what's with the idea that parents should be paying for their kids 4-year college education? at best you should pay for a year of their community college. you're also not spending $2k/mo per kid to raise them. the american dream was never owning a new car. even buying a 2 year old car even 10 years is quite a great standard of living for 10% of the budget. $44k for wedding, yeah if did a beach wedding fully catered. otherwise it's more like $8k at a decent venue. a nice 3 br home is more like $400k. you don't need to fly to italy for every vacation. the retirement amount is also quite a bit lower if you pay off your house and no longer have a mortgage. you really only need to dividend stocks paying out $2k/mo which is like $300k invested. my grandparents also never bought a new car after their retirement which is normal given you don't drive much at all at that point, maybe 10 miles per week on average.
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