I do appreciate these detailed suggestions—-thx!

If you have specific resources, you could post them on Teachers Pay Teachers. Just another option that may be lower lift than putting together and maintaining a website.

Great job on saving – you are in a good position and have the flexibility to stay home or return to work as you’d like! I don’t have anything to add regarding financial advice, but I didn’t see any comments addressing the specifics of cooking for others/selling meals. If you do want to go down this road, I would recommend you research your state’s laws around food safety. Whenever you sell food, you are liable to restrictions/inspections by the state and local health department, and every state has different requirements.

I have some experience with this as I opened my own bakery business during the pandemic (my state has a cottage food law that allows me to sell shelf-stable food without my kitchen being inspected). I did lots of research and set up everything officially as a registered LLC for my own peace of mind and to protect my personal assets. I know some people who do things under the table and ignore these regulations. However, if the health department gets wind of it (which has happened before), your business can be shut down and you can face fines, etc. I just say this, because I honestly thought it would be pretty easy to sell food, and I realized it was a lot more involved than I thought. If you have any questions about owning a business, I would be happy to answer them 🙂

Cheers,
Melissa

Basically a combination of what FW is recommending and what they’re already planning.
-1: Move the savings to a high yield savings account.
-2: Use the extra savings above emergency fund level to pay for the next 3 years of $10K/year deficit. This would leave them with a 3-4 month emergency fund.
-3: As they are doing that, start transitioning Jane’s 457b to a more risk-averse portfolio, planning to draw from this next.
-4: Use Jane’s 457b to pay for the remaining 6 years of $10K/year deficit. They would use most of the 457b this way.
-5: Joe retires!
Why I think this would work: Ignoring the checking, savings, and 457b, they currently have a bit under $1.2M, all in other retirement accounts. If we assume a 5% inflation-adjusted rate of return on the accounts, they would have over $1.8M by the time Joe retires, plus his social security at 67.

To be clear, I’m not saying they shouldn’t save more / work more / etc. when they feel fine doing so. But I don’t think they need to stress about it. They should have enough, and if they get particularly unlucky with any external factors (inflation, stock market, social security…), they seem like they would have plenty of options to deal with it.

Good point about the target date fund, I hadn’t thought about that!

*They currently have a $10k/year deficit between their net take-home total and their expenses. Where would they draw the $ from?
*I agree that the simplicity of a target date fund is appealing, and they’re a great vehicle for younger investors. However, they get conservative quite quickly; for example, moving them more to a 60/40 split. It behooves Jane & Joe to align on a desired asset allocation and then construct a low-maintenance 3-fund portfolio.
*Fully agree re: health insurance, and I’m a broken record but I think FSAs are great. Especially with how many OTC items can be purchased through them now, it could easily reduce their household supplies line item.

I agree with all this advice, except contributing more to Joe’s 401k. I would only do up to the match, as you’re doing now, and put any remaining savings into Roth IRAs or the emergency fund. Actually, I’d vote for the emergency fund first b/c you may want to bump up your savings for new cars.

If it were me, I’d focus on your asset allocation ASAP. Being in 99% stocks is very risky! Eventually getting to 65/35 would be great. You might also check if consolidating any of the retirement accounts is possible for easier management.

Is your estate planning/beneficiary info all up to date? That’s important for you guys.

Thank you for sharing your lives in this case study! I found it very inspiring to read a story where the wife’s career was put first, and then you switched.

Things to look into as you head into this next phase:
-You ask about asset allocation. An easy way to plan for this without being an expert is to use a target date fund, which automatically adjusts your amount of equities vs bonds based on nearness to retirement. Since you use Fidelity for most of your accounts, I looked up Fidelity’s target date funds. You would likely want to use the Fidelity Freedom Index 2030 Fund, FXIFX. It’s made up of index funds as Mrs. FW and many others always recommend, and the target retirement year is 2030 (closest option to 9 years from now). If you do this, careful to pick the Index fund (FXIFX, says Index in the name) rather than one of the other types of target date funds that are not index funds. FXIFX has an expense ratio slightly higher than your current ones, but still much lower than actively managed funds – I used this ratio when I filled out the Rich Broke or Dead calculator that I discussed above.
-If you want to consider other options such as Joe retiring earlier, I would highly suggest playing around with different options using the Rich Broke or Dead calculator.
-If Jane WANTS to work, by all means go ahead! 🙂 You have the freedom to choose based on your interests rather than based on salary. Hopefully this can assuage some of your concerns about the impact of your employment gap, which are otherwise quite valid.
-You ask about choosing your health insurance plan. What we generally know is that, if you do NOT expect to meet your deductible/out-of-pocket maximum, you should definitely choose the higher deductible (cheaper premium) plan. It is more likely to save you money overall. If you DO expect to meet your deductible/out-of-pocket maximum, it’s a wash and you can choose what you prefer. I personally choose the lower deductible (higher premium) plan for myself because I have expensive health care needs, and I feel emotionally better about just hitting my deductible/out-of-pocket max and then not feeling the impact of each individual bill. But that’s a personal choice and not necessarily optimal, because if I have a low healthcare cost year, I am losing out financially due to this choice.

I have seen other FIRE adherents talk about contributing to at least employer match in a 401k before investing in a taxable brokerage account. This allows you to receive your full compensation from your employer and also diversify the types of accounts that you’re investing in. I found a blog post by Tanja Hester (Our Next Life) about calculating how much you need to save in different accounts for each phase of your retirement. For my estimates I came up with one savings goal for the years before 59.5 and another savings goal for the years after that.
The amount/percentage of savings for each person will vary depending on their total income, expenses, age, amount already saved, etc. For someone who is over 50 with a large amount saved in traditional retirement accounts they may direct all additional investments (after employer match) to a taxable brokerage account over the remaining savings years. A younger person may direct a small percentage or even delay putting money into a taxable brokerage until they’ve reached a specific savings or income level.

I’ve had a Honda Civic LX for 17 years and it has around 156k miles. My husband always says that if the engine goes it might be worth it to consider buying a new engine and have it put in, which would be cheaper than buying a whole new car. Since we’ve put so much money into maintaining this car, I think that’s a good idea. I think the max cost would be 3k? Even at 5k, it would still be cheaper than another vehicle. Just a thought! Great job on saving, you guys are financial goals for me and my husband!! 🙂

Thanks for the detailed suggestions, Sarah!