Hey Chips,
I'm equally aware that marriage and possible divorce can be an issue. I know Seattle Pioneer from the Fool boards has a sizeable stash which would have been very different perhaps if he had ever married. Other than saving twice as much that you need to cover the possibility of losing 50% and further saving additionally to be able to buy out her share of the home without needing to sell it, I don't see a way to avoid it. Pre-nups aren't valid here and are only used as an advisory to the court system, they are free to ignore it. Owning a business adds an additional layer of risk with marriage, losing partial control of the business to a third party, perhaps an acrimonious one would be still worse. Being 32 now, I don't expect to have to really consider the implications until my mid to late 30s.
It is all very good to say the millionaires in the book avoided divorce but if it happens it happens, I don't know that you can avoid it by design other than avoiding marriage to preclude the possibility altogether.
Having a family like you say may delay things. I don't like the idea of having teenagers about the place nearer 60 than 50, but the way life is playing itself out it looks rather like that. People here, especially women, are delaying the second stage of their lives for one of more money, staying single and playing the field longer and being more independent. So I think we're now breeding a generating of adults who will need to work till 60 or beyond to support a late stage family. Not quite sure what to make of that but I fit into that to some extent being that my focus in on the business and a relationship is distant second right now.
My plans do very much extend to European travel. I start a beginner Spanish language course next month. First language exposure since basic French at school. So many European destinations speak Spanish along with various possible FIRE retirement spots doing so too, it made sense to try it out. I also wouldn't want to move abroad and not speak the language. Several TV shows here cover Brits moving to Spain and none of them spoke the language. A couple took lessons while there but they all moved into Brit expat areas where the Spanish locals spoke English to get their business in the shops like they do in Spanish holiday resorts. I would rather have much more independence than that and also I think property outside of those kinds of areas may be more affordable as they are bought by the locals themselves. If you don't know the language fluently, you don't have that option. So trying out Spanish is in part to make vacations in Europe more enjoyable, be able to go off the beaten track without much problem with communication but also to acclimatize myself to the future options. Greece is another possible destination but the language is very difficult and written language uses a different alphabet.
One idea with the States is to rent a place for three months and use that as a base to see one state really well or simply travel around extensively. I would ideally like two vacations, one a simple by the beach kind and another where you're travelling around seeing the sites over a much broader range of locations. I don't understand people who take the same vacation to the exact same place each year. There's so much to see.
I think FIRE planning for people now in their 30s will be much more difficult. Many here saved for 20 years in highly favourable market conditions which delivered the kind of return to put them over the top. It would not be unfair to say that without such a return many would not be in such a position and would have FIREd significantly later, perhaps 10 years or more later. Between 84 and 95, for instance, saw a 500% increase in returns. Looking ahead a similar 20 year timeline for people like myself and BenSolar, the returns aren't expected to be that good in the future and the cost of living, property, cars, insurance, food etc has risen way above inflation. With higher base costs and far far lower expected returns that received by the last 20 years FIRE saving period, the road is far steeper. We'll need to put away so much more cash to deliver the same result that compounding will matter little, pure cash generation and retention will be what its all about. Given that, planning to fund 2 people from one salary in order to allow for a marriage but be able to not be ruined by a possible divorce would need an extremely high income over 20 years to do it. That is why I went self-employed. Figured I'd lose money and suffer for a few years but have a better chance in the long run.
P.S. I'm familar with Americans and their need to see old buildings. Ur kind of famous for that here, that and being easy to spot on the tube (underground metro) for being very overweight, wearing bright non-matching clothing and talking loudly. Not everyone looks like that but it seems that way - No offense. Americans are so easy to spot!
Petey
therealchips wrote: Sorry, Petey. There are an ocean and a continent, and two generations between us, and I do not know in what fields your education and ambitions lie. I don't have much to say that would be relevant to your situation. Generalities and platitudes are all I have to offer. Here are some:
Marriage and family responsibility may delay your FIRE ambitions by a decade or two. (That is, unless you marry a rich widow . . . ) Alimony or a ruinous divorce can postpone FIRE indefinitely. As I recall, the marks of the millionaires in Millionaire Next Door included avoiding divorce and having spouses agree on whether and how to achieve wealth. There is an amazing story in that book about a man who told his wife one morning that he was transferring some of his millions, produced during the marriage, into her name alone. She said "Thank you, dear. I appreciate that. I really do." and went back to clipping grocery coupons. Evidently, they did not quarrel about LBYM.
I like your idea of taking time in "seeing America". A time period such as you might allocate to "seeing Europe" would be appropriate. (I was surprised in Amsterdam in talking with a young Dutchman to find he had never been south of the Alps, and near Zurich to find a Hungarian woman who had not been west of Switzerland, as easy as those trips are with Europe's rail system.) There are no currency exchange or passport problems within the US, and most of it speaks English. I think our consumer prices are lower, in large part because our sales taxes are less than VAT, but also because our retail sector is so much more efficient. We Yankees get worked up about some building being "old" or "historic" if it is two or three centuries old; bear with us. In the London Museum, I saw an Asian with so little respect for European antiquities that he rubbed his hand on the Rosetta Stone. (Maybe it was only a replica on display. I'd like to think so.)
I would be glad to hear from anyone that his career offers much more satisfaction than simply preparing him for FIRE. We spend so much time working that, ideally, that effort provides great psychic rewards, too, and some sense of being part of something significant. While working, I had the satisfaction of knowing that I contributed to important tasks, including American defense and ultimately the liberation of Eastern Europe. Of course, my contribution was not critical, but that's not the point.
It's promising that you have learned so much about FIRE while still so young. You must have seen computations showing how important to the retirement stash it is to start the accumulation phase early. (Yeah, and I went broke in my thirties, but still managed to leave the rat race at age 53.) One calculation I saw said that the first decade of retirement savings contributed more to the ultimate retirement stash than the next three decades combined. That depends on investment results, of course.
Here ends the collection of random thoughts.