Any tips or hacks on reaching FI with school-aged kids...

If we waited it out, we would be past the typical retirement age! We should reach FI some time between our oldest two graduating high school, with at least one still at home. Our oldest was born when we were just barely handling our massive student loan debt on a single income. We have steadily increased our earnings over the years but have also made career choices to give us more flexibility as a family.

We try to teach our kids through every day opportunities. For all our kids:

• shop with them, talk about pricing and choices, and how we pay for things (We play a game where we guess the total at the grocery store. Winner gets bragging rights or occasionally a small prize like a candy bar or to pick the next board game we play.)
• Save/spend/give jars with a specific goal for savings (physical when they're younger, accounts starting in middle school)
• Allowance commensurate with age for chores completed
• Advice on purchases (usually reminders about opportunity costs or quality recommendations)
• Let them make purchases with their own money (i.e. they pay at the register, talk to the cashier, count change, etc.)

For our teen:

• Awareness of our retirement accounts, the basics on investing and compound interest, and roughly what we make and how that factors into opportunities.
• Completed a (state required) high school course on personal finance
• Will take Khan Academy's personal finance course (I intend to have all my kids do this eventually)
• Discussions about college costs (direct and indirect), return on investment (cost of your degree vs earning opportunities), and alternate paths
• Calculating taxes, tips, and interest

In general terms, we work hard at helping our kids be as independent and skilled as possible to prepare them for adult life. We teach them household tasks starting at preschool age, encourage them to attempt to solve problems on their own first, and let them fail in a controlled way (e.g. natural consequences). They do household chores, regularly prepare their own breakfast and lunch, and build relationships at school and in their communities. Our teen bikes or takes the public bus around town. We talk about what healthy friendships and relationships look and feel like. They accompany us when we volunteer (and help!) and we make sure they stay in touch with family and friends. We're also literally investing in their futures with 529 plans. I'd like for their possible future student loans to be less crippling than ours were.

Hey, we FIed about 7-6 years ago, I FIREd 5 years ago, wife will FIRE in the next year or two, we've got 2 teens in HS we'll be putting through college during increased empty nest travel spending. It's completely doable, you just have to be intentional.

There's a number of ways to go about life and FI. Personally, having FIREd, I can absolutely say that I would (again) prioritize FI highly and aiming at FIRE be the default path unless home life/goals were being adversely impacted somehow. Our living into FI was great. Upon FI, our plan was to boatschool our kids, globally nomadic on a liveaboard sailboat, but COVID border lockdowns prevented that. All my research strongly points to any such nomadic adventures happen when the kids are between toddlers and teenagers. "Toddlers and teenagers are the worst" says the communities. Consider the FIoneers' (

https://youtu.be/6LOARTidEQo?si=JgSc1iDUBduY8Y_A

) variety of options the different levels of financial freedom get you... and if you haven't hit FI while you've got kids, don't foolishly spend ALL of your time/years with them, but consider maximizing for that time, even if it's a "mini-retirement" or few. But don't force that extra time and and attention if that doesn't align with what you want.

Our kids are highly financially literate, because we involve them in everything possible... grocery shopping (tons of opportunities for discussing trade-offs), planning our 1.5-month summer vacations, etc. I spend about 50% of my retired freetime volunteering, largely as a financial educator/coach in a few ways. My passion project is coaching their HS' weekly Personal Finance Club (like a ChooseFI hyper-local group, firewalled for their safety/security) where we discuss anything the participating students care about. Both daughters attend that. They both got their Fidelity Youth Accounts (the only worthwhile "banking" account for teens) on their 13th birthdays, have Custodial Roths. We had them do the

Client Challenge

course before we turned the loose, and let them make all of their mistakes early where the consequences aren't so bad. We have really high confidence that both will launch successfully. Do prioritize time with the kids, there ARE only so few summers, etc. with them before they're gone. Our eldest just realized by opting to go to her friends' Super Bowl Party, there's really only 1 ever left available with us, next year. Time is our most limited resource. Get busy living!

My wife and I retired while my daughter was in middle school. It depends on your assets and your plan for yourselves and your kids. If you expect your kids to pay their own way through college or early adulthood, thats different than being prepared to support them if the get accepted to Princeton. Top schools dont care about your income or AGI, they look at your assets andxexpect you to use them. Even if you are planning on living off them for 40 years.

You can totally make progress toward FI with school-aged kids. And even better, you can be a FI-positive household where your decisions and discussions lead into ways you can help your kids be more likely to thrive financially.

My wife and I have a tween and teen, and we've always homeschooled. We've held fast to the idea of not having to buy tons of stuff, and not have our kids in 3,000 activities. That's helped prevent both time stress and money stress.

Intentionality has been key for us. Setting our goals, figuring out a good budget, eliminating debt, dialing up savings and investments where and when we can. As parents we have so many pressures and considerations. In our experience, understanding our goals as a couple and a family has been huge in keeping us focused.

Bringing kids into it has been so helpful. We started allowances with each kid when they were 5. Discussing saving and investing at the kitchen table has them adjacent to discussions, and my teen son now regularly participates in those (and he's now investing too).

Hitting the FI number allowed a transition to less hours for both of us and being part time has been a decently sweet spot where at least one of us has benefits but we have flexibility to take time off when the kids have time off.

My kids are still in elementary school but I talk money out loud. I don't need to buy the thing on sale but my kids when they are starting out in their lives on their own will so I talk through like I'm a college kid and go through the if I get this vs this and discuss its application to bigger purchases and general life choices.

Favorite hack has been giving them a budget and a physical calculator and having them buy healthy food for our local food bank and have to make decision and balance out meals, they get better at it each time.

I have moved to not being as overall aggressive and tight after reaching my number and kept more cash so I don't have to think or work on money.

I also have intentionally worked on flexing my spending muscle to get me ready to transition to pulling from not just piling into my accounts.

This tends to be on more trips. Not necessarily fancy trips but more and farther. Trips actually make really good case studies that my kids get to be involved in because it's easy for them to see the trade offs. Like if we get dinner supplies at a grocery store instead of eating out we get to go on a boat or get to stay at the place with the slide.

We talk about credit cards mortgages and debt. Of course the questions they ask are in line with their ages. I take them with me to the credit union. I over explain my decisions with the teller so the kids can follow along. I do get them the biggest coin they have that day because so little is paid with real money these days plus man the 50 cent pieces are huge.

They like to feel like they are involved as really this ship is a family affair. We're in it together.

Just reached FI with two tweens and single income. Many years of frugality and not letting lifestyle creep. But also in last few years we took a different path and increased our spending on our values of kids activities and vacations (while still driving 15 yr old cars).

We found it important to make sure we don't miss out on opportunities for the kids and with the kids (broadway show, roadtrip to hall of fame, performing arts club) that are important to us. The 10-20k a year that this all costs is a short-term expense (10 years) in the grand scheme.

It's helped that we've tracked expenses for 15 years so we know what our expenses were pre-kids to understand what they'll go back to once they are through school. So we were able to analyze in portfolio visualizer using they expense adjustments.

Now as we reached FI and kids still in school, we can't move to the beach, so it's finding the next phase of local hobbies and communities. So we've really gotten involved in the clubs that our kids are a part of. I could work longer to save for a bigger house on the beach, but would just mean more to clean and take care of.

Side note, love the other comment about talking to the kids about money. interesting that we have the same conversation with our two kids and they have two totally different outlooks about money. so still a work in progress.

We're close to FI at 46 with two kids at home - 16 and 13. I do all the same things everyone else does: live below our means, invest what we can, etc. Do we travel as much? Nope. We're tied to the school schedule. Does my husband keep working for the health insurance and security? Yep. So if you're asking if we have RE'd, then, no. Could we? Yeah. But I've always liked RE as "recreational employment." FI for me is about security and knowing we could walk away if jobs got bad.

That being said, I'm trying to loosen up and enjoy our time with them more before they are out of the house. Planning some fun adventures.

A few things I do that have worked for me with regard to kids.

1) I talk about money. A lot. Especially with my oldest who wants to do ALL THE THINGS and buy ALL THE STUFF. I have talked about money with her from the time she was tiny. I've explained that if I don't buy the most expensive X, it means I have more money to send her to dance class. That if I use partially broken Y (that still functions) instead of throwing it away and buying another one, I can keep supporting our favorite charities.

2) I set up a Spend/Share/Save system. They get a very small monthly allowance ($4 less than their age. Arbitrary!) which they have to split into these categories. Allowance was to learn about money, not to pay for everything they wanted. They needed to earn extra money.

3) This year, she wanted to do competition dance. (EXPENSIVE!) I gave her my budget for her activities for the year, and she is paying for anything that goes over. We made a plan for her to pay me monthly.

4) Now that she's 16 and has a job, we made her an authorized user on a credit card. She can buy gas for her car and things I ask her to pick up from the store. She can also use the card to buy stuff she wants. I go through the statement every month, tally up her personal expenses, and she gets a credit card bill from Mom, which she has to pay.

She tells me her friends are clueless about money. She tries to tell them to stop buying so much useless crap. She tells them she already has a Roth IRA. (My idea, not hers, but she's glad it's there.) This Momma is so PROUD!

5) I set up a Roth IRA the second she started making money babysitting. I funded it myself (up to what she made or $500, whichever is least) and let her keep what she made.

6) I set up 529s years ago, saved a set amount in them for college.

7) Christmas and Birthday money went into High-Yield Savings from the time they were little. It is theirs, and it keeps growing. Could I have invested for higher returns? Yes. But I wanted their money to be completely secure, and I still have it under my name (for FAFSA purposes).

Hope you get something out of all of this!!

To answer your first question, yes, lots of people have achieved FI with school-aged kids and while financially supporting elderly parents. I'm sure that there are also some out there with adult kids at home, but I expect that's a far less common scenario.

Having school aged kids generally affects you in two ways:

• limits your free time/flexibility to engage in activities and/or travel
• consumes a certain amount of cashflow

So, you can still be on the path to FI, and from a portfolio/cashflow perspective, it's really a function of accurately modeling the (expected, I'm assuming) reduction in expenses once the kids are out of school and out on their own.

Karsten (Big ERN, over at earlyretirementnow.com) has some spreadsheets/tools that allow for modeling future changes in actual cashflow and cashflow needs. And there are a multitude of similar tools out there on the Internet (though, I can't think of any right off hand).

Supporting adult kids and/or elderly parents is a bit more tricky, because the timelines are less certain than a kid with a specific projected graduation date. But the same general ideas apply.

Your last question is a little bit confusing. I think it is meant in the spirit of "making sure they successfully launch and are able to make their own way without relying on regular financial support from mom & dad". The emergency fund portion of that is the part that I don't get. If you mean an emergency fund for the kid(s), then that may or may not be helpful depending on a variety of factors. The biggest thing is to make sure to teach and model good money habits starting from the earliest possible opportunity.