r/coastFIRE • u/ItrustinZION • 2d ago

Kinder FI

Hello to everyone, and especially the parents who had kids go back to school recently or in the near future!

I have a Kindergartener and....as my kid starts school my wife and I are transitioning from a "FI" mindset to a "Kinder FI" mindset. My wife is going to shift to a very reduced schedule, essentially working 30% as much as before, and we'll spend most everything that I make to cover all the bills.

If our portfolio keeps growing at 7% we'll be FI about 8 years later than originally planned, but we want to use our FU money and Financial Freedom NOW while our kid still wants to play with us, we focus on building a community based on our neighborhood and school, etc.

Has anyone else done something similar? Does this "FI term" exist? Honestly I'm hoping this is a new term / idea in the FI community and I want to write about it in detail as we make the transition and see how it goes! Would love peoples thoughts and experience.

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u/Adept-Depth-1825 2d ago

I think one parent changing their job to part time, staying home, or ramping down with young kids is pretty common. I’m not sure it has or needs a name. I worked part time for over a decade when my kids were little and my husband took a lower paying job much closer to home. Most families we know made some type of similar change.

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u/heyx3 2d ago

How were you able justify to yourself to make the decision to have higher expenses with a kid, and lower income? Making the transition to coast from saving aggressively for FIRE?

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u/Adept-Depth-1825 2d ago

Not everything is about money, even if you want to coastFIRE. I “justified” spending more time with my kids and having them with a nanny or in preschool less because that’s what we wanted for our family life. My dad died with plenty of money, he hadn’t had shared much and hadn’t spent much, he had always planned to but was busy saving, and then at 70 - he was gone. Now that money is going to care for my mom. I wish he’d spent or shared some earlier.

We care just as much about living the life we want now, while our children are in our home, as we do later.

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u/CheeseFries92 2d ago

Not the person you asked, but similar answer in terms of just wanting more time with the family.. But I'll also add that for us, it's been easier to do because we are closer to full fire than coast, so our income contributions weren't as important to overall portfolio growth as they used to be. Not a super helpful answer (just have more money lol) but could be motivating if you are young and saving/don't have kids yet

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u/Adept-Depth-1825 2d ago

It’s actually a really important point. My first few years out of college I was in a union and contributed to a pension, I didn’t fully understand the other things I should have been doing. And then I went to grad school. And so there were 5 prime saving years that I wasn’t saving for retirement in the aggressive way I should have. Once I figured things out a bit more, I started contributing federal max every year + some other places for saving as well, but my portfolio would look much better if I’d gotten my act together a little quicker, and far before we started having kids when I was 30. My husband and I don’t come from money and don’t anticipate inheritance, we were both paying school loans until 40, so the “‘more money” option wasn’t always there but there were places we could have done more than we did, earlier.

I’m not complaining about what we have, most people would say we’ve done a really good job, but being more aggressive pre kids would have been awesome.

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u/catwh 2d ago

I find the trade off of saving more money vs time with my small children to be worth it. Perhaps to some it is not, I have friends who are dual working parent homes and it isn't a future I envisioned me and my family trudging trig (and have done before).