Two Kids, One Freelancer, and a FIRE Goal That Refuses to Die
Hey everyone! So… it’s been a while… again. 🙂
If you’ve been following along, you know I have a habit of disappearing for months at a time and then showing up with a massive life update. Today is one of those days. My son was born two weeks ago. My daughter turns five at the end of this month. And I’m sitting here thinking it’s probably time to write the post I’ve been putting off for a few years now: what FIRE with kids actually looks like in practice, from someone who is living it right now.
Spoiler alert: it’s complicated. But not in a bad way.
Baby #1: Where We Got Surprisingly Lucky
When our daughter arrived back in 2021, my wife and I had mentally prepared for the financial hit. Everyone warns you about crèche costs in Belgium, and for good reason. Depending on your income and commune, you’re looking at anywhere between €400 and €900 a month. We had budgeted for it.
Then my parents stepped in and offered to take care of her. Just like that, one of the biggest expected costs of having a baby in Belgium simply never happened for us. My wife was back at work after about two months, and our daughter spent her days with her grandparents instead of a crèche.
I genuinely cannot overstate how lucky we were. Not just financially, but also because she got to grow up with her grandparents around every single day. That is not something money can buy. According to research on the cost of raising children in Belgium, a family can easily spend over €1,000 per month per child in the early years when you factor in childcare, food, clothing, and medical costs. Dodging the crèche bill alone made a meaningful difference to our savings rate.
The House Situation (Or: How My Grandmother Saved Our Finances)
If you read my catchup post from 2024, you already know the housing backstory. But for the newcomers: my Brussels apartment had been delayed for what felt like forever. In the meantime, my grandmother’s house became our home. And eventually, it became officially ours.
Buying the house from my family was one of the best financial moves we made, even if at the time it felt more like a lifeline than a strategy. Having somewhere stable to land during a period that included a new baby, a delayed apartment, a career switch to freelancing, and eventually a full renovation… yeah, that mattered.
The apartment, once it finally got delivered, became a rental property. I’ve covered the full journey of that project in earlier posts — a total investment of €441,646.62 by the time everything was done. After years of headaches and delays, it now generates passive rental income every month. Honestly? Worth the wait. You can read the full story of how it finally got there here.
Then We Decided to Renovate. Because Why Not Add That to the Mix?
Here is where a chunk of our FIRE progress went for a while.
With a second baby on the way, we knew the house needed proper work before the arrival. We ended up doing a medium-sized renovation: not a full gut job like you’d see on a TV show, but enough rooms and enough contractors involved to make it a real financial project. If you’ve read my renovation post, you already know how that adventure went… 😅
The renovation is the main reason my FIRE timeline has shifted by a few years. Not the kids themselves so much as the conscious decision to invest heavily in the home we’re going to raise them in. We could have kept more money in the portfolio. We chose the house instead. No regrets, but it is a real cost and it would be silly to pretend otherwise.
FIRE With Kids: What the Numbers Actually Look Like
This is the part I want to be honest about, because I think a lot of FIRE content out there is a bit too tidy.
The timeline has moved. A few years, roughly. Some of that is the renovation, some of it is just the reality of a family that keeps growing. We are a one-main-income household in the sense that my freelance income does the heavy lifting. My wife works too and has a decent paying job, but her background is in educational sciences and that career path has not fully opened up for her here in Belgium the way she had hoped. The language barrier is real. The gap between what she studied for and what the market offered her here is real, and it adds a layer of complexity that is easy to overlook when you are just staring at spreadsheets.
The Definition Changed Too
But here is what has changed more than the timeline: what I actually mean when I say FIRE.
When I started this blog, FIRE meant stopping work as early as possible. Full stop. Now I think about it more as reaching the point where I can choose how and when I work, not whether I have to. Pursuing FIRE with kids forces you to get very honest about that distinction pretty quickly. The rental income from the apartment is a small but growing step toward passive income. The freelance setup already gives me more flexibility than a regular job ever did. The goal now feels less like a finish line and more like building a life where we have real options.
The South America Factor
I would not be giving you the full picture without mentioning this.
My wife is from South America. She built her life here in Belgium, but Belgium has not always given back equally. And moving there, at least at some point, is something we actually talk about. Not just “wouldn’t that be nice” talk. Real talk.
The cost of living comparison alone is eye-opening. A FIRE number that feels far away in Belgium looks very different in her home country. She would also have a real shot at the career she studied for. Our kids would grow up knowing that side of their family and that part of their identity. Geographic flexibility is not a nice-to-have for us. It might end up being a big part of the whole strategy. For anyone curious about how dramatically location changes the FIRE equation, this breakdown on geographic arbitrage is worth a read.
No firm plans yet. But it changes how I think about the numbers.
Where Things Stand Right Now
Two weeks into life with a newborn. Daughter turning five in a few weeks. House renovated. Apartment rented out. Still freelancing. The FIRE with kids journey is alive, just wearing slightly different clothes than it used to.
If you asked me “has having kids derailed your FIRE journey?” my honest answer would be: no, but it has definitely redirected it. The timeline shifted, the definition evolved, and the why behind it all got a lot clearer.
I did not expect any of this to go exactly to plan. It didn’t. But most of the surprises turned out to be okay.
More updates to come, hopefully without a multi-year gap this time