u/tonkotsunissinramen

I know that Brian has talked about taking the foot off the gas pedal and it becomes more of an option the closer you get to retirement.

I am a 39m government employee with a strong pension, high retirement savings rate, and young kids. My wife and I are probably on pace for a retirement income that exceeds our current inflation-adjusted spending, but I’m struggling with determining when “more saving” stops materially improving life outcomes. Especially since the “tax savings” may be more and minimal in tax advantage accounts. My wife looked at her 401k and wasn’t excited just sort of glum that it is all this money she has no access. I think at our next family meeting I would like to talk to her about decreasing our saving rates to allow more bandwidth for life style. This may not be tax efficient, but I feel that dollars spent today would provide more benefit than the difference they could make tomorrow.

I think my questions are:

- When did you intentionally reduce savings?
- Did having a pension change your approach to Roth vs pretax vs brokerage?
- Any regrets either from over-saving or under-living during your kids’ younger years?
- What were you willing to sacrifice retirement contributions for?

Interested particularly in perspectives from pension households or people who reached Coast FIRE earlier than expected.

I have seen a lot of the MG clips when there is talk about pensions and they treat it as a future promise or that it is unwise to rely on pensions.

However, the millionaire study keeps referencing teachers who typically have less income potential but have some pension at the end of the career. Why do the MG and other financial planners ignore that one of the greatest wealth creation route is to go into public service and get a pension?

I think there should be a modification to the FOO for public employees who have less income potential but can bypass a lot of the saving rate steps to go step 8 when you reached a certain experience level.

Any public employees feel that they can’t progress in the FOO as fast as their private counter parts?

*EDIT-I think a lot of folks are responding with how to factor into the net worth. For me net worth is a tool to see how you are doing compared your peers or where you should be relative your age. The FOO is what to do with your next dollar. I think the FOO is not optimized for public employees and will trap them to be retirement rich. I used the teacher example because I have never heard of a wealthy teacher when they are working. The narrative is more that they are struggling due to wages that aren’t keeping up with cost of living. I think the FOO needs to adjust when there is more clarity to your career, if you are vested, or if your retirement horizon gets closer.