Originally Posted by Unregistered

You cant sleep at night? Stressed out by work / money worries?

Whether you can retire or not in 5 years time (at 47) depends on:

1. Expected expenses in retirement
2. How much more you can save in the next 5 years.

Your networth of $2.3M (including your home) will only last 23 years if your yearly expenses are $100k a year (about $8.5k pm). This is assuming no inflation. Expenses of $8.5k per month is not exactly a lot especially when you have 3 young children.

At 42 yo, what you could be experiencing now is probably mid-life crisis. Just grit your teeth and plod on. Many others before you have gone through this phase of their lives - some caved in and changed jobs or made irrational decisions like buying expensive cars or go on expensive holidays, while many others like me, just steeled ourselves and soldiered on.

"Mid life" crisis can strike you many times. But each time you pulled through, you get better at dealing with it.

So, what do I get for sticking through? Well, for that, I ensured that my income was not disrupted throughout the years. My savings grew consistently. We also saw through the high expenses of our children's uni education without any stress / dip on our savings.

In fact, at our current age of 57, we can look back at those "mid life" crises and smile at the thought of what we almost did - like walking out of our jobs or doing crazy things like travel around the world.

While working, we could still travel the world but just in shorter duration - while still having our salaries.

Another big benefit of not quitting early or working through to your mid fifties is this golden period of savings acceleration. The typical working family / couple from early 50s to their 60s will see that their financial commitment taper off while their salaries peaked. This combination will accelerate their savings - very important period to pad up their retirement nest egg.

We have been enjoying this phenomenon for the last 7 years. We saw our savings hitting as high as $400k last year! This was made possible as our children graduated and entered the workforce, our housing loan and car loan were paid off.

So just hang on. Tough times dont last, tough people do.