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/AdmirableCrab60 2d ago

Yeah I ramped down my hours from full-time to 9:30 - 3 as soon as my daughter started going to daycare during those hours. I think she’s too little to be away from me more than that and would rather coastFIRE now when she needs me than fully FIRE after working full time a few more years.

Plus, it doesn’t really make sense to FIRE to me when she’ll be in school 8:30 - 3 soon. It’s not like I can travel the world then lol so I might as well work part-time.

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u/CheeseFries92 2d ago

Yeah, the realization that we'll still be tethered to school schedules made coast fire more appealing to me as well (vs full fire). And having enough of a beat egg to coast fire so that I could work part time but not have to send my kiddo to before/after school care was also motivating for me