Wife and I are married, 30 yo with two kids under two. 145k combined before tax living in suburbs of Atlanta. My round trip commute is 2 hours per day (44 miles round trip). The wife currently works from home office. I will be in graduate school while working for the next 3-5 years depending on pace, tuition is covered by my employer.
We have a pid off house worth ~250k which we just paid off. We own two cars outright, no student loans, no other debt. Moderate but not agressive 401k contributions. We've been lucky, diligent and we've deferred rewarding ourselves.
Our caluations show that we can now throw off $5,000 per month after taxes and expenses.
What do we do? Do we pursue comfort and buy the nicer things in life but limit our potential? Or do we pursue empire, where we maintain our current spending habits, invest aggressively for the next 10 years, to taste great victory or grave defeat?
Comfort: Nicer house, closer to town. Walkble to public transit, reieves significant stress of commute, closer to economic center, become a one car family. Very close to grandparents (intangible) though they aren't far away to begin with. Grandparents reduce the expected cost of child care but hard to predict a reliable number. On the high side this house costs $600k. To further round against myself assume 200k from sale of current house, 400k mortgage. A 15 yr loan would yield a ~1000k per month surplus.
Empire: Agressively invest with the goal of creating enough cashflow to not have to work anymore. Investment vehicle TBD. Assumptions is that we would continue to live as ascetic monks, and possibly the investments would require some amount of additional brain space and labor over the time period. This would be adventure as much as finance, what can we make of ourselves?
"Conan, what is best in life? Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women! "
Submitted July 22, 2018 at 09:01AM by BaughGareth https://ift.tt/2uFmv3l
