Heckuva mortgage. Welcome to Boston I guess.Hello,
Apologies for the long post and for the somewhat personal nature. Consider this 75% finance and 25% therapy through finance.
My father had a massive stroke this week and passed away last evening at 73 years old. RIP dad. He was a tremendous father and person and as you might imagine it is making me question a few things about how I am investing my time.
I am a married 39m with 3 young children and am going to begin the process of retiring from corporate America and refocusing my attention on my family and my dream, to become a high school track and field coach. This is very clearly a midlife crisis but in the spirit of never letting a good crisis go to waste I would like to make it a positive one.
I would love some recommendations on the right exit point and some of the practical steps I can take to set me and my family up for this. My wife is very much on board with this plan as well. Please note we are really willing to make some very big changes and acknowledge that this will involve radically reducing expenses and making some concessions to standard of living.
Here are the variables of the situation.
Personal Characteristics:
* 39YO male w/ 39YO female spouse
* 3 children 7/4/2
* Live in near in suburb of Boston. Very good school district but also very high cost of living. No support system or roots here so open to moving. Location is currently professionally driven.
Jobs/Salaries:
* My job is 1 year old and a big step up from a salary standpoint. Base = 440k, Bonus = 330k, Public Equity (3 year vest) = 750k. Bonus paid in March.
* Spouse job is longer running and more stable. Base = 350k, Bonus = 100k, Public Equity (1 year 25% vest then monthly for 3 years) = 100k. Bonus paid in March.
Liquid Assets:
* 100k cash
* 2.5m taxable brokerage
* 1.615m in assorted retirement accounts
* 175k towards college
Real Estate:
* Zillow values home @ 3.4m. Currently owe 2.3m @ 3.85% interest
Other assets:
* 2.1m in unvested company stock for me. Will vest 400k/300k in September/Feb for the next 3 years with the initial vest in just a few weeks (Sep 24’). Stock is pretty volatile but I personally feel good about the trajectory. Reloads are in June typically.
* Wife has 750k in unvested company stock. Vesting is mostly even at about 20k a month so no big cliffs at this point.
Expenses:
* 13.8k mortgage
* 5.8k daycare
* 1k car payment (0% interest, 40k remaining)
* 1k utilities, streaming etc.
* We don’t budget the rest but usually cash flow about 2-4k from our paychecks each month to investments. We bank all of our bonuses and vested equity for the most part.
So given all of the above. What are some concrete things you would do.
Thank you.
These situations are so hard. You're already wealthy but your earning potential is so friggin' high that it is hard to walk away from it, especially at 39.
I am now a high school hockey coach. Without dropping the high paying job. I think you're seeing a false dichotomy. Keep exploring your options. I bet you'll find something that allows you to still contribute meaningfully in the workplace, still have a high income and build wealth, and yet feel like you're not missing out on real life.
Back in about 2016 (when I was 41) or so I wrote down what my ideal life looked like. Then I made numerous small changes over the next 5 years that gradually allowed me to align my ideal life with my actual life, like a Venn diagram. 8 years later, there is almost perfect overlap. Paid work is still a meaningful part of my life.
Statistics: Posted by White Coat Investor — Sat Aug 17, 2024 4:34 pm — Replies 31 — Views 2701