Am I spending too much? Is it even possible to retire early?
Am I spending too much? Is it even possible to retire early?
Monthly Expenses for me and my wife:
Mortgage $3,953
Water $121
PG&E $225
Phone bill $155
Allowance to parents $1,000
Car payment $1,300
Gardener $155
Property tax $873
Total is $7,782.
This is excluding ALL food and ALL credit card expenses. I'll estimate that my wife and I (no kids) spend $6,000 on our credit cards for food and other expenses, like buying stuff on Amazon and internet, netflix etc. per month.
So the total spent per month is $13,782 = $165,384 per year. That number seems really high tbh. We're also going to do a $140k remodel on our home since we just bought it and it’s old (4 beds 2 bath). (Got lucky and bought for 300k under market rate). We're also expecting a child in the next two years.
My wife and I both are senior software engineers at FAANG. Right now our combined TC is $700k. Our TC was never that high before, as we just got into faang less than 3 years ago, and we just got promoted recently. The total net after-tax income, including bonus and RSU's is $30k a month. If you only count the base salaries, it’s $17k a month, which barely covers the $13k we spend a month, and most of the time that $13k number is higher lol.
Are we living outside of our means? Can we even retire early? We’re in our very early 30’s. Wife will probably stop working in the next 5 years to take care of our future children. But what about myself, am I doomed for a lifetime of work? We have around $300k in cash in our bank account.
comments
Having kids will impact your finances greatly, so I suggest fixing your shit before even thinking about it. Day care full time is about 3k/month.
which doesn’t bode well for financially planning for a child
Also, your credit cards and some other apps help you budgeting and identifying where most of the expenses go. You could save a lot if you could cut down on it
You need around $4.2m to retire at your current spending level. Given a TC of 700k, your take home should leave well over 200k for saving each year.
If you can maintain that savings rate, you can retire in 11-12 years.