One of the biggest decisions you make in your life is who you are going to be spending your life with. There are obviously some financial benefits to this as well, but more importantly lots of emotional benefits. From a FIRE perspective ideally you find someone who shares the same philosophy as you do about money, ie you want to save as much as possible from your income (whilst still living a reasonably comfortable life) and everything works out well. If that person doesn’t share the FIRE philosophy then it’s likely to be very hard going to achieve FIRE although still probably possible.
What makes FIRE even more difficult is divorce, particularly if you are older and have built up some wealth or have kids. Divorce is generally financially devastating to both parties. From what I’ve read on average it works out worse financially for women than for men but I’ve got no desire to get a bunch of hate mail from either feminists or MRA activists by taking sides so let’s just say it’s quite bad financially for both parties.
You go from sharing expenses for one house to having those same expenses for two houses, you may need to take out another mortgage, there may be child support, there may be splitting of assets, two people living together have lower costs than two people living separately and so on and so forth. I don’t want to say avoid divorce at all costs, but think very seriously about why you are contemplating divorce and if the marriage can be saved. If it can’t, then try to keep it as amicable as possible whilst being equitable to both sides instead of paying out a fortune to lawyers.
Ideally then you want to marry someone who shares the FIRE philosophy and who you are likely to want to be with for the rest of your life (and vice versa of course). There are of course lots of other boxes you both want to tick, but those are the big two from a FIRE point of view.
One of the other really big decisions is with regards to buying a house. I’m leaving aside the issue here of whether you should think about your house as an investment or not as that’s a post for another time. I realise that not everyone wants to own a house and plenty of FIRE participants are very happy renting. Having two kids I really prioritise stability (although there are others who travel all around the world with their kids and good luck to them I say) and therefore to my wife and it’s important to us to own our property rather than rent. The economics of it can go either way so it’s up to you whether you want to buy or rent.
What I do think is important though is to stick to one house to the extent possible, and buy one that suits your needs. If you are buying and selling houses every few years then you have to pay stamp duty, you have to pay real estate agents and conveyancers, you may have to pay for removalists, you will likely have at least some period where you are paying two sets of mortgages/rent etc and various other costs.
Looking at an example of buying a $750,000 house in Victoria where I live you’re on the hook for $40k in stamp duty, real estate agent fees of 2% so $15k, maybe $2k for conveyancing, add on another few thousand for removalists, paying two sets of mortgages etc and you need the property to go up $60k just to break even. Now that’s just the unfortunate cost of doing business if you’re planning on living there forever.
But if you’re buying and selling every few years, you need to have some pretty decent returns to get back to break even. So if you do want to buy a home, think very carefully about whether or not you’re going to be happy to be there for a long time. Otherwise all those fees may do a lot of damage to your FIRE plans.
The takeaways from this if you want to make FIRE as easy to reach as possible, stick to the one spouse one house rule!
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