Are We Crazy? Chasing Financial Independence on the Road With Two Kids

From the outside, our life looks like something we should love and fight to protect.

A six-figure job. A house. Two healthy kids. Stability.

And yet, almost every night, the Co-Pilot and I end up asking each other the same uncomfortable question:

Are we crazy for wanting something different when we already have what we’re supposed to be grateful for?

The four of us – me (the Pilot), the Co-Pilot, Lil Spark (two years old), and Baby Spark (two months old) – have come to a conclusion that feels both terrifying and relieving to say out loud: we’re willing to give up a life that looks good on the outside in search of one that feels good on the inside.

Over the past year, we took a hard look at everything. Our finances. Our career choices. How we actually spend our time, and how we want to show up as parents. What started as “how do we save a little more?” turned fast into a bigger question: are we living the life we want, or just maintaining one we’re afraid to disrupt?

That question led us somewhere we didn’t expect. We’re planning to sell our house and go full-time in a Class A motorhome.

The Co-Pilot will work as a traveling nurse – her contracts will shape where we go and how long we stay. I’m working toward a remote role while building some side projects that trade golden handcuffs for flexibility. The goal isn’t escape. It’s presence. We want to spend these short, unrepeatable years with our kids actually living alongside them, not squeezing family life into the margins after work.

Who this blog is for

This is for anyone caught between gratitude and ambition.

If you’re doing fine on paper but still anxious about money – you’re here. If you want more time with your kids without burning your financial future – you’re here. If you found the FIRE movement and quickly realized it’s a lot messier when real life gets involved – definitely here.

We’re documenting this honestly, as it happens. Not the polished version. The actual one.

What Rolling With Fire is – and isn’t

This won’t be a highlight reel.

We’ll share what’s working, what’s failing, and what we wish we’d figured out sooner. Some decisions will look smart in hindsight. Others won’t. That’s the whole point.

This isn’t financial advice. It’s a real family making unconventional choices in real time, with real kids and a real mortgage we’re trying to offload.

Over the next few posts, we’ll dig into our finances, break down the actual numbers behind this decision, and talk through the fears we haven’t solved yet – and the tradeoffs we’re still wrestling with.

Maybe this works. Maybe it doesn’t.

But we’d rather find out deliberately than stay comfortable and quietly dissatisfied. The journey is changing. Come along.

Keep reading: The Big Stay: Why the Job Market Changes Your FIRE Math | Full-Time RV Living: Real Costs for a Family | The Changing Retirement Age and What It Means for FIRE Families

Common Questions

Is it worth giving up a comfortable life for financial independence?

That depends on what comfortable means to you. We have a six-figure income, a house, and two healthy kids. We also have a mortgage, two car payments, and the feeling that we are building someone else dream on autopilot. Financial independence is not about escaping a bad life. It is about designing a deliberate one.

How do you plan FIRE with young kids?

Kids add cost and they add urgency. Daycare alone can run $2,000 to $3,000 per month. At the same time, the years when your kids are young are exactly the years you want your time back. We are planning around both realities: cutting housing costs through RV life while the Co-Pilot shifts to higher-paying travel nursing contracts.