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FIRECracker is a world-travelling early retiree. She used to live in one of the most expensive cities in Canada, but instead of drowning in debt, she rejected home ownership. What resulted was a 7-figure portfolio, which has allowed her and her husband to retire at 31 and travel the world. Their story has been featured on CBC, the Huffington Post, CNBC, BNN, Business Insider, and Yahoo Finance. To date, it is the most shared story in CBC history and their viral video on CBC’s On the Money has garnered 4.5 Million views.
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It’s been a while and our reader cases are piling up, so without further ado, it’s time for another reader case!
Greetings FC and W!!!
I’m normally a “Live quietly among the masses!” type of guy, but I finally had to reach out, say what’s-up and ask your advice.
I’d like to claim I was FIRE before FIRE was cool, but I’ll let you be the judge of that. I started reading The Greater Fool, right at the beginning, and Mr.Money Mustache around the same time. I picked up on you guys when you were featured on GreaterFool, and have followed your journey ever since. You are such badasses!! You guys rule! One of the things I love about the FIRE community is that everyone doesn’t necessarily have to agree on everything, but the overlap is > the differences and you can take the advice that works for you. There’s lots of badassery to go around!!
One particular thing I want to thank you for is having the foresight to segregate the original portfolio from the blog/book/side-hustle income/investment, to keep the experiment pure. Most FIRE individuals are not bloggers or writers and may not plan on additional income streams, and this really helps us!!
With that completely voluntary-suck-up (VSU) out of the way, I want to tell you a little about my situation and ask for your advice.
I’m married with kids. We live well below are means in the Greater Toronto Area and are generally happy. My wife is awesome. However, she’s got a job she loves, with a government pension, and has no plans to retire before it kicks in 15ish years from now. I’d like the freedom to retire when I choose. Like tomorrow, or 15 years from now, or anywhere in between. Also I work in a lucrative, but volatile industry and I’d like the freedom to call it quits if I get downsized or laid off in meantime.
My wife is naturally frugal and has never hesitated to cover her proportion of our family expenses, so for the sake of the analysis, let’s assume she keeps working, but I need to cover my contribution to the family even if I stop working. For all the analysis we are going to completely ignore her savings and investment, because she’s getting a $60k+ pension at retirement and plans to keep working in the meantime.
Here are my numbers:
My Gross Income: $200K (it can go up and down a bit)
My Net Income: $120k
My Current Spending: $35K (may go up to $67k – see below)
No Debt at All
$500K paid off Townhouse (I refuse to count cars as assets even though I LOVE them)
Investments:
DCPP $450k – currently locked-in and will become an RRSP/LIRA when/if I leave
RRSP $255k
TFSA $242k
Non-Reg: $753k
Total Investible Assets: $1.7M
Current Expenses (my portion): $2895/month (~$35k annual).
We have a paid-off townhouse worth ~$500K that we scooped many years ago before real estate got (more) crazy.
I suspect based on these numbers that you might be screaming at me “RETIRE ALREADY!”, but here’s the kicker…
Whether I retire now or in a few years, I want the ability to move to a detached SFH that would be worth ~$400k more than our paid-off place. I know i could take that out of the portfolio, but my inclination is to “rent” the $400K by taking on a mortgage and letting the portfolio yield/gains pay the mortgage (portfolio first! real estate second). I will also need to add in a $2400/month mortgage payment and bump up the other expenses to account for other housing cost increases. This takes me from ~$35k to spending of ~$67k/year.
Please don’t tell me to sell the townhouse, invest the proceeds and rent the detached SFH. I DO get why that’s a good/valid strategy. It will never fly with my spouse, and frankly it’s not my preference either.
Could I bail tomorrow and still achieve this? If I don’t get laid off or retire, I can keep socking away ~$60k-$80k per year (depending on company performance) for the foreseeable future.
What say you?
You are both an inspiration. Thanks in advance if you have the time to respond or use this. If you publish anything feel free to redact the hell out of parts that aren’t useful or you don’t want to include (like referenced to other bloggers?). If you don’t want to use it (totally understandable) I’m open to a short succinct reply as well.
Keep living your best life and F the haters!
MrFIRENerd
Back when we had all the free time the world and could spontaneously go to FIRE retreats, we discovered a common type of FIRE spouse called a ‘drag along spouse’.
This type of spouse is not interest in FIRE, didn’t give two shits about who Mr. Money Mustache or JL Collins are, and would probably happily use their partner’s copy of Quit Like a Millionaire as a coaster.
They usually like their jobs, aren’t worried about layoffs, and don’t get why you’d want to hang out with bunch of finance nerds. Which is why their other half would drag them to these finance retreats, secretly hoping some of this nerd energy would rub off and finally get them on the FIRE path.
What’s interesting is that within a day of meeting the FIRE community, the ‘drag along’ spouses discover that nerd fights about safe withdrawal rates aren’t what’s discussed at all, but rather topics involving life after FIRE, passion projects, and couples therapy. A week later, they would leave feeling like a real person, instead of just a LinkedIn profile
That seems like what’s happening here. One spouse desperately wants to FIRE, but the other has zero interest. They’ve split up their numbers so that FIRE nerd spouse can build his own portfolio to cover his expenses. And since they are on Team Own, they want to a single-family home as well.
Should the FIRE nerd spouse retire? Will they have enough to cover their own expenses, plus a new mortgage? But most importantly, how will that effect their relationship if one person continues working while the other putters around the house in their boxers, watching White Lotus reruns, and stuffing their face?
Well, as we always say on this blog, let’s MATH THAT SHIT UP!
|
Summary
|
Amount
|
|---|---|
|
Income (net)
|
$120k
|
|
Spending
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$35,000-$67,000
|
|
Investible assets
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1.7 Million
|
On first glance you can see that using the 4% rule, on a $35,000/year expenditure, he only needs $875,000 to cover his expenses. In this sense, he’s got double what he needs.
But this is if he stays with his current expenses and doesn’t buy another single-family home, which they seem to desperately want.
If they give in to their home buying urges, his portion of the expenses then jumps from $35,000/year to a whopping $67,000/year, which will require a portfolio size of $1,674,000 to cover.
Normally that would set you back decades since you’ve essentially doubled the size of your portfolio requirements, but because Mr.FIRENerd is so Obese FIRE’d, he has enough to cover even this frivolous spending scenario. So in this sense, he’s all set from a financial point of view.
However, one thing to key an eye on is their relationship. I’ve seen enough couples bicker about FIRE when two people are rowing in opposite directions that it’s easy to see the landmines at this point.
Maybe one spouse will continue working and the other will bum around the house and be perfectly happy. Maybe the Fire’d spouse will find a passion project and a new group of friends and everything will be fine.
But the brutal honest truth is that when one person continues to work, while the other quits and is stuck at home, there are a few problems that could arise:
- The working spouse could become jealous and resentful of the retired spouse’s free time
- The retired spouse may get bored, restless, and end up with an identity crisis if they don’t find any other purpose and friends outside of work. They may see their spouse move up the corporate ladder and lose self-confidence.
To avoid these types of conflict, it makes sense for Mr.FIRENerd to build another identity with passion projects, volunteering, etc before he quits his job. It’s not impossible, but it is difficult to do this is you’re stuck in one place with the same set of friends, who are working, while you sit at home, feeling unproductive. When both spouses are on board and they can travel together and meet new friends, have new experiences, and work on passion projects together, retirement becomes way more fun. Or if you’re both home bodies and don’t travel, but simply spend your time off together, it’ll also be more fun because you won’t feel so lonely that everyone else is at work.
It’s not easy to have one spouse working while the other sits at home. Even if it’s by choice. You need to find a way to fill your time, and it’s harder to do if you don’t have your spouse keeping you company, or have the flexibility to go find new FIRE friends.
I think this is something Mr.FIRENerd and his wife needs to discuss before he quits the rat race. I’d suggest going to a local ChooseFI meet up and see if you can meet some FIRE friends to hang out with before pulling the trigger.
What do you think? Should Mr.FIRENerd retire while his spouse keeps working? Should they buy the Single Family Home? Do you have a drag along spouse? Share your experience to help them navigate this situation.
2 thoughts on “I Want to FIRE But My Wife Doesn’t”
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Great post and answers to the question! This one hit close to home for me, I retired a year and a half ago and my husband is retiring at the end of this month. Years ago, when we were daydreaming about the possibility for retirement, I said I would work until he retired. His job is with the government. They are eligible at age 50 and mandatory at 57 for retirement but then do have a nice pension after it. I was a family physician and had no pensions just investments and 457b.
As I got more and more burned out, I tried working less hours. The less I worked, the more I wanted to retire sooner. I finally had to change the goal to retiring when we both could afford to instead of simultaneously. Thankfully, he understood and supported my decision but wanted to keep working for a bit longer.
The points made about the relationship and the importance having passions outside of work are very valid. Possibly, the writer could work part time to develop those passions before leaving the workforce completely.
Also,I I think having the home paid off before retirement is ideal. Although the numbers seem to support a mortgage, it would be stressful, especially if you no longer had a steady income coming in.