Is $4M enough?, age:40, valedictorian to burnout and outdated, can I retire? Nice story inside.

[mikejuss]

No, I would not want to be retired for a 40-year period.

[alfaspider]

I'm around the same age and financial situation, so I can relate. I'm on vacation now, and I've found myself fantasizing about selling my primary residence and just buying a "vacation home" in a nice spot and retiring.

For me, the biggest obstacle is "then what?" I have many hobbies and things I would like to do, but I still have small kids that would keep me from traveling the world or doing many of those hobbies as a fantasize. I don't really want to move somewhere where we don't have friends and family, and take the kids out of schools they like and are well adjusted to.

Many years ago, I read a BH post about the need to "retire to" something rather than "retire from" something. I think you need to make sure you can get to "retire to." I personally haven't gotten there. I'd also like to ride through a downturn to truly feel financially comfortable doing it. We've had a very solid run over the last 15 years, but a run more like 1999-2009 is probably overdue. I want some working years to buy in through the dip to really feel confident.

[retired recently]

Re the kids, I think it depends on the kid and the timing. Our son was pretty advanced and we supplemented his education quite a bit anyway. When he was in elementary school it was very easy to take him out for an extended period of time. We had to disenroll him from school and effectively home school him but as the teacher knew we would return she gave us a month worth of assignments. One year we went to Thailand for 7 weeks with him and we would go to the beach in the morning for a few hours, come in for lunch and assignments, then back out in the afternoon. It really takes very little time to do the school assignments...maybe 90 minutes or so...and then another hour on things we had him doing o/s of the curriculum, eg., Art of Problem Solving, etc. We travelled quite a bit within Thailand and I think he learned a ton...we did Costa Rica the next year but only for a month and he only missed about a week of school. Education is easily done abroad but the bigger issue for us was team sports...that kinda stopped our travels. Also, elementary school is easy but later on would get tougher depending on the school system.

Finding stuff to do has never been a big issue and I stay quite active. Friends are a bigger challenge but I had spent 14 years abroad, so moving back to the US was a bit of a challenge for several reasons.

Worked quite well for us but I can appreciate it is different for everyone.

[alfaspider]

Re the kids, I think it depends on the kid and the timing. Our son was pretty advanced and we supplemented his education quite a bit anyway. When he was in elementary school it was very easy to take him out for an extended period of time. We had to disenroll him from school and effectively home school him but as the teacher knew we would return she gave us a month worth of assignments. One year we went to Thailand for 7 weeks with him and we would go to the beach in the morning for a few hours, come in for lunch and assignments, then back out in the afternoon. It really takes very little time to do the school assignments...maybe 90 minutes or so...and then another hour on things we had him doing o/s of the curriculum, eg., Art of Problem Solving, etc. We travelled quite a bit within Thailand and I think he learned a ton...we did Costa Rica the next year but only for a month and he only missed about a week of school. Education is easily done abroad but the bigger issue for us was team sports...that kinda stopped our travels. Also, elementary school is easy but later on would get tougher depending on the school system.

Finding stuff to do has never been a big issue and I stay quite active. Friends are a bigger challenge but I had spent 14 years abroad, so moving back to the US was a bit of a challenge for several reasons.

Worked quite well for us but I can appreciate it is different for everyone.

Yeah, I could never home school my kids. Neither of us have the patience. Plus, I know from vacations that I wouldn't be very interested in traveling with them for more than a week or two at a time. They are also too young to do the sorts of adventures I would have in mind.