Retire before your kids leave home, not after

I recently received a great comment on my post, I wonder why all the rich people still have life insurance?. This was the last line that emerged. Here’s what Mark had to say.

When I worked full-time, I had life insurance ($1M) through my employer, but since I’ve cut it down to ~10 hours per week, I no longer have it. My spouse still has her own life insurance from work (also $1 million), but once she leaves the job in the next few years we will not be taking any more life insurance.

I’m not as dogmatic about it as some of the ex-fire guys you mentioned, but we don’t see any reason for life insurance in our case. We keep 3+ years of expenses in cash for our emergency fund, so we avoid some of the concerns expressed in the article. “We have a student policy,” he said. Unlike our financial needs in an untimely death case, there is no limit on judgments due to one’s personal liability, especially in a litigious state like California.

for reference, We are almost 50 years old and our children attend middle school and high school in the South SF Bay Area. Net worth > $10M.

Mark and his family are clearly doing very well. Thanks to them. However, I have yet to meet anyone in real life who is rich, has kids, and doesn’t have life insurance. However, I have met many people online who Tell They will drop their coverage once they stop working. But I still have doubts.

Saying you will do something once you reach a milestone and actually doing it once you get there are two completely different things. Money is emotional, and we are creatures of habit. This is why another year syndrome exists.

But this post isn’t really about whether or not you should have life insurance after being stressed with kids. (obviously you should.) This is something of a big deal: whether to retire when your kids are home, or wait until after they’re gone.

My thought is, if you can afford it: don’t wait.

Retire when your kids are home, work after they’re gone

When I read that comment, a home worth over $10 million, with a middle school student and a high school student in it, and a spouse planning to leave in a few years, I was surprised. Personally, if I had that kind of net worth and both of my kids were within five years of leaving home forever, there would be no way for me to continue working.

We all know that by the time your child turns 18 and goes to college, you’ve already spent the majority of the personal time you get with him. Widely cited “tail end” analysis puts that figure at or around 90%. After they’re gone, you’re living until the last moment.

And I already feel an incredible urgency about time in my late 40s. I can only imagine how fiercely I’ll want to protect it when I’m 50, just like Mark and his wife.

more money doesn’t change anything

Choosing to make more money when I already have $10+ million, instead of spending more time with the people I love most, is a complete non-starter for me. I don’t see how spending 40-60 hours a week to earn an extra $500,000 before taxes would make a positive change in my life.

But I also understand that money and status are so intoxicating that it is difficult to stay away from them. Meanwhile, some people have truly amazing jobs that fill them with joy, purpose, and passion. We are all entitled to do what we want, not just what is best for our children. So I understand. There is no one right answer here, there is only one answer that suits your life.

I wasn’t lucky enough to maintain my passion for finance after 13 years, so I wanted to move out. But I have been lucky enough to keep my passion for writing alive for 17 years, writing before my children woke up and even while they were in school.

Traditional Path vs Agni Path

People sort career, money, and kids in two common ways.

Traditional route: Work, have kids once you have some financial stability, keep working to support them until they finish college, and then retire. Children are expensive and time consuming. No one denies this. And there’s no upper limit to how much you can spend on them if you let yourself.

Fire Path: Get ahead in your career and save and invest 50%+ of your income for 10 to 25 years, retire early, travel the world and explore passion projects, then have kids. In theory, this gives you more time to be present and build a stronger connection. Then, once your children go off to college or work, you can return to full-time opportunities if you wish.

There is a real compromise between the two.

The traditional path often means having small children. As a result, you get to share a larger part of your life together. This is by far the biggest benefit, and you feel it most in the second half of your life.

One of my own biggest regrets is having children late. Not only would I not live there that long, but I also wouldn’t be able to have more children. The downside of the traditional path is more stress, less energy, and sometimes weaker relationships and more stress at home when juggling career and family.

The FIRE path usually means having kids later, because you’re so focused on saving, investing, and escaping your career that there’s no room for them yet. Then, when you finally pull the trigger, it may be hard for you to conceive naturally due to biology. And when you have kids, you won’t get as many years with them as you’d like.

The flip side is that you’ll probably spend much more time with them than you did when you were working for them during their first 18 years. As a single parent, you may also have more financial resources, which can make supporting your family less stressful.

Therefore life is full of give and take. Objectively, there is no better way than this. Things really do turn out the way they are for you, and the way you wish they would have been.

Hybrid approach seems optimal

There’s a running joke between my wife and me: There’s no need for both of us to suffer through the same difficult thing. So one way to balance career and family is to have one person hustling for a big paycheck while the other stays home with the kids. This traditional version makes a lot of sense, especially when one of the parents at home ends up bearing the cost of child care. Once your child is eligible for full-time preschool, you can decide whether to send him or her. Just know that being a full-time parent is harder than any banking job, so there is.

Another version: One or both parents leave their full-time jobs after having a child and work on their own projects part-time or from home. You may not be able to earn as much, but you will have much more time with your children. The biggest gift of COVID was normalizing remote work and, in fact, getting paid more to be around your kids. Too bad most serious companies have since pulled everyone back into the office.

The final version, the full FIRE version: Both parents become stay-at-home parents while their investments generate enough passive income to cover household expenses. It’s a somewhat uncertain life, as market downturns happen all the time. But based on historical returns, this is a version that could work over the long term, especially if you can earn some supplemental retirement income along the way.

Agni Marg to Career and Parenting

Here’s a FIRE path worth considering if you’re planning on having kids. Let’s see if my vibe-coded guide works.