thanks marg, you opened up a few dimensions in my mind.
even if i go to a financial advisor, i know typical phrase they would say ‘it all depends on what you actually want to do’ .
really appreciate the time you have taken to reply to my posts.

ok, for my wife to juggle with work, i don’t think it is worth the penny to have my child sent to childcare or someone minding him, at best the mother & child bond is the best to have. i would not sacrifice anything for that, many people would prefer otherwise, but i am a strong believer in this. while other relatives are not handy too to be able to look after our child, so we donot have this option.

my valuation which i put up on this post, has been more than conservative. in reality, i hv checked around & sold market prices very ecently for the same unit, after selling all, i could still pocket $155K, then minus $25K for all commissions, left with $130k (which comprise of all my initial deposits, etc, etc, so not all profit).

you are right, not many people have $100K for emergency,
however when we think about it, $10K is not really enough for emergencies, yes we do have private health insurance, however all the what-ifs can just be coming along. not coming from a negative side here, but emergency is really ’emergency’, so having 10x$10K makes a lot of sense. of course, this could be sitting in a bank deposit at call, earning interest, but that is the idea of emergency cash. when my dad got health problem, i did not have much $ on my hand. lots have been learnt from this, my money all tied up in property, and i , as the only son, could not do much about it, not having enough emergency cash (i had only $15K), well, this could be that emergency cash level needed is different from person to person.

then i was thinking to keep $110K for emergency fund, and use $20K to continue trade options in the US market.

that is all my plan. you are right, i still have a lot of years in front of me, however my focus is to retire early & start ‘living’ with my family.
i hv started investing quite late, i was 24 y.o at that time. hv certainly learnt alot from this venture.

however, if i ended up selling up, i could be regretting this decision, when the market picks up again. you could see that all of my properties are negatively geared, if i sell up, and if i enter the property market again, i would certainly go for positive cashflow property, pay a buyer agent if have to. basically starting again with a clean slate.

any comments ?

to shake-the-disease, thanks
how did you come up with $100k per year growth ?

also to terry, i cannot just sell one, as you can see the properties are cross-collaterilised to each other, if i sell one i have to come up with the shortfall on the other property to make LVR stay at 80%, and i don’t have that much money to cover that. so either sell everything or don’t sell at all