What made you slow down your FIRE journey?

Well, I only discovered the FIRE movement a few years ago, but I’d been pursuing FIRE without knowing it was called FIRE since my early 20s. For us it slowed down significantly once we had kids. I stopped working to stay home with them, we moved to a better (more expensive) neighbourhood, to a bigger house, bought a second car and started to visit my parents who live a four-hour flight away more frequently.

We’ve since downsized to a smaller house in the better neighbourhood, but I’m still home, we still have 2 vehicles, we still travel to visit family, plus just take regular vacations with our kids. We also spend a decent chunk of money on extra-curricular activities for the kids.

I could have kept working, we could have stayed in the original house and taken the bus instead of buying the 2nd car (husband needs his car for work). We could just not visit my parents and expect them to visit us, and never go on vacations other than camping within driving distance of our house. We could decline to put the kids in extra-curricular activities or only allow them to do activities that are really cheap.

We were more willing to live more meagrely without indulgence and accept more challenging self-imposed circumstances before we had kids. The lure of RE also isn’t as strong now because we’re tied to the kids’ school schedule and RE for us means travel. Instead we’re trying to engineer my husband’s work to be flexible enough that we can all travel when the kids are off school, with RE likely postponed until the youngest is done school.

/r/financialindependence Thread