u/strangehuman111

Hi everyone,

My wife (32F) and I (34M) live in Hyderabad and currently have no kids. Our goal is to retire as early as reasonably possible( in next 7 years) travel, and live a simple, peaceful life.

We are fairly asset-rich but, as I see it, quite equity-poor. I’d really appreciate some advice on how to structure our finances if FIRE is the goal.

Current monthly expenses

Around ₹1 lakh/month.

We currently have:

- Car loan EMI: ₹36K

- Home loan EMI: ₹57K

Investments / savings

Combined:

- Mutual funds: ₹10L

- Indian stocks: ₹10L

- US stocks (Vested): ₹35L

- ₹25L given to someone on interest, generating around ₹30K/month. We can ask for the principal back when needed.

We essentially started rebuilding our investments around 2 years ago. Before that, I had used most of my savings to purchase a home.

Real estate / assets

1. Home 1: ~₹1.3Cr value, ₹50L loan outstanding

2. Home 2: ~₹2.2Cr value, possession expected in ~1 year

3. Home 3: ~₹2.2Cr value, possession expected in ~1 year

4. Plot: ~₹60L

5. Farmland: ~₹40L

6. We also have a decent amount of gold jewellery.

We bought Homes 2 and 3 with one time payment in the same community because we got a good deal and had some money from selling our previous home. Our current plan is to sell Home 3 after possession.

Income

- Husband: ₹60L/year CTC

- Wife: ₹10L/year

My wife is intentionally not looking to switch jobs. Her current company/project is comfortable and gives her enough flexibility to take care of our family and her parents. So we are not looking at maximising household income at all costs.

Insurance

- Corporate health insurance: ₹10L coverage for both of us + my parents

- Wife also has separate health insurance: ₹5L base + top-up up to ₹50L

- Term insurance: Husband ₹4Cr, Wife ₹1Cr

My ₹4Cr term insurance will be completely paid off within the next year. I’m choosing to close it early rather than continue the monthly/annual payments.

My parents are completely dependent on me financially and don't have pensions, so this is also something we need to account for in our FIRE planning.

Our situation

I feel we are asset-rich but equity-poor.

A large portion of our net worth is tied up in real estate, while our financial/investable portfolio is relatively small.

My first question is:

How would you structure this if the objective was safe early retirement?

Should I gradually sell some of our real estate and move the proceeds into diversified equity/debt investments? If so, how would you approach the transition and what kind of asset allocation would you target?

Also, should I be treating the ₹25L earning interest as part of our FIRE corpus, or would you consider that too risky/concentrated?

Our expenses are currently only around ₹1L/month, but I obviously don't want to assume that this will remain constant forever. We also need to factor in my parents' expenses and healthcare.

Second question — children

Honestly, both of us are somewhat afraid of having a child.

We worry that having a kid would completely change our lifestyle and potentially push our FIRE timeline much further out, especially with the increasing cost of education, healthcare, etc.

We don't have a strong desire for a conventional lifestyle. Our dream is basically to retire early, travel around the world, and live peacefully. Neither of us has expensive habits or particularly large financial goals, and we're both quite comfortable adjusting our lifestyle.

So for people who are already FI/RE or are well on their way:

How did you account for the decision of having/not having children in your FIRE planning?

Are we being overly conservative about the financial impact of having a child, or is it reasonable to treat this as a major FIRE variable?

Would love to hear how people in India, particularly Hyderabad/India-based FIRE folks, would approach our situation.

Thanks!

I went to watch Vishwanathan and Sons after seeing all the good reviews and recommendations. Overall, I thought the movie was good. The story itself felt quite routine and I didn't find anything particularly new, but it has almost all the ingredients needed for a successful South Indian commercial movie.

However, there is one thing I genuinely couldn't digest.

The way the movie normalises hookup culture and extramarital affairs, especially through comedy, really bothered me. I understand that the intention was to create a funny sequence, and I'm not against movies showing such things. But there has to be a limit to how far you take it.

Making almost a 15-minute sequence out of it and portraying it as something cool, casual and completely acceptable, with even the mother, fiancée and brother-in-law being okay with it, felt completely unnecessary to me.

I actually have a good opinion of Venky Atluri as a writer and director, which is probably why this bothered me even more. I genuinely don't understand what he was thinking while writing, filming and editing that particular portion. The movie had enough material to work as a comedy without going that far.

And the irony is, this is supposed to be a family movie.

We've seen cinema gradually normalise things like smoking, drinking, teasing girls and ragging over the years. Now we're increasingly seeing hookups and extramarital affairs being treated in the same casual, comedic way.

I'm not saying movies shouldn't portray these things. They obviously exist in real life. But portraying something and normalising it are two different things, and I felt this movie crossed that line just to create a comedy track.

Maybe I'm being too sensitive about it, but I genuinely wanted to know if anyone else felt the same way after watching the movie.