I met a special lady in May 2011. moved in in July. made a baby shortly thereafter, who is still building itself out of all the gluten and sugar the special lady eats. wedding = april, baby = june.
She is basically antidotal to ERE (if there was anything wrong with ERE), although we seem to have struck a nice compromise. We're saving 50% of our post-tax income and planning to move out to the country in 3-4 years. However, in all likelihood we'll be dropping our whole nest egg on the country home.
Lots of question marks re: FI and ERE timeline, partly because she's not into long-term planning the way I am. I try to respect that, and she's very cooperative with keeping our spending in check. I don't think there's any way I could assign a date to ERE at this point, because
* I don't know for sure that we'll acquire an income-generating property when we move to the country (horse ranch, farm, vineyard), or what the economics of that property would be, yet (who's got the inside scoop on the aforementioned?!).
* We hope to have a family of 3+ well-behaved monsters, and to send them to "good" schools. (sorry, Jacob!)
* She was raised in "comfort" and isn't ready to exit affluence, let alone the middle class
That said, she's an amazing gardener, and would take pride in being able to grow all the veggies we'll eat. She's also a great seamstress, and a traditional-minded homemaker type (who happens to also be an attorney). So there's lots of income-replacing skill and passion there, which holds some promise FI-wise.
Home schooling would have been my preference, but that's totally out of the question now.
Since our FI number is pretty nebulous, I'm going the "grow your income" direction instead of the "shrink your living costs" one. Since I own my own business, this is in the realm of possibility, and I've set some very aggressive growth goals for 2012. Hence, why I shouldn't be spending time writing this.
(I can't quit you, ERE forum!)It isn't the low-stress direction, but it is engaging and it has me focused on my business like never before. I'm ordering meals in constantly because of frequent 16-hour workdays, paying someone to clean the apartment, using task rabbits, a virtual assistant...
Basically, it's looking a lot more like 4HWW--minus the dubious dropshipping business--than ERE.
That said, the whole country house plan is aimed towards the same goal that ERE was aimed at: having a family and raising the kids by hand.
Anyhoo, I'll be back here in a week to see if anyone has something to say. Hope everybody's doing well!!!