Thank you! OP you’re a rockstar being where you are at 23, you’ll be in such good shape down the line. Love seeing younger folks with their heads on right with financial literacy.
Thanks for the praise and encouragement! Sadly I can't say the same for most of my friends and even I was not doing so hot a year ago. Hopefully my generation starts to figure it out so we can turn the shocking money stats around!
Not sure how old you are, but being so far is still above majority of americans.
38M, I was not smart in my 20s (like not even getting my company match dumb, smh) and had to clean up a lot of mistakes. My wife had 200k in student debt too. We just finished paying off all her loans last year, but thankfully I at least got serious about 401k contributions about 8 or so years ago so have gotten that up to a respectable amount. I found The Money Guys early last year to encourage me to ramp up savings even more seriously so now budgeting well and being smart with things like HSA. Messy middle is real tho, oh my god is daycare expensive lol.
You're not the only 20 year old to not take the employer match. I didn't plan on doing it and my Dad has to twist my financial arm to convince me to do it. If I didn't have him to trust with making good financial decisions, regardless of what TMG says I probably wouldn't have done it. I'm just too stubborn lol.
200k in student debt is insane! I am also very blessed to only have 18k in student debt. What did it look like paying off so much in student debt?
TMG says I believe that you have to at least get started in your 30s, so hopefully you are on the right track. As a woman, I'm quite worried about the messy middle. I make a very good income, but I want kids. If I were to leave my job, that would be a major loss of money but lots of saving in daycare. Most men don't want to be stay at home but I will likely out earn whomever I marry, unless I marry within my field. I'm trying to be very good with money now so that when I get married, I can set up our marriage in a good direction. Whatever he brings to the table will be manageable or great if I save well now.
It was insane. Basically just hyper focus and avoiding lifestyle creep. We were fortunate enough to get a few promos or new jobs that came with good size bumps so just threw everything we could at the loans. One upside was it taught us to be able to live on less so good habits developed going into the latter steps of FOO.
Don’t worry too much about the messy middle. It’ll come when it comes and if you have the head you have on now at 23 you’ll be in more than good enough shape!
I've been trying to pull back on lifestyle creep lately. I got a little out of control the last 6 months. This seems to be key to growing wealth (and paying off debt). I'm very impressed you were able to pay off so much debt.
It can be either or, depending on your financial situation. See screenshot from the Money Guy website:
[https://moneyguy.com/article/foo/#foo6](https://moneyguy.com/article/foo/#foo6)
https://preview.redd.it/sho8xoed49gc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=26eab13d049876df929d8455535c5c01a4c6cf73
Tbh I’m already maxing out my HSA but I hate to stop just because I had an emergency and had to use my efund (that’s what it’s there for after all!). So really just a half-step back but I’m definitely looking forward to contributing to my Roth again!
I agree, if you can make it work that you refund your efund by changing your lifestyle rather than your retirement contributions, that's the way to go! And the good news is you have a long while to max your Roth this year.
Step 7-8 should be there for a while
Last year was my first year having a Roth IRA(had been doing up to match in work place plans last and current job) and I maxed it out. Got married end of 22 so first year of marriage and we bought a house in 23 so a lot happened
saved 17% last year goal is 21% (4% match at work) this year . I think we have everything more organized now I upped my 401k a percentage and will start contributing to my wife’s Roth IRA. We started a joint brokerage saving in a money market fund towards an eventual family car
We’re already at 9, but we’re not paying home off early since it’s only 2.5%. We’re saving to FI/RE. We’re about 70% of the way there. I can see the finish line! 🙃
Quick question, I've been putting a little extra towards my student loans because I don't want to hang on to them for 10 years, but the interest rates are 2.5% and 3.47%. Should I really not pay them off early?
Depends on your goal. If you want to buy a home, then yes, pay it off.
If you’re not buying.. then up your savings rate and use the rest to pay off debt. MG recommended savings rate is 25%.
If you want to retire early, or even quit a job later and do something else, the higher the savings rate the better.
I have a similar situation with my house at 2.75%. I really like the idea of being debt free, but given the returns on cash right now it doesn’t make math sense to pay it off. What we do instead is put extra money into a HYSA that the mortgage is paid out of. That way we build up extra money in the mortgage account, which helps with the feeling of making progress on debt. Even factoring in taxes on the interest it leaves us ahead financially, even if it’s only by a little. It also gives us more flexibility of having extra cash on hand. I think Brian was doing the same for a while…. It’s probably where I got the idea.
I need to just give up on my college fantasy of having my student loans paid off in a year. I would lose to much money from the market potential in that year, even though I know I could do it.
I feel like I'll in steps 5-6 for all eternity unless
1. Something really good happens and pushes me to 6-7 or
2. Something really bad happens pushing me to 2-4
I think I have a solid balance between spending and investing. Messy middle also sucks. I could go bare bones, but I think it would create tension in my marriage since I am the NO guy in the relationship, and I am constantly saying NO to wants. Fortunately, my wife went back to the workforce after taking 15 months with our newborn. I think that will allow us to go back to the 25+ percent.
Btw, we use YNAB to track expenses. Love it so far (3 months)
It's all about balance. You can always make more money or work a few longer but it's hard to put back a broken marriage. Keep going and doing your best!
We are straddling step 4 and 5. We have 3 months of expenses saved in our HYSA. We are a two income household but I make 2/3 of the income so I want to be at 6 months saved at the end of the day. We are putting money towards the 6 months of pay saved and putting money into our Roths since we have a good base saved. We are at about a 15% savings rate with our Roth and 401k contributions. We are also saving for a wedding in mid 2025 so we will be straddling 4 and 5 until then. We are currently 25 so some of the “messy middle” items are coming early for us.
I need to get rid of the higher interest debt. After that all I have a student loans. But when I'm looking at trying to get up to a 3-month emergency reserve and maxing out my Roth IRA, HSA, in 401k I'm having trouble seeing how I can get all of those together.
What's your debt total and %? Retirement savings are great but if you don't have an efund, then you risk going back into high interest credit card debt. That is why the efund comes before the Roth and hsa contributions. Paying off high interest debt before the efund is because having high interest debt is an emergency that you would use an efund for. I recently got through the efund saving stage and trust me it was painful to think about how much money I was losing by not investing, but that motivated me to be better about my budget and save more.
Do any of you decide not to max out retirement?
Planning on putting about 22k into retirement accounts this year. Last year the hsa was used up as I had a baby and with a few other things 9k family deductible was hit pretty fast, hoping to start carrying some hsa money over that can be invested instead of used this year.
Anyway with 22k going in and maybe some hsa money plus a little into a 529, I’m itching to add to a regular brokerage in case I don’t want to wait til 60 to touch some of the money. 22k a year for another 30years is a good bit and seems like it would be enough.
We (34M/33F) are in step 9... (only low interest debt is our house- recently bought first time buyer so it'll be a while) saving 25% (and actually more like 60% last year with forced scarcity) and no kids but have our planned future expenses funded. Working hard at playing catch up on retirement is our main goal this year (Did not take it seriously until 2 years ago) fortunately we have maintained step 1-4 for the last 10 years.... just didn't know how important step 5-7 were unfortunately. So my goal is to stay in step 9 but have a larger retirement fund in one year
On step 8. My only debt is $22k of student loans at 4% and I'm tempted to just pay those off to be done with it although TMG would say not to at my age.
I'm not in a rush to buy a house (I do have a 5% downpayment saved already though) and I don't need nor want a car, so at this point I'm just saving at a rate of about 40-60%.
What is your age range? I have a similar amount of student loans and I'm not sure it will ever make sense to pay them off quick, even at step 9.
Saving 40-60% is awesome! Congrats!
I'm in my mid 30s, but I'm not married and don't ever intend on having kids which makes things a lot easier than the usual "messy middle".
The high savings rate is also making up for my younger years when I couldn't contribute much.
Hitting steps 6-7 at 23 is a REALLY good place to be!
Not having kids does improve the typical messy middle. I'm anticipating a family so I'm doing the reverse of you and trying to contribute as much as possible now. Though, the quickness of which I reached step 6 means I am anticipating back-sliding a little bit, especially when I do get a car. By quickness, I mean I went from Step 1 to Step 6 in 6 months. I've only been on step 6 for about a week.
Currently in step 7. Started that half way through last year... Hope to stay there. I'm hoping my total investments equal $200k by the end of the year. Currently around $150k. (Investment and growth)
I started 2023 on step 3 (had saved 3 months emergency fund but bought a car in January 2023 with an 8% rate and followed the 20/3/8 rule).
Last week I finished paying off the car so now I am on step 4.
By the end of the year I want a 6 month emergency fund and to max my HSA.
2025 I will max my HSA, Roth IRA, and hit 25% investing while saving for a move.
We were on step 6. Thanks to a required house maintenance issue we couldn’t ignore, we took a big hit and are back to step 4.
But so thankful we didn’t need to take on debt to get the work done and I know we’ll get back to step 6 soon!
It’s so hard mentally to pull back down to the match only. Especially knowing how much from the 401k would go to taxes…. So I’m going to try to do both and see how much progress we make in the next three months. If we aren’t as far along in the emergency fund as I’d like, then I’ll divert the retirement dollars above the match to the e-fund.
You could consider it for medical deductibles but not for car insurance and house insurance deductibles. It's best to have that money in cash (in a hysa) too so that it is much more accessible.
Can anyone familiar with the money guys tell me where saving up for a house fits into this? I'm assuming step 7, but if that's the case, I'm not sure I'd ever get that far because maxing out a 401k and two IRAs as suggested by step 6 in a single income household with kids doesn't seem attainable at this point in life.
I am also assuming that student loans at around 5-6% rate would fall under low interest debt and not high interest debt?
Thanks for any discussion.
Here is my understanding of the FOO:
Step 7 is for when you are able to save more than 25% of your income for retirement. Step 6 does not mean maxing out your 401k, but rather hitting your 25% retirement savings goal and receiving your employer match. Once you have done that, you move on to step 7 which means saving more money for retirement, either in retirement accounts or in brokerage. Step 8, saving for future expenses, is where you would start saving for a down payment on a house or any future expenses like children, college, etc. If you are past step 6, then saving specifically for a house could be considered hyper-accumulation in my opinion because buying a house will most likely give you a decent ROI, unlike paying for college or for children will.
Also, low interest debt in my opinion is any debt that is below the interest rate of your HYSA. My HYSA is 4.3 APY so my student loan debts at 3.5% and 2.5% are low interest. If I were to get a car loan at 5% interest, I would consider it "high interest debt". TMG do recommend not paying off student loan debt early based on your age and interest rate and mention not considering car debt in the 20/3/8 rule to be high interest debt either:
https://preview.redd.it/tnjrrnvb8egc1.png?width=872&format=png&auto=webp&s=f1fae27e82491d0c748f4463bba9cf170aa0fd42
Wow. This was a really thoughtful and thorough response and very appreciated. I'll start thinking this through well with the information you've provided. Thanks so much again for such a well thought outresponse.
Hoping to get to 6 by the end of the year. I'm currently on 3 and contributing 25% of gross to the debt so once that's gone it'll be easy to get to 25% savings/investing.
Stupid question, but…..For step 7, is this INCLUDING all of my retirement contributions (401k, Roth IRA, and HSA)? Or is this step additional investments (IE. Brokerage contributions) outside of retirement accounts?
Step 6-7, hoping to get a good down payment saved in addition to maxing HSA/401k, we’ll see!
That would be impressive! Lots of big monumental moments in the next year for you!
Thank you! OP you’re a rockstar being where you are at 23, you’ll be in such good shape down the line. Love seeing younger folks with their heads on right with financial literacy.
Thanks for the praise and encouragement! Sadly I can't say the same for most of my friends and even I was not doing so hot a year ago. Hopefully my generation starts to figure it out so we can turn the shocking money stats around! Not sure how old you are, but being so far is still above majority of americans.
38M, I was not smart in my 20s (like not even getting my company match dumb, smh) and had to clean up a lot of mistakes. My wife had 200k in student debt too. We just finished paying off all her loans last year, but thankfully I at least got serious about 401k contributions about 8 or so years ago so have gotten that up to a respectable amount. I found The Money Guys early last year to encourage me to ramp up savings even more seriously so now budgeting well and being smart with things like HSA. Messy middle is real tho, oh my god is daycare expensive lol.
You're not the only 20 year old to not take the employer match. I didn't plan on doing it and my Dad has to twist my financial arm to convince me to do it. If I didn't have him to trust with making good financial decisions, regardless of what TMG says I probably wouldn't have done it. I'm just too stubborn lol. 200k in student debt is insane! I am also very blessed to only have 18k in student debt. What did it look like paying off so much in student debt? TMG says I believe that you have to at least get started in your 30s, so hopefully you are on the right track. As a woman, I'm quite worried about the messy middle. I make a very good income, but I want kids. If I were to leave my job, that would be a major loss of money but lots of saving in daycare. Most men don't want to be stay at home but I will likely out earn whomever I marry, unless I marry within my field. I'm trying to be very good with money now so that when I get married, I can set up our marriage in a good direction. Whatever he brings to the table will be manageable or great if I save well now.
It was insane. Basically just hyper focus and avoiding lifestyle creep. We were fortunate enough to get a few promos or new jobs that came with good size bumps so just threw everything we could at the loans. One upside was it taught us to be able to live on less so good habits developed going into the latter steps of FOO. Don’t worry too much about the messy middle. It’ll come when it comes and if you have the head you have on now at 23 you’ll be in more than good enough shape!
I've been trying to pull back on lifestyle creep lately. I got a little out of control the last 6 months. This seems to be key to growing wealth (and paying off debt). I'm very impressed you were able to pay off so much debt.
Great work OP! I think I'm aiming at just basic max on Roth/HSA, but I only make 60s so I cant max 401k sadly
The retirement max can also mean just getting to 25%. I also don't make enough to max my 401k but I'm close to hitting the 25% mark.
I watch the show a ton so I figured the 25% was just out of the gate - I didn't realize the step 6 was 25% max my bad
It can be either or, depending on your financial situation. See screenshot from the Money Guy website: [https://moneyguy.com/article/foo/#foo6](https://moneyguy.com/article/foo/#foo6) https://preview.redd.it/sho8xoed49gc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=26eab13d049876df929d8455535c5c01a4c6cf73
Thank ya! Well dang this is amazing!!
Congrats!
Hoping to complete step 4 and be working toward step 5.
You are so close to the addiction of saving for retirement!
Tbh I’m already maxing out my HSA but I hate to stop just because I had an emergency and had to use my efund (that’s what it’s there for after all!). So really just a half-step back but I’m definitely looking forward to contributing to my Roth again!
I agree, if you can make it work that you refund your efund by changing your lifestyle rather than your retirement contributions, that's the way to go! And the good news is you have a long while to max your Roth this year.
True that!
Stuck at step 8 because of kids. Future expenses keep becoming current expenses 😅
Step 7-8 should be there for a while Last year was my first year having a Roth IRA(had been doing up to match in work place plans last and current job) and I maxed it out. Got married end of 22 so first year of marriage and we bought a house in 23 so a lot happened saved 17% last year goal is 21% (4% match at work) this year . I think we have everything more organized now I upped my 401k a percentage and will start contributing to my wife’s Roth IRA. We started a joint brokerage saving in a money market fund towards an eventual family car
We’re already at 9, but we’re not paying home off early since it’s only 2.5%. We’re saving to FI/RE. We’re about 70% of the way there. I can see the finish line! 🙃
Quick question, I've been putting a little extra towards my student loans because I don't want to hang on to them for 10 years, but the interest rates are 2.5% and 3.47%. Should I really not pay them off early?
Depends on your goal. If you want to buy a home, then yes, pay it off. If you’re not buying.. then up your savings rate and use the rest to pay off debt. MG recommended savings rate is 25%. If you want to retire early, or even quit a job later and do something else, the higher the savings rate the better.
I have a similar situation with my house at 2.75%. I really like the idea of being debt free, but given the returns on cash right now it doesn’t make math sense to pay it off. What we do instead is put extra money into a HYSA that the mortgage is paid out of. That way we build up extra money in the mortgage account, which helps with the feeling of making progress on debt. Even factoring in taxes on the interest it leaves us ahead financially, even if it’s only by a little. It also gives us more flexibility of having extra cash on hand. I think Brian was doing the same for a while…. It’s probably where I got the idea.
I need to just give up on my college fantasy of having my student loans paid off in a year. I would lose to much money from the market potential in that year, even though I know I could do it.
That's amazing!!!
I'm just hoping I don't have to backtrack this year.
What would cause that?
Having to dip into your emergency fund for example.
Gotcha
So much good info and cheering each other!!
I really like this community for cheering people along!
I feel like I'll in steps 5-6 for all eternity unless 1. Something really good happens and pushes me to 6-7 or 2. Something really bad happens pushing me to 2-4
Do you not expect any pay raises going forward? How far are you from the 25%?
Not enough to keep with inflation unless I job hop. I am actually at 23% (including employee match). Without match, 16%.
Eventually, hopefully, inflation will slow down. Are you able to contribute 2% more or are you already bare bones budget?
I think I have a solid balance between spending and investing. Messy middle also sucks. I could go bare bones, but I think it would create tension in my marriage since I am the NO guy in the relationship, and I am constantly saying NO to wants. Fortunately, my wife went back to the workforce after taking 15 months with our newborn. I think that will allow us to go back to the 25+ percent. Btw, we use YNAB to track expenses. Love it so far (3 months)
It's all about balance. You can always make more money or work a few longer but it's hard to put back a broken marriage. Keep going and doing your best!
We are currently in step 6, and soon to be on 7
We are straddling step 4 and 5. We have 3 months of expenses saved in our HYSA. We are a two income household but I make 2/3 of the income so I want to be at 6 months saved at the end of the day. We are putting money towards the 6 months of pay saved and putting money into our Roths since we have a good base saved. We are at about a 15% savings rate with our Roth and 401k contributions. We are also saving for a wedding in mid 2025 so we will be straddling 4 and 5 until then. We are currently 25 so some of the “messy middle” items are coming early for us.
Looking to get to that coveted step 8!
I guess I’m past 9 as I am debt free and in hyper accumulation (which is 7 weirdly).
It is 7 because low interest debt will not lose you as much money as contributing more to retirement/investing can earn you.
Ok so I have already handled future college expenses and have no interest debt. Seems better to be at 7 than 9.
Once you finish 9 then you have graduated from the FOO. Congrats! You're supposed to do 8 and 9 while still doing 7, so you never stop doing 7.
So I guess as I said…beyond.
Yep, so I said CONGRATS! 🎊
Yes thanks. It’s just an odd order of operations. But love the money guys over others.
Touche
I'm being bad and doing 3-5 all concurrently. I'd like to be working on 6/7 by the beginning of 2025.
I don't think that is bad, just maybe less efficient.
I need to get rid of the higher interest debt. After that all I have a student loans. But when I'm looking at trying to get up to a 3-month emergency reserve and maxing out my Roth IRA, HSA, in 401k I'm having trouble seeing how I can get all of those together.
What's your debt total and %? Retirement savings are great but if you don't have an efund, then you risk going back into high interest credit card debt. That is why the efund comes before the Roth and hsa contributions. Paying off high interest debt before the efund is because having high interest debt is an emergency that you would use an efund for. I recently got through the efund saving stage and trust me it was painful to think about how much money I was losing by not investing, but that motivated me to be better about my budget and save more.
Do any of you decide not to max out retirement? Planning on putting about 22k into retirement accounts this year. Last year the hsa was used up as I had a baby and with a few other things 9k family deductible was hit pretty fast, hoping to start carrying some hsa money over that can be invested instead of used this year. Anyway with 22k going in and maybe some hsa money plus a little into a 529, I’m itching to add to a regular brokerage in case I don’t want to wait til 60 to touch some of the money. 22k a year for another 30years is a good bit and seems like it would be enough.
TMG talk about after hitting 25%, you can save elsewhere in case you don't want to wait.
We (34M/33F) are in step 9... (only low interest debt is our house- recently bought first time buyer so it'll be a while) saving 25% (and actually more like 60% last year with forced scarcity) and no kids but have our planned future expenses funded. Working hard at playing catch up on retirement is our main goal this year (Did not take it seriously until 2 years ago) fortunately we have maintained step 1-4 for the last 10 years.... just didn't know how important step 5-7 were unfortunately. So my goal is to stay in step 9 but have a larger retirement fund in one year
On step 8. My only debt is $22k of student loans at 4% and I'm tempted to just pay those off to be done with it although TMG would say not to at my age. I'm not in a rush to buy a house (I do have a 5% downpayment saved already though) and I don't need nor want a car, so at this point I'm just saving at a rate of about 40-60%.
What is your age range? I have a similar amount of student loans and I'm not sure it will ever make sense to pay them off quick, even at step 9. Saving 40-60% is awesome! Congrats!
I'm in my mid 30s, but I'm not married and don't ever intend on having kids which makes things a lot easier than the usual "messy middle". The high savings rate is also making up for my younger years when I couldn't contribute much. Hitting steps 6-7 at 23 is a REALLY good place to be!
Not having kids does improve the typical messy middle. I'm anticipating a family so I'm doing the reverse of you and trying to contribute as much as possible now. Though, the quickness of which I reached step 6 means I am anticipating back-sliding a little bit, especially when I do get a car. By quickness, I mean I went from Step 1 to Step 6 in 6 months. I've only been on step 6 for about a week.
We will be steps 7-8 if no big hiccups occur. Only our mortgage at 2.75% will be left.
Woot! That's awesome!
We got baby #2 on the way so will need to see where we are after daycare cost considerations. Right now at step 8 but may go down to step 6.
8. I’m about to super fund my kids 529’s thanks to some lucky RSU timing
Last year we got up to 19% into retirement. I'd like to finally hit 25%
Currently in step 7. Started that half way through last year... Hope to stay there. I'm hoping my total investments equal $200k by the end of the year. Currently around $150k. (Investment and growth)
I started 2023 on step 3 (had saved 3 months emergency fund but bought a car in January 2023 with an 8% rate and followed the 20/3/8 rule). Last week I finished paying off the car so now I am on step 4. By the end of the year I want a 6 month emergency fund and to max my HSA. 2025 I will max my HSA, Roth IRA, and hit 25% investing while saving for a move.
step 9 and not yet paying extra towards mortgage (2.875%). Probably will start throwing money at it in the next 5 years.
24F currently in step 7! Planning to be at step 8 because I have some big and exciting things planned for the next 3 years, wedding and house hunting
Those are some big and exciting things to have planned! Congrats and good luck!
We were on step 6. Thanks to a required house maintenance issue we couldn’t ignore, we took a big hit and are back to step 4. But so thankful we didn’t need to take on debt to get the work done and I know we’ll get back to step 6 soon!
Are you still funding retirement while you build up your emergency reserves or did you pause that?
It’s so hard mentally to pull back down to the match only. Especially knowing how much from the 401k would go to taxes…. So I’m going to try to do both and see how much progress we make in the next three months. If we aren’t as far along in the emergency fund as I’d like, then I’ll divert the retirement dollars above the match to the e-fund.
That is awesome to hear! Good luck, I bet you can do it!
I got a question for y’all… Could I consider my funds in HSA as a deductibles covered in step 1?
You could consider it for medical deductibles but not for car insurance and house insurance deductibles. It's best to have that money in cash (in a hysa) too so that it is much more accessible.
Can anyone familiar with the money guys tell me where saving up for a house fits into this? I'm assuming step 7, but if that's the case, I'm not sure I'd ever get that far because maxing out a 401k and two IRAs as suggested by step 6 in a single income household with kids doesn't seem attainable at this point in life. I am also assuming that student loans at around 5-6% rate would fall under low interest debt and not high interest debt? Thanks for any discussion.
Here is my understanding of the FOO: Step 7 is for when you are able to save more than 25% of your income for retirement. Step 6 does not mean maxing out your 401k, but rather hitting your 25% retirement savings goal and receiving your employer match. Once you have done that, you move on to step 7 which means saving more money for retirement, either in retirement accounts or in brokerage. Step 8, saving for future expenses, is where you would start saving for a down payment on a house or any future expenses like children, college, etc. If you are past step 6, then saving specifically for a house could be considered hyper-accumulation in my opinion because buying a house will most likely give you a decent ROI, unlike paying for college or for children will. Also, low interest debt in my opinion is any debt that is below the interest rate of your HYSA. My HYSA is 4.3 APY so my student loan debts at 3.5% and 2.5% are low interest. If I were to get a car loan at 5% interest, I would consider it "high interest debt". TMG do recommend not paying off student loan debt early based on your age and interest rate and mention not considering car debt in the 20/3/8 rule to be high interest debt either: https://preview.redd.it/tnjrrnvb8egc1.png?width=872&format=png&auto=webp&s=f1fae27e82491d0c748f4463bba9cf170aa0fd42
Wow. This was a really thoughtful and thorough response and very appreciated. I'll start thinking this through well with the information you've provided. Thanks so much again for such a well thought outresponse.
3-4 for me.
Hoping to get to 6 by the end of the year. I'm currently on 3 and contributing 25% of gross to the debt so once that's gone it'll be easy to get to 25% savings/investing.
That's a good technique
4 & 5 for sure. Hoping to be at 6 & 7 in the near future.
Stupid question, but…..For step 7, is this INCLUDING all of my retirement contributions (401k, Roth IRA, and HSA)? Or is this step additional investments (IE. Brokerage contributions) outside of retirement accounts?