u/mintbark

We have two young kids (3 and 1) and we recently hit our original number ($10M). We’ve since upped the number to $15M due to inflation and increased lifestyle. But wanted to know whats it like to be fatfired with young kids? We’re looking to have more kids. By the time we fire our kids will be in elementary school and we’ll be beholden to the school calendar. Is it even worth it when everyone you know is working? We’re both remote so get lots of the benefits of not working.

Edit: our spend is 350k with two kids not including private school or healthcare (we pay <10k effective right now including OOP max).

We are considering buying our elderly back neighbors house because we have a small backyard and they have a huge one. Their house is on a busier road and costs about one years savings. Our house is 2.1M and we haven’t gotten numbers yet but I’m guessing 1.2-1.4M. We love the house and the neighborhood, but does it actually make sense? Should we buy or build another house instead? We‘ve only lived in our house for 3 years, but have had two kids here. we would buy the house as is, probably not in fantasic shape to sell/rent

HHI ~$2-3M depending on public RSUs, will probably drop to $1.8M in 1-2 years when one of us quits working

$8.2M liquid

$1.4M equity in our primary (670k on the mortgage, yes we’ve been paying extra)

529s are fully funded and not included

current spend is ~$330k/yr including two daycares

early/mid 30s with 2 kids and will have at least one more

we’re guessing this delays retirement by roughly 1 year

edit to add, we wanted to buy a portion but the neighbors weren’t interested because they wanted to sell so were having a discussion about an off market purchase. Our neighborhood is small and there aren’t any better houses to buy in our neighborhood that would sell soon, but there might be in adjacent neighborhoods.

I currently have young kids. My youngest was eligible for the $1000 seed to their 530A account, however the more I've looked into these accounts, the more excited I am and I plan on maxing them out for my kids along with any future kids we have. Has anyone else looked into these accounts? Am I missing anything?

I plan on contributing $5000 a year for 18 years, meaning I'll contribute $90k over their lifetime and the account will be worth $250k at 18 assuming 10% growth. At 18 the 530A account becomes a Traditional IRA. As soon as we're past the kiddie tax rate, I'll have my child convert the account to Roth IRA. I plan to gift my child the annual gift exclusion to help pay their taxes on the conversion.

Unfortunately I only earn W2 income so there's no way to contribute to a conventional Roth IRA for my child since we do not have earned income. Even if they made an income, $5000 + $7500 is still well below the annual gift limit so it's not an issue.

We already max out all of our tax advantaged accounts and superfunded a 529 for each child a birth with 2x the 5 year annual gift limit that year. Our income is extremely high and we're not big spenders so all the excess money just goes to our brokerage account right now and I love tax advantaged accounts. We're extremely FIRE motivated but $5k/child/year has no impact on our annual budgets. I am not interested in contributing to a UTMA because I do not want to gift my children unrestricted money at 18/21 and prefer to gift directly as needed (there's no cap on the amount of expenses you can directly pay for a child).

Questions

• If I transfer ownership of the 529 for college to my child, will they be considered independent at 19 and thus no longer subject to the kiddie tax? The owner of the 529 is considered the source of funds. I assume once my child has a full time job they'll no longer be a tax dependent and we will no longer be subject to the kiddie tax. What about if they have an internship? Top internships paid roughly $30k for the summer when I was in school and I paid all my own expenses (minus college tuition itself). If ym child is in a similar situation, will that be enough to be considered no longer a tax dependent? What if my child gets a merit scholarship? Will they be considered funding their own college?

Thanks for your thoughts!