Tell me you’ve never had a good WB schedule (22+ days at home a month), without telling me you’ve never had a good WB schedule

;-)

 

And that gentlemen, is the million dollar question. If you can determine "how much is enough", then that lifestyle is closer than you think.
Side note and honest question, what basis does having a couple kids in college play one's retirement decision making?

 

Really depends on how much you plan to support their college education. I started saving in my state 529 for my kids college. So I wouldn’t think that would factor into my retirement decision much at all. (Eg it’s paid for)

If you haven’t started saving something for that, and you want to help them out, you should start now. If you are a parent that can “push them out of the nest” and tell them to do it on their own, it also wouldn’t factor into the retirement equation.

I have a hard time determining how much money I’ll need in retirement. The only answer I usually can come up with is “more is better”

 

Some chose to let their children pay their own way; some chose to help; some chose to pay.

Depending on ones desire to help or not, the cost of the colleges, plus ones age when your children enter college, it can mean a couple extra years of work to cover the bills left over as a necessary step financially. Not always the case for everyone, but certainly a factor for me as an example.

Unfortunately, prior to age 25 your children have to input their parent's income into any financial aid application regardless of whether or not the parents intend to help with payments, and tragically many big name schools nationwide now charge over $75k per year and somehow expect people earning anything approaching "upper middle class" to pay the entire bill. For me the bills exceeded $700k for 3 kids and that definitely pushed my ability to save for retirement out a few years. College bills can vary widely from family to family, but for sure in some cases it has an impact on the timeline saving for retirement.

 

This dude is also married to a surgeon. Listening to him give financial advice is like getting social reform from Marie Antoinette.

 

I’ve been married to a stay at home mom for 25+ years and would agree with what he said. A public school 4 year degree will run around $100K per kid. We saved for that expense and had the money set aside for college, but that was also money that could have been applied to retiring debt, retirement savings, etc. If parents want to help or pay for their kid’s tuition, that is a significant amount of money that isn’t applied elsewhere. Couple that with the inevitable black swan events that we will all experience, the ability to punch out as early as 53 won’t be obtainable for most.