[geekster777]

I quit in May. I'm a bit worried though. The gig was good, people were great, but writing on the wall was that management expected devs to be so bullish on AI that no handwritten code would exist moving forward. Simultaneously, deadlines were getting aggressive and OKRs more optimistic now that everyone can be a 10x engineer with Claude. I probably could have ridden it for another year if I really wanted to coast, but ultimately I'm too burned out to do that sanely.

Financially, I'm in a place to (lean) FIRE, but my wife is 6 years away from FIRE. The plan is for me to be a stay at home dad (supplemented by the above FIRE income), while my wife who is also in tech continues to work and advance her career. In our soonest timeline, that leaves me 10 months to pursue hobbies and projects before an infant makes focus time more difficult. I've spent the last two months on my backlog of videogames, writing some music, hitting the gym, and exploring new hobbies (mahjong, climbing, and drawing). I'm hoping to focus my pursuits into quarters (Q3 being music and Q4 being video game development). Hopefully, this will cement habits enough that they'll continue as my life transitions.

But to circle back to my worries above. I'm planning on exiting the workforce for good if possible. If I enter it again, it will most likely be in 6-8 years (as kids enter school). This is a long time, and likely the industry will shift significantly in that time. I fear the cash cow that is software development will be less lucrative in that time, or that my skills will be too outdated. So while I desperately want the year off, another year of work would put us in a more secure financial position. And I'm most in my prime now, and therefore able to secure a high paying gig right now. It's /probably/ fine, but becomes an issue if we hit road blocks in the next few years (layoffs, injuries, economic disaster, etc). That's a lot of financial anxiety that I probably don't need to have, but it's still present. While the economy remains shaky, I don't necessarily feel confident that my purchasing power will keep parity over the next few years.

[jimbo_joe]

Hey, how do you plan FIRE with children? My daughter turned one recently and we're planning to have at least one other child. While I can see myself FIRE and be able to live off savings at some point I feel that children costs (education, general upkeep like housing, food, and other stuff) x number of children for the next 20-25 years (roughly until they become self-sufficient) coupled with economic uncertainty are unpredictable enough that I can't imagine myself FIREing when I have my children to provide for.

[geekster777]

Honestly, I've been hand waving this somewhat. We'll be on my wife's insurance for the next several years at least, and live in an area where public schools are quite good (Massachusetts). My assumption is that each kid will add ~$15k in cost a year, though I could be underestimating this. I'm planning a few layers of buffer here. 1) My wife wants to keep working past 6 years from now and has no interest in FIRE (this is huge, but 6 years is a long time for her to change her mind). 2) Once kids are old enough for elementary school, I can go back to work. If my math is wrong, 7ish years of overspending shouldn't set back our FIRE too considerably. 3) Being a stay at home dad to start should seriously eliminate the expensive childcare costs. 4) My FIRE numbers don't include my 401k/IRAs, which I can dip from (with penalties) if necessary.