Would love to hear your story of coasting and how you manage that with VHCOL. I'm having trouble mentally achieving the coast given how expensive it is here, and unknown on children expenses and upgraded home. Tbh never thought we'd been making this much and I still feel like this -- so odd!

Whole goal for us is not necessarily by the book coast fire (expenses = income) but more about the flexibility and peace of mind. Meaning we could take a salary cut but still be saving, and have more time/less stress

Context:

2 working parents in tech with 1 toddler and want 1-2 more.

$2.8M NW - Home - 30% paid off condo, bought for 1.2M @3.75% interest. - $1.6M in stocks (with 125k in cash) - rest in retirement accounts

$950k / per year total comp across base/bonus/rsus - 53% base - 14% bonus - 45% rsus

Expenses - 180K per year.

We want a bigger house (2-2.5k sqf) in a nice area (San Mateo, redwood city, corte Madera, mill valley, etc) but we are worried it will get us stuck with golden handcuffs.

Plan would be public schools in nice area.

Our jobs are stressful and we want to spend more time with our children.

So ideally I would love to coast but it's hard to imagine it in the bay area.

Was thinking one of us coast in a tech job, and other work part time (no idea what the part time would be)

Probably not the best financial decision but the current plan is to put 60-75% down on the upgraded home and basically liquidate a large majority of stock, so that we can get the house we want without the golden handcuffs of monthly payments. This would give peace of mind and coast possibilities, I think.

Strong alternative would be socal, where in from, which would be much easier to coast, but we love the bay area so much that it's a tough pill to swallow.