted.

I'm wanting to understand my fiancee and I's coast fire number, while also considering a few life circumstances that may come up over the next decade. We are both 30, and I work a very high stress job in construction that I'd like to see when it's possible to leave and do something part time I'll enjoy more. I also need to consider kids, which could be a possibility in the next 3-5 years, in which case I'd really like to be a stay at home mom/work part time. Obviously that would only be possible if we're in a financial position to do so. Here's some of our stats:

• Total 401k, Roth IRA: $600,000

• Monthly savings: $4k

• Savings for house down payment: $130,000

• Current monthly expenses: ~$4k

• Retirement monthly expenses: assuming ~$8k in today's dollars

• No student loans

• 2 Paid off cars

Some coast fire calculators say we'd be able to hit it by 55, even if I went down to part time work tomorrow. Others say we still have quite a bit left to invest.