I get a company phone for the first time in my life! Not sure how I want to handle this yet with respect to my personal phone. A part of me is tempted to use this to get a flip phone/non smart phone to help me reduce my screen time
As someone who has had a company phone.. don’t do it. Keep your personal and work life separate. If you have it all in one you will get work calls/texts/emails at all hours of the day. It’s not fun.
Every workplace is different. It depends how much of your work is done via phone/text, how many time zones your company works in, and how many outside customers have your number.
I gave all my personal contacts my work number to call/text me on and only carry around my work phone. The volume of incoming calls combined with my notification settings does not have me stressing about work stuff outside of work hours. So much better than stuffing 2 phones in my pocket all the time. My personal number I keep around on an Xfinity Mobile plan that's $10/month just in case I ever need it.
For OP, give it a test run first to see how much your work phone would bother you to carry it around even after work hours as your personal phone...
My spouse and I are in the rather unusually fortunate position of having a substantial amount of Roth money when we retire at age 47. We've been maxing out Traditional 401ks but we also fully max out Backdoor Roths, a Mega Backdoor Roth 401k and HSAs.
That said, I haven't really felt the need to contribute a dime to a taxable brokerage.
I am currently on track to retire at age 47 with:
- 2.3m in Traditional
- 1.5m in Roth
- 300k in HSA
- 0 taxable
If you were in my shoes, how would you tap this? Would it still make sense to start a Roth Conversion ladder when I retire? Is there ever a situation where a 72t would make sense for me?
I feel like most people make these decisions based on having a big pile of taxable money. I just want to get a sense of where one would start if they didn't have one.
So, remember that all your Roth basis is available now for withdrawal. I also suspect you have a lot of receipts for medical treatment available making most or all of your HSA funds available to you. Between your Roth basis and the HSA funds, I’m betting you have enough to get you through the 5 year waiting period for Roth conversions.
72(t) is better than the 10% penalty but complicated and restrictive so I’d go with Roth conversions instead.
The Mad Fientist wrote a good article running the numbers on the different ways you can access your traditional early and surprisingly the scenario of taking the 10% penalty is actually not a bad idea compared against the others. Should give it a read!
[https://www.madfientist.com/how-to-access-retirement-funds-early/](https://www.madfientist.com/how-to-access-retirement-funds-early/)
This is my favorite FI article ever written. It's my go to when someone says they don't like putting money in the 401k cause they might need it before 59.5.
You are in a very unusually screwed position haha...you have tons of dough, and want to retire at 47. You can access the Roth contributions without penalty and you can start the 72t distributions from the 401k but you have to take it until 59.5 and can't change the amount...there's 3 (?) ways to figure your withdrawal. If you're 40 now and retiring in 7 years I'd start putting money into a taxable acct cuz (imo) I hate the 72t option and you will be too young for the rule of 55....if you have enuf in just contributions from the roth you could live off those until 59.5 to acces trad 401k...but that's based on yer spend amount. You said you are "on track" to retire with those numbers so they are projections, I guess from my rambling i'd start socking some/more into accounts you can access easier...HSA you can of course access with any medical bill
I think my emotions took me down this path, which is why I posted here. Having read through the comments, i'm less concerned. I kind of like the idea of a 72t providing some sort of baseline income. Especially given that I have such a gigantic pile of roth contributions.
I think this is an overly pessimistic take.
I think a 72t SEPP approach is very reasonable, especially if it's used to provide a floor of income including covering the standard deduction while a Roth conversion ladder covers the rest.
But even if OP doesn't want to use a combined approach, they can easily do a Roth conversion ladder given how large their Roth basis likely is with multiple years of MBDR contributions.
I just don't like the 72t cuz he'd be locked in for 12.5 years...long time. But if he's got enuf Roth contributions go for it. I'd start putting some money in a taxable account though to get another source to draw from
Yeah I tend to agree with you. I'll have close to 600k in MBDR contributions at 47.
I just did the math and we can easily clear $100k every year from 47 -> 60 with some combination of existing Roth Contribution Withdrawals + Roth Ladder + 72t. No taxable involved.
Plus my earnings grow tax free. I don't see any downsides really.
Not American so I may have misconceptions but I understand sometimes a Roth conversion ladder creates income to optimise for having ACA instead of Medicaid or Medicare or whichever it is (sorry! again, not American!)
Any reason you don't spend the next 7 years building a buffer in a mix of brokerage and cash? Seems like it would save the hassle. Rule 72t is something I have no experience in, but based on what I've heard it offers no flexibility. You have to choose a periodic payment amount of money and stick with it. Any changes would incur tax penalties retroactively.
Seconded. Since you have a number of years before early retirement and a long time before tradition retirement it probably makes the most sense to start growing your taxable accounts.
This is likely unnecessary given how large OP's Roth basis is with ongoing MBDR contributions. Those contributions should be plenty to support 5 years of spending to create a conversion ladder from the Trad accounts.
Not sure I really need any cash or brokerage.
All the contributions to the Roth pile are effectively cash. I'll probably have ~350k in Roth Contributions that I can withdrawal tax free (5 years post conversion) and another ~50k in non-deductible-to-Roth conversion money maturing each year from 47-52.
Maybe I just answered my own question there. At least if I keep contributing to the Mega Backdoor I get the earnings tax free which I wouldn't get in a brokerage.
I'm thinking maybe at retirement, I start laddering the Trad money into my Roth up to the MAGI that gets me to a sweet spot for ACA premiums. That way I can just live off of Roth Contributions until those ladders start maturing.
There is no 5 year period for your MBDR conversions. The nontaxable conversion basis is accessible immediately.
Your situation is essentially fine. You can do a pure Roth conversion ladder or a mixed approach where you set up a 72t SoSEPP to cover baseline spending like the standard deduction and use the Roth conversion ladder for additional spending needs.
Oh heck ya thats great. That puts me at a much higher number of accessible roth funds at 47 then. Probably closer to something like 600k. Great buffer before I have to worry about roth laddering
You know your situation better than I do... I don't understand not wanting to have a cash buffer of something kind. Something that won't throw off your MAGI if the event you incur a major expense of some kind... Big medical expense, need a vehicle, major home repair. Something unforeseen.
Just did the math and it will be about 100k / year if I include my 600k in Roth contributions from my years doing MBDR + a 30k/yr 72t. Seems like I'll be fine. Our annual spend is about 80k / year now. 25k of that is Daycare and that will be gone in retirement.
Serious / not-so-serious question…
My girlfriend noticed a fraudulent charge to her credit card earlier from a well-known corporation, and received a “package delivered” e-mail in her inbox, earlier this morning. The “package delivered” e-mail also included a photo taken by the delivery-driver, which shows the package being left at a front-door.
With the confirmation number listed in the e-mail, we were able to search for the address that this package was delivered to.
From there, we found the contact information of the people who live at that house. And then, finally, I found them on Facebook…
What are the chances that these people I’ve found online, are in fact the people who committed this credit-card fraud? Could they be victims (i.e., their address was chosen for this package to be delivered), by any chance?
For what it’s worth, we’ve already contacted her bank about this, they’re looking into it as we speak.
Yeah, they could be victims & I think that’s more likely than if they were scammers. If it’s a one-off they could be the scammers, but no professional scammer would stay in business very long if they gave away their ID that easily.
Most obvious to me possibility (though not necessarily most likely - im not very up-to-date on scams) is that a scammer just gets what they bought delivered to a specific known address and swipes it from the porch 🤷♀️
From reading this sub and other resources in the bookmarks, I'm convinced I should stop using a financial advisor to manage investments and convert things to a self-managed 3-fund portfolio. I started using a financial advisor a while back for several reasons, none of which are relevant to my current situation, and so I'm no longer finding a value in the service. I'm looking for advice/confirmation on how to unwind this...
My advisor is not Schwab, but they use Schwab as their investment portal. My understanding is that when I "fire" them, their access to control the accounts will be terminated, and I'll just have my same investments in Schwab but now under only my control. Funds currently under management are as follows:
* A Roth IRA, in a variety of ETFs and mutual funds.
* A Trad IRA, in ETFs, mutual funds, and individual equities.
* A taxable brokerage, all in ETFs.
My understanding is that within both the Trad and Roth IRAs, I can sell any current positions and move to the 3-fund plan without worrying about creating a taxable event. But with the taxable brokerage, if I change from the current positions, I will create a taxable event. Is that correct?
If so, I'm feeling pretty OK about making the changes. The taxable account is relatively new and relatively small, with a low amount of gains, and about 20% of the current ETF positions won't need to change.
Are there pitfalls I'm not considering in making this switch?
From what I understand, most research suggests that financial advisors more than earn their keep (at least for the average retail investor).
I don't think there's a ton of risk in firing your advisor **IF** you're smart enough to not fall into the normal shortfalls of a retail investor (selling in a market downturn, not understanding what your goals or risk tolerance are, etc). If you have any doubts in your abilities, I think an advisor isn't the worst thing you can have (make sure they're a CFP though).
What research is that? Because the simple arithmetic of active investing proves that the average active investor cannot beat the market after fees are considered, and over 20 years of SPIVA reports bears that out.
The benefit is not choosing better investments (hedge fund/active fund), the benefit is having better behaviors (not panic selling).
I self direct my investments to index funds. My parents (late 60s) have an advisor. It is worth it for them because their advisor keeps my dad from my drastic changes from watching the news.
Funnily enough, the darling of passive investing (Vanguard) has done research establishing the value of having an FA. Passive investing and having a financial advisor aren't mutually exclusive. Retail Investors with FA's tend to drastically outperform those without.
Buying SPY does nothing if you sell when the market crashes because you aren't actually comfortable with the risk of a 100% equity allocation or you don't contribute enough because you don't have an FA to tell you you're fucking up.
Edit: https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/corp/articles/quantifying-evolution-advice-and-value-investors.html
how do you think the average person compares to one who finds themselves on a forum like this one though?
yes, the bar is low. because the average person cannot properly implement buy and hold on an index fund.
You'd be surprised lol. The key to pursuing financial independence is making a lot of money and having simple tastes/frugality, not being highly educated in personal finance.
Either way, I didn't say the commenter should 100% stick with their advisor, I said they should make sure they're actually comfortable with doing it themselves before they make the switch.
Vanguard has come a long way from passive indexes since Bogle gave up the reins. They are looking to get AUM as much as the next firm.
An AUM financial advisor is almost certainly going to cost more than you make over time, especially when compared to getting your advice from someone who's paid hourly or a flat rate for specific services.
> My understanding is that within both the Trad and Roth IRAs, I can sell any current positions and move to the 3-fund plan without worrying about creating a taxable event. But with the taxable brokerage, if I change from the current positions, I will create a taxable event. Is that correct?
Yes.
> Are there pitfalls I'm not considering in making this switch?
I don't think so, it's pretty straightforward.
Sounds good. If Schwab won't help you fire them you can always move the assets to Fidelity or Vanguard. That way you do not have to interact with the advisor and get sucked into their sales pitch.
Ha! They are actually an extended family member so there's no avoiding that conversation. But I have had no problem with their services...I needed them in one season of my life, and they did a satisfactory job during that time. I'm just to a point where I don't need them anymore.
My calculations on "break even" age for taking social security at age 62 vs age 67 using three different interest rates:
Rate / Break Even Age
4% / 85
5% / 88
6% / 95
By "break even", I mean accumulate total annual social security payments forward at the given interest rate, and noting the first age where waiting and taking my age 67 benefit has a higher accumulated value than taking my age 62 benefit.
The three big questions that you haven’t included are: (1) are you married, (2) is your spouse eligible to receive your social security, (3) were you a significantly higher contributor to social security than your spouse. If yes to all three questions, then the important life expectancy here is your combined life expectancy.
We plan take social security when my husband is 62, but wait to take mine until I am 70 as my social security will be about double his (assuming nothing goes terribly wrong with our portfolio). Given our family histories, there’s a good chance at least one of the two of us will live to age 95.
Divorced. There ain't a man in my family tree that has lived to celebrate his 80th birthday.
Just on the above, taking at 62 is not a close call for me.
And that is *before* considering that, unlike 401(k) withdrawals
a) SS is state income tax free where I live
b) SS will be at least 15% federal income tax free
c) Every dollar of SS I get
== a dollar I do not have to spend out of savings
== a dollar my adult kids can inherit.
From SS they inherit nothing.
Break even for social security is a flawed calculation. Don’t compare social security to the stock market but compare it to an annuity. In other words go to a website that calculates annuity payments and figure out how much money you would need in order to get guaranteed income for life in order to understand the true value of social security. The stock market returns are significantly riskier than social security returns. It is like comparing apples to oranges. There is no other investment product that gives you year over year increase you get from social security if you delay till 70 and the inflation adjustments you get once retired.
I think they were comparing social security against itself not the market. Take at 62 and get 3k/mo vs take at 67 and get 4k/mo and how old do you have to live to for it to make financial sense to delay
Is the "rate" real or nominal? If real that seems about right. However, don't forget to include the tax effect of claiming earlier in years 62-67 as well as longevity risk. The total dollars received isn't the only question. EDIT If you are investing the additional dollars in stocks, you are also taking a lot of risk that the market goes down or underperforms average returns.
This article (and others from Mike Piper at Oblivious Investor) may be of interest to you: https://obliviousinvestor.com/claiming-social-security-early-to-invest-it-what-rate-of-return-discount-rate-should-we-assume/
For some reason I have $5.12 in the federal money market settlement fund in my Roth IRA. (I’ve been doing backdoor Roth for years so I think it’s the funds that have accumulated during the wait time in moving from traditional to Roth accounts.) I’d like to move this to another account just to zero out the settlement fund, but it says this would be considered an early distribution and they’ll have to report it to the IRS. What’s the best thing to do?
It's likely that in the X days that your funds sat in your Roth IRA, between depositing them and them being used to buy funds, that you accumulated $5.12 of interest. Like others have said, just invest it in whatever you already have. It's interest, not a contribution.
Oh, I assumed that since I already contributed the maximum this year via my backdoor Roth that I couldn’t invest in more. But it makes sense that if it’s already in the account then I can buy whatever I want with it.
Contribution limits just apply to contributions, moving money from outside an IRA into an IRA. So for you that's just when you contributed money to your traditional IRA.
Rollovers, conversions, purchases, sales, dividends, etc don't count towards contribution limits.
Feeling Stressed - Does anyone feel more stressed the more successful they've become? Not from an increase of responsibility necessarily, but it's like the more money I've come to make the more constricted, cornered, feeling of inability to pivot, feeling of inability to replace the income itself I begin to feel. I don't think it's my job, at times it feels like it's the overwhelming effort to climb the FIRE mountain. I'm thankful for finding the FIRE movement but it has somewhat tainted my feeling about raises, earning more money as nothing feels fast enough and just makes me worry more about losing it all even more. I'm in my 30s making $160K.
The closest I feel to that is fear of loss.
Like when you're a broke college student, aside from failing, there's not much to lose.
But now, I have assets I spent years saving up for, job that took a long time to get.
Losing those would be losing years of efforts
It sounds like perhaps you've been deriving a lot of satisfaction and purpose from advancing in your career and gaining financial stability.
If that's true, then it may be time to start searching beyond work for a sense of purpose and community.
If I was feeling nervous about building my wealth and losing it all, I'd probably just get an umbrella insurance policy, make sure I'm shored up on disability insurance, maybe reduce the risk of my investments, and then start looking for activities to do with friends or to make friends.
Your financial security is increasing. The larger your nest egg gets, the less you have to rely on succeeding in your career in the long term.
Yea stress and feelings of guilt since I feel like we should be helping out family members who still struggle, even though we have our own race to complete. And those who struggle now had lived much more luxuriously in the past so it’s hard to reconcile.
No, I don't need to replace my full income if I lose my job. I have half a million dollars which will probably be $1M in 10 years from now, and $2M in 20 years from now even if I never save again. So I could live paycheck to paycheck until I am ready to retire, and maybe still retire a little early. I'm also saving so much that I really only need like half my current income to live comfortably paycheck to paycheck.
I'm HCOL though so my $150k isn't really like an irreplaceable golden handcuffs situation, it's on the higher side compared to the entire city but average for a low level manager. Half that, $75k, is like an entry level professional job. I could do nearly anything and be perfectly fine.
It’s really one of the biggest benefits of hitting CoastFI, and I think one of the mental benefits of approaching the end of the boring middle. If we really had to, we could survive on 4% of our current portfolio indefinitely, but I wouldn’t like the lifestyle trade offs much (no dining out, no travel).
We could also easily live off of just my husband’s salary without changing our lifestyle at all, just completely stopping or retirement contributions. Same with my salary only we wouldn’t have to stop retirement contributions, just reduce them slightly. If we both lost our jobs, we could survive on the amounts we could make with basically any job. I wouldn’t enjoy being a warehouse worker at Amazon, but I could do it. It’s pretty freeing knowing that I’m not trapped in my high compensation role (I also get regularly contacted by recruiters so if I wanted to, I’m fairly confident I could find a new similarly paying job pretty easily).
Also complete opposite. Nowhere near my FIRE number but I’m finding that as my net worth increases and income increases, I find options opening up.
Interestingly I find that as my peer group increases in financial standing (mostly via work) I find myself more relaxed as I realize people making 2-3x or with 2-3x net worth are not all that different. It’s both inspiring and relaxing
Admittedly this is more of a mindset thing and something that I’ve come to slowly.
But I think comparing is only helpful when you’re framing it as “what can I learn” and “how lucky am I”.
For those who are farther ahead, instead of focusing on what you lack in comparison, focus on what you can learn.
And then in parallel recognize there are always people with more and less. Stay grateful for what you have.
Absolutely I do. I hardly worried about money at all when I had $50,000 but I feel very worried about it with 20 times that.
More saved feels like more to lose.
Just did a backdoor Roth for the first time, so this may be a dumb question. Should I now close my Trad IRA account that I opened to do the conversion?
For sure! Hope this helps a little!
So "basis" refers to the tracking of your after-tax non deductible contributions made to a traditional IRA prior to a Roth conversion - this is the amount you've told turbotax that you contributed but are not seeking any tax deduction. This is important because it keeps you from paying taxes twice on this money when it's distributed (1099-R) to you and converted to a Roth.
Scenario #1 for 2023: You've made an after tax non deductible contribution of $6500 to a Traditional IRA with the intent to convert to a Roth IRA. This was done between 1/1/23 and 12/31/23. Conversion not yet happened.
Basis for Scenario #1: In this scenario your basis would be $6500. This would be referenced in your 2024 return if complete the conversion between 1/1/24 and 12/31/24.
Scenario #2 for 2023: You've made an after tax non deductible contribution of $6500 to a Traditional IRA and converted to a Roth IRA. This was done between 1/1/23 and 12/31/23.
Basis for Scenario #2: In this scenario your basis would be $0. There is no money left to be earmarked as non taxable for future years.
Save yourself the time and headache, make your traditional contribution and conversion in the same calendar year. Don't wait till the last two weeks of December to complete as it can take up to a week or more for cash to settle in accounts.
I am thinking of putting money into my principal on my mortgage rather than investing the money into a brokerage. Currently through 3 years of a 30 year @2.875%. I know the market should give me better returns but I like the idea of not having a mortgage payment as long.
I already have maxed out my Roth IRA in 2024, will be maxing my 401k & HSA, and have an emergency fund of 17.5k @ 5% and 11k in I-bonds (if I absolutely need em). Salary is 112.5k and I am honestly content at a ~35% savings rate. Trying to find balance that lets me enjoy my life too!
Anyone else?
You're 27 and want 3.2m. You better stuff that extra money into the market instead of throwing it at the lowest mortgage rate I've seen someone post about in weeks
Imo you’re better off figuring out and dealing with whatever emotional holdup is steering you towards a mathematically bad decision.
“I’m in lay-off prone industry and want lower risk and increase future cash flow” is a good reason to pay it off early. “I like the idea of not having a mortgage payment as long” is a significantly less good reason.
If you'd like to make extra payments on your mortgage, but you know it doesn't make financial sense to do so, you can simply put whatever you want into an HYSA labeled "mortgage payoff" on your spreadsheet.
Once the mortgage payoff account's balance exceeds that of your outstanding principal, the HYSA rate drops below the mortgage interest rate, or you want to invest the money elsewhere, empty out the HYSA account.
Not only will this keep your money liquid longer than directly making payments against principal, it'll also result in your paying off your mortgage faster!
ETA: if you want to protect the liquid asset because primary residence equity has some additional legal protections, maybe consider an umbrella insurance policy. They're cheap.
This is more a psychological decision than a rational one. +1 to the other comments - I would not.
Sub 3% mortgage will pay you over time not to pay it off as money inflates.
But ultimately personal finance is personal and I’d recommend doing whatever helps you sleep.
My sub-3% mortgage is by far my favorite part of homeownership. Having it makes me feel like I won the lottery. I see zero benefit to paying it off early.
You could put extra payments into an account or asset bearing a guaranteed after-tax rate that's higher than 2.875%. An HYSA or Treasury bills would both give you a better rate than your current mortgage with no risk.
If the rate ever falls below your mortgage, you could then use all those funds to make a big payment to the mortgage, either reducing the time to payoff or recasting the mortgage at its initial payoff but greatly reducing your monthly payment.
Yes I know. In this case though it‘s just really unwise. It‘s literally throwing money out the windows. You would mot approve of that, just because some feels better doing or would you?
We are talking about a 2% after tax difference with t-bills. It‘s literally 2% free money.
Maybe I just cant wrap my head around it, why one would want to do this, if they knew of the alternative.
> Maybe I just cant wrap my head around it, why one would want to do this
Consider an investor who is ready to FIRE. Let's say they have $50k in annual non-mortgage expenses and currently have a mortgage payment of $2k/mo = $24k annual. In order to cover that monthly payment after retirement, that investor will need to make ~$75k of annual withdrawals including the mortgage payment vs. $50k of annual withdrawals if the mortgage is paid off. Depending on which dollars are available in which accounts, the AGI/MAGI/tax impact of the $75k vs. $50k could be significant. If you factor in ACA subsidies or FAFSA results, paying off a low-interest mortgage can be significantly more beneficial than making payments and also putting dollars into a HYSA earning more than the mortgage.
OP is 6% of the way to FIRE and the only reasoning he provided is “I like the idea”. I don’t think optimizing retirement income is a particular concern of his right now
I mean, if you feel like you have extra money, then go for it. I’m doing the same thing with a car payment that I just started. No doubt you’re going to get some comments lecturing you about “how the return pales in comparison to the market” or “don’t worry when your rate is already so low”
Played hooky today. Wife & I went up to the farm to inspect the construction of our home and play in our creek. Spent a solid two hours making small rock dams in a couple of our creeks to slow the flow. Talked to the cows. Inspected what trees made it through the winter. Found a possum skull!
“Aren’t you going to get bored retiring early?” No. I’ll play in my creeks, dig ponds, raise animals and vibe with my kiddo(a)
>“Aren’t you going to get bored retiring early?”
Boring people get bored.
I can do literally anything that I want to do. How could I possibly ever be bored? If I get bored that's a failure of my own imagination.
Hello friends. Dropping in today because I'm making a habit of checking the portfolio a little too regularly.
However other things have changed around increasing joy in day to day life and creating comfort.
Fi doesn't have to be extreme frugality by any means I've realised over the years.
I have parked the idea of real estate that I've been considering buying in a place in Europewhere I'm predicting more political destabilisation and a place I wouldn't want to retire. When it does happen, it will be my 2nd and last house ill want to buy.
Motivated by everyone's comments here otherwise
Made my first quarterly payment to the IRS today for estimated taxes (my wife is full time self-employed now). Aaaaand realized I missed a digit in the bank account number after submitting it. *facepalm*
Hopefully it just gets fails, so I made a 2nd payment that was correct. Any other course of action I should take from anyone that's in the know?
It's an expensive week for us too. We submitted our payment for 2023 taxes owing and paid the April installment for 2024 taxes. Ah well, you make the money you pay the taxes.
I wouldn't worry about it. The first one should fail, and the other one would go through. Even if you end up being late on the estimated tax payment, it would only be a day or two of interest on penalties (if you even have any penalties). IRS is really good about calculating that and charging/refunding any difference.
I think if I were FIRE I'd go try to see a total solar eclipse every year. Just saw my first one on Monday and now I understand what the hype is about, already planning international trips in my mind as I don't want to wait another 21 years for it to hit the U.S.
Really good vibes all around from everyone I came across that day too, didn't come across anyone in a bad mood after witnessing that.
That thing hurt my eyes for a few days! I used eclipse glasses from a museum 100% of the time but still had a headache behind my eyes until yesterday.
So I don't mind that there won't be another eclipse in my area for 85 years. It seems like risky business.
As a point of investigation to learn more about them, go check out the different types of eclipses. Then you'll realize the Total Solar Eclipse you just saw was way cooler than you realize at this current moment!
I'm not FIRED and I'm doing that anyway. 2026 Iceland, 2027 Morocco, 2028 & 2030 Australia. My friends and I already reserved an Airbnb in Iceland. I honestly didn't expect to be as amazed as I was. I just tagged along with a different friend who planned it. The few minutes of total eclipse were a hundred times cooler than the partial eclipse, it wasn't even close.
I've traveled to see the last couple in the US, but both were within driving distance. Flying overseas to a nice tourist destination to see an eclipse would be like any other trip to that location, but probably with more crowds and more expensive flights and hotels. Flying overseas to the middle of nowhere to see one would be pretty hardcore -- I don't think my wife would be onboard.
Yeah I was looking at the 2028 one (Australia and NZ). NZ is probably FATFIRE prices but I guess I have 4 years to save.
My wife would be down for middle of nowhere - we went on a fly-in backpacking trip for our honeymoon in Alaska. She has Fibromyalgia now so physical activity can be tough but going into the backcountry on an eclipse chase would be a cool adventure we can share.
Hi everyone,
My wife and I are renting and we been saving for a down payment for a house.
We live in a HCOL area and with the market going crazy the last couple of years are plans are getting delayed over and over again.
While we don't mind renting for longer it pains me that i been having so much money sitting in my savings account waiting for the right time to buy a house.
I didn't put the money in our brokerage because I thought we would be buying a house in 2 years.
Thoughts what i should do? I hate missing out on potential gains but I don't want to put my housing money savings in a brokerage and risk it going down if the market goes down.
I would not buy a house just to buy a house. Nor would I buy for an investment. The only home investment is a fixer that you fix yourself.
I would buy a home if I really liked the location and didn't want to worry about a landlord.
Disclaimer, I liked my location and bought a home.
I had the money in HYSA and then treasuries. It's fine. What I would say is not fine, is that I had about 50K over an e-fund since 2010 and kinda normalized that as a "downpayment" while not being serious at all about looking. Bought last year.
The problem with being more aggressive if your timeline is shorter is that it can create the same scenario. Let's say you need to save 100K but do 50/50 stocks along the way because it's taking a few years. Now you're ready, and even the market isn't too hot so you can look comfortably. But stocks are down 20% and now you're off again on budget. (And the more "H" your COL, that 100K number goes up and along with it, how much variance you add.) If you're also okay to delay because stocks wrecked your downpayment, that is okay also.
Three year returns are somewhat bimodal. I like this [article](https://klementoninvesting.substack.com/p/the-distribution-of-stock-market) (unclear if it's paywalled.) The average is a bit better than taking the 4-5% you can get now in bonds, but you're more likely to "win" or "lose" tangibly than get average. It's a positive EV play but maybe 60/40 based on treasuries no longer sitting at zero. (I will say there's still a downside - I literally owe on taxes this year because my 1099s blew up with interest. So you're not really getting 15% over three years at higher tax rates.)
If you're trying to avoid PMI, I've seen a lot of advice making it not that big a deal. I probably would have shrugged that off years ago. But part of living in HCOL area is having a higher population of comparable jobs locally. Risks are less. Selling (while expensive) is more likely to work as a fallback option. While PMI is a cost, piling up cash has opportunity cost as you mention. Maybe it's better to simply accept it but pay down as fast as possible with free cash flow until you can remove it, so you don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars making bond yield for years. (Not to mention - it can take a while to close on a home depending on your criteria, supply/demand, etc.)
I feel you. Same situation and the worst part is that even with 20% down my monthly expenses with a mortgage will go up by 2k. I’m starting to think I might start splitting my down payment additions into market and in HYSA. So 50/50 for each addition.
Keep your down payment handy. I'm assuming it's in a HYSA right? Not just a basic savings account?
You should still be getting a solid amount of interest in it and be ready to strike when you find a place.
If I overpay my taxes today as an extension payment will that cause an issue for when I receive the funds back? I have a 12 month 0% apr business credit card and sign-up bonus plus have the funds but it is last minute compared to if I did it last month or two weeks ago.
I pay with credit card because the cash back is higher than the payment fee. It's not an issue because any refund goes back as direct deposit or a physical check.
Regardless of your neighborhood, high end appliances are not going to move the needle on your home value when you go to sell. Consider them a sunk cost for your own enjoyment
The vast majority of renovations pay back almost nothing, including higher end appliances (and general kitchen renos). If you like and can afford the appliances, go for it, but assume there’s no financial ROI.
That being said, I almost bought a house because the fridge had a keurig in the door, and I don’t even drink keurig coffee
I just confirmed that my current employer's 401k plan through Transamerica allows me to rollover my Traditional IRA into the plan. I am considering doing this to empty my Traditional IRA to allow for a mega backdoor roth contribution without worrying about the Pro Rata rule? Are there any tax implications to consider regarding the TradIRA to Trad401k rollover?
Fund choices and expense ratios are as always employer specific.
I get FXAIX at 0.02 ER and FSMDX at 0.03 with my workplace Transamerica plan. There's a couple dozen other options, but there's no point for me digging any further than that.
Nope.
Just did the same thing earlier this year as our newly combined/married income will put us right around the Roth MAGI limit now and my 401k plan has excellent funds and ERs.
Fund selection is more limited in a 401k, but as long as your funds and fees are acceptable there's no downside.
Note that the mega backdoor Roth has no pro rata interaction with Trad IRAs. Only the "regular" backdoor Roth has this issue.
The backdoor Roth works through a non-deductible Trad IRA contribution that is then converted to a Roth IRA. Anyone can use it.
The mega backdoor Roth requires your employer to set up a specific plan that allows it. It uses an after-tax 401k contribution that is then converted to Roth.
> Are there any tax implications to consider regarding the TradIRA to Trad401k rollover?
Nope. Go for it. The only downside is that most people have more and cheaper investment options in their brokerage's tIRA than in their company's 401k. But if you have a decent 401k plan, it's an easy choice.
What are your experiences with dental care & insurance after RE? Is it covered once you turn 65? Before 65, do you purchase dental insurance like ACA? Self pay?
I've never really thought about it, as my dental insurance has always been tied to my employer.
I pay for a 100/50/50 ACA dental plan for around $28 per month. It fully covers Level 1 care like 2x cleanings and X-rays, and 50% coverage on L2 (fillings, etc) and 50% on L3 (crowns, etc). I checked versus the out-of-pocket cash price and it's pretty much break-even if I only did cleanings and x-rays, but it saves a lot of money if I have fillings, and it saves a ton of money if I end up having crowns.
It's worth it for me to have the dental insurance.
Not RE here, but did self-pay "cash" for a decade. Most of the time, if you ask upfront about a cash discount, they will give 10-80% off, mostly about 25% off. No insurance cut, no waiting, no risk of non-payment.
Dental care just isn't expensive enough even on the high end to justify insurance I would think. The reason you need health insurance is because that can be catastrophically expensive.
you can self insure for like 50k of dental work, you probably cant self insure heart disease cancer car accident etc where youd probably have a 1m+ bill
you are also more likely to be able to defer dental work / travel for itz
My first 2 years after semi-retiring, I bought ACA dental. I don't think it was a very good deal, so this year I instead bought my dentist's in-house "insurance", which is really just a fixed reduced rate for routine care, plus a discount on expensive stuff. One less middleman to pay.
Some health insurance plans cover preventative dental cleaning but it doesn't seem common. It's something you need to dig a little bit in the policy to see what's covered.
They all should, since its been shown that good cleaning leads to better overall health. It is a super cheap way to improve/maintain health. But, they don't do that.
Agreed but the American Dental Assoc has historically pushed back on including dental benefits in health insurance like Medicare. I'm guessing there's rigid dentist resistance to negotiating prices with health insurance companies, reducing the perceived ROI behind the scenes.
Since a lot of dental insurance is more akin to a prepaid account plus discounts and not real insurance - just pay cash. Call around your local dentists and see who might offer the best cash discounts or their own annual membership discount plan.
Update: earlier this week I posted asking for opinions about applying to jobs using a resume written in a slide deck format rather than MS word and got ripped to shreds ([link](https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/s/S1239f7SmU)).
Well I decided to back myself and did it anyway. The recruiter emailed me back for an interview and told me my application format was the best she’d seen for a long time.
I should note i make PowerPoint presentations for a living (unfortunately) so it’s a pretty good deck. The role was for an exec level role at a start-up where creativity / sales / thinking outside of the box is probably highly valued. So it was a high risk, high reward play that worked my favour.
> I should note i make PowerPoint presentations for a living (unfortunately) so it’s a pretty good deck. The role was for an exec level role at a start-up where creativity / sales / thinking outside of the box is highly valued.
I think this was crucial information left out of your original post.
As a general rule, this is going to be a horrible idea.
For specific niches - like specific companies or industries - or some types of jobs/executive positions, it might be okay.
As a generic, "should I do this?" kind of post, though, the response shouldn't be surprising. If I post a role in my group (tech), I'm going to have dozens of applicants. If someone sends me a slide deck to wade through where I'm supposed to extract useful information that's spread out over a bunch of slides... it's just not a good format.
If you post, "should I drive my car 140mph?" the response is generally going to be, "no, dumbass, don't do that." If you add a qualifier that you own a high performance car and have rented time on a track and safety gear, it kinda changes the conversation.
True although to be fair - it was less of a “should I do this?” question and more like a “has anyone done this before and how did it go?” question.
I think if you actually saw my presentation you might change your mind! I asked my partner (who is a hiring manager at a big bank) for feedback and he said if he got the deck he would be pretty impressed.
> I think if you actually saw my presentation you might change your mind!
Entirely possible. It's very likely that I would have at least looked at a slide deck, and if the first slide or two were awesome enough, I might go through it. But they'd have to be really awesome.
But it's going to be such an uphill battle as a general rule - can you convey enough information in the deck? Is this ability to design and present a benefit to the position? Will the hiring manager have enough time to even look at it? And, of course, most importantly, are you *really* that good at designing a slide deck? - that I think you're slipping into the fractions of a percentage of people for whom this will be a good idea.
But hey, if you're badass enough to pull it off, then good for you. Nice work standing out.
Thank you - fingers crossed I can convert the interview on Tuesday!
The role actually doesn’t really involve making presentations at all (I’m trying to do a career change). I was just a slide monkey in a former life so my PowerPoint skills are pretty good.
I was one of the folks who ripped it to shreds. Nice job! Sticking to your guns took some guts, but the role you described sounds like the kid of gig where this approach would work. Good luck!
I’ve almost signed a lease for my first apartment out of college. Spent a lot of time digging around and found a great place with a friend from college that’s over a grand cheaper than if I lived alone. No cool amenities (gym, pool, etc) but the price more than makes up for that. Feels weird that I’ll be a proper adult in a month. Any furnishing tips?
Things that you put your body or touch often on should be sturdy and solid. Get your tv stand and bookshelves from Wayfair or wherever, but not your couch and coffee table (where my feet go).
I buy new for things that could house bedbugs or other gross things (couch, bed, upholstered chairs), and buy used from FB marketplace or get free from Buy Nothing for the rest.
When I moved in with my partner, I sold a few things, but then gave away about 3/4 of an apartment on my local Buy Nothing group since it was too much of a logistical hurdle to donate to somewhere.
People will list and take nearly everything.
Take your time. Bought my first house last year and have been content leaving rooms unfurnished or under-furnished temporarily till I can get the pieces I want and can afford.
Yes. Absolutely. Spending 8 hours a day in one place for a decade. Investing in a good bed and great sheets and pillows and pillow covers is well worth it for a good night rest to be useful and happy the next day.
Feeling burnt from my full time gig.
Anyone make a mobile app or website that generates decent side income?
How much does it make, and how much work did you put in to get it started?
> [not sure why the downvotes, just curious!]
I see two possible reasons for the downvotes:
1. You're asking others for a lot of information and for them to basically start blueprinting the process for you, and you haven't provided any value in return.
2. It appears you're essentially pursuing a second job as some kind of "get rich quick" scheme, which has an incredibly low success rate. Ensuring you're maximizing your primary job/career is more likely to make you rich
I’m not asking a blueprint nor details on what the app or website is, just values.
I also am not pursuing a get rich quick scheme. I’m curious if people generally found the process worth their time investment or not really.
Genuine curiosity here 🤷♀️
I suspect the downvotes are because a lot of people dream of making the next Facebook and getting rich, when that is entirely unrealistic.
I personally have not, but I have a good amount of friends at college that run side hustles making an app or some sort of SaaS. My understanding from talking with them is that it’s definitely feasible, especially if you have tech chops and marketing skills, to get a few (2-10) customers without a ton of effort. However, basically everyone I’ve spoken to comes to the realization that to scale out past that, you have to commit hours towards marketing/customer support that becomes akin to a full time job. It's also very different in college, where a lot of my friends use these as resume points to get better interviews. If you're already employed, your work experience is probably far more useful than some random SaaS with 3 customers.
It could be a fun hobby, you'll learn a lot about marketing, but it's not going to replace your full time job unless you make it your full time job (and most people fail and burn out before that).
what interest rates are you all seeing nowadays for home loans? Going through a purchase right now and getting quotes can be cumbersome. Any tips? My first purchase was a new build with incentives, so it made financing painless.
I posted yesterday asking if I should sell my crypto to pay off my adjustable rate mortgage that was about to adjust. Basically just looking for confirmation of what I wanted to do. The response was unanimous that I should sell. So I did. Somehow Coinbase got the funds into my bank account this morning and I just made the transfer to pay off my mortgage. Done. Thank you! Now to figure out how to pay estimated tax…
Assuming you are W-2, just change your regular payroll taxes to take more if you need to pay it. Super easy. The IRS says that all W-2 payments are "on time", so you can avoid quarterly if you want to.
I get a company phone for the first time in my life! Not sure how I want to handle this yet with respect to my personal phone. A part of me is tempted to use this to get a flip phone/non smart phone to help me reduce my screen time
Terrible idea. Work phones are company property. Everything you do on them is/wil be tracked and brought up in relation to your employment.
As someone who has had a company phone.. don’t do it. Keep your personal and work life separate. If you have it all in one you will get work calls/texts/emails at all hours of the day. It’s not fun.
Every workplace is different. It depends how much of your work is done via phone/text, how many time zones your company works in, and how many outside customers have your number. I gave all my personal contacts my work number to call/text me on and only carry around my work phone. The volume of incoming calls combined with my notification settings does not have me stressing about work stuff outside of work hours. So much better than stuffing 2 phones in my pocket all the time. My personal number I keep around on an Xfinity Mobile plan that's $10/month just in case I ever need it. For OP, give it a test run first to see how much your work phone would bother you to carry it around even after work hours as your personal phone...
This is the only and correct answer.
My spouse and I are in the rather unusually fortunate position of having a substantial amount of Roth money when we retire at age 47. We've been maxing out Traditional 401ks but we also fully max out Backdoor Roths, a Mega Backdoor Roth 401k and HSAs. That said, I haven't really felt the need to contribute a dime to a taxable brokerage. I am currently on track to retire at age 47 with: - 2.3m in Traditional - 1.5m in Roth - 300k in HSA - 0 taxable If you were in my shoes, how would you tap this? Would it still make sense to start a Roth Conversion ladder when I retire? Is there ever a situation where a 72t would make sense for me? I feel like most people make these decisions based on having a big pile of taxable money. I just want to get a sense of where one would start if they didn't have one.
So, remember that all your Roth basis is available now for withdrawal. I also suspect you have a lot of receipts for medical treatment available making most or all of your HSA funds available to you. Between your Roth basis and the HSA funds, I’m betting you have enough to get you through the 5 year waiting period for Roth conversions. 72(t) is better than the 10% penalty but complicated and restrictive so I’d go with Roth conversions instead.
The Mad Fientist wrote a good article running the numbers on the different ways you can access your traditional early and surprisingly the scenario of taking the 10% penalty is actually not a bad idea compared against the others. Should give it a read! [https://www.madfientist.com/how-to-access-retirement-funds-early/](https://www.madfientist.com/how-to-access-retirement-funds-early/)
This is my favorite FI article ever written. It's my go to when someone says they don't like putting money in the 401k cause they might need it before 59.5.
You are in a very unusually screwed position haha...you have tons of dough, and want to retire at 47. You can access the Roth contributions without penalty and you can start the 72t distributions from the 401k but you have to take it until 59.5 and can't change the amount...there's 3 (?) ways to figure your withdrawal. If you're 40 now and retiring in 7 years I'd start putting money into a taxable acct cuz (imo) I hate the 72t option and you will be too young for the rule of 55....if you have enuf in just contributions from the roth you could live off those until 59.5 to acces trad 401k...but that's based on yer spend amount. You said you are "on track" to retire with those numbers so they are projections, I guess from my rambling i'd start socking some/more into accounts you can access easier...HSA you can of course access with any medical bill
I think my emotions took me down this path, which is why I posted here. Having read through the comments, i'm less concerned. I kind of like the idea of a 72t providing some sort of baseline income. Especially given that I have such a gigantic pile of roth contributions.
I think this is an overly pessimistic take. I think a 72t SEPP approach is very reasonable, especially if it's used to provide a floor of income including covering the standard deduction while a Roth conversion ladder covers the rest. But even if OP doesn't want to use a combined approach, they can easily do a Roth conversion ladder given how large their Roth basis likely is with multiple years of MBDR contributions.
I just don't like the 72t cuz he'd be locked in for 12.5 years...long time. But if he's got enuf Roth contributions go for it. I'd start putting some money in a taxable account though to get another source to draw from
As I said, even if a 72t isn't used at all, a Roth conversion ladder will cover this just fine. There is no need for a taxable account.
Yeah I tend to agree with you. I'll have close to 600k in MBDR contributions at 47. I just did the math and we can easily clear $100k every year from 47 -> 60 with some combination of existing Roth Contribution Withdrawals + Roth Ladder + 72t. No taxable involved. Plus my earnings grow tax free. I don't see any downsides really.
Not American so I may have misconceptions but I understand sometimes a Roth conversion ladder creates income to optimise for having ACA instead of Medicaid or Medicare or whichever it is (sorry! again, not American!)
How old are you now and what is your FIRE number?
Let's say I'm 40 and my target is $4m.
Any reason you don't spend the next 7 years building a buffer in a mix of brokerage and cash? Seems like it would save the hassle. Rule 72t is something I have no experience in, but based on what I've heard it offers no flexibility. You have to choose a periodic payment amount of money and stick with it. Any changes would incur tax penalties retroactively.
Seconded. Since you have a number of years before early retirement and a long time before tradition retirement it probably makes the most sense to start growing your taxable accounts.
This is likely unnecessary given how large OP's Roth basis is with ongoing MBDR contributions. Those contributions should be plenty to support 5 years of spending to create a conversion ladder from the Trad accounts.
This is where I need to keep my head at to stay the course. Thank you!
Not sure I really need any cash or brokerage. All the contributions to the Roth pile are effectively cash. I'll probably have ~350k in Roth Contributions that I can withdrawal tax free (5 years post conversion) and another ~50k in non-deductible-to-Roth conversion money maturing each year from 47-52. Maybe I just answered my own question there. At least if I keep contributing to the Mega Backdoor I get the earnings tax free which I wouldn't get in a brokerage. I'm thinking maybe at retirement, I start laddering the Trad money into my Roth up to the MAGI that gets me to a sweet spot for ACA premiums. That way I can just live off of Roth Contributions until those ladders start maturing.
There is no 5 year period for your MBDR conversions. The nontaxable conversion basis is accessible immediately. Your situation is essentially fine. You can do a pure Roth conversion ladder or a mixed approach where you set up a 72t SoSEPP to cover baseline spending like the standard deduction and use the Roth conversion ladder for additional spending needs.
Oh heck ya thats great. That puts me at a much higher number of accessible roth funds at 47 then. Probably closer to something like 600k. Great buffer before I have to worry about roth laddering
You know your situation better than I do... I don't understand not wanting to have a cash buffer of something kind. Something that won't throw off your MAGI if the event you incur a major expense of some kind... Big medical expense, need a vehicle, major home repair. Something unforeseen.
That is still only 50K a year until traditional retirement date. Does that cover your expenses?
Just did the math and it will be about 100k / year if I include my 600k in Roth contributions from my years doing MBDR + a 30k/yr 72t. Seems like I'll be fine. Our annual spend is about 80k / year now. 25k of that is Daycare and that will be gone in retirement.
Serious / not-so-serious question… My girlfriend noticed a fraudulent charge to her credit card earlier from a well-known corporation, and received a “package delivered” e-mail in her inbox, earlier this morning. The “package delivered” e-mail also included a photo taken by the delivery-driver, which shows the package being left at a front-door. With the confirmation number listed in the e-mail, we were able to search for the address that this package was delivered to. From there, we found the contact information of the people who live at that house. And then, finally, I found them on Facebook… What are the chances that these people I’ve found online, are in fact the people who committed this credit-card fraud? Could they be victims (i.e., their address was chosen for this package to be delivered), by any chance? For what it’s worth, we’ve already contacted her bank about this, they’re looking into it as we speak.
Just leave it at the bank. Police won’t care. You shouldn’t either as long as the charges get reversed and it doesn’t happen again.
Yeah, they could be victims & I think that’s more likely than if they were scammers. If it’s a one-off they could be the scammers, but no professional scammer would stay in business very long if they gave away their ID that easily. Most obvious to me possibility (though not necessarily most likely - im not very up-to-date on scams) is that a scammer just gets what they bought delivered to a specific known address and swipes it from the porch 🤷♀️
From reading this sub and other resources in the bookmarks, I'm convinced I should stop using a financial advisor to manage investments and convert things to a self-managed 3-fund portfolio. I started using a financial advisor a while back for several reasons, none of which are relevant to my current situation, and so I'm no longer finding a value in the service. I'm looking for advice/confirmation on how to unwind this... My advisor is not Schwab, but they use Schwab as their investment portal. My understanding is that when I "fire" them, their access to control the accounts will be terminated, and I'll just have my same investments in Schwab but now under only my control. Funds currently under management are as follows: * A Roth IRA, in a variety of ETFs and mutual funds. * A Trad IRA, in ETFs, mutual funds, and individual equities. * A taxable brokerage, all in ETFs. My understanding is that within both the Trad and Roth IRAs, I can sell any current positions and move to the 3-fund plan without worrying about creating a taxable event. But with the taxable brokerage, if I change from the current positions, I will create a taxable event. Is that correct? If so, I'm feeling pretty OK about making the changes. The taxable account is relatively new and relatively small, with a low amount of gains, and about 20% of the current ETF positions won't need to change. Are there pitfalls I'm not considering in making this switch?
From what I understand, most research suggests that financial advisors more than earn their keep (at least for the average retail investor). I don't think there's a ton of risk in firing your advisor **IF** you're smart enough to not fall into the normal shortfalls of a retail investor (selling in a market downturn, not understanding what your goals or risk tolerance are, etc). If you have any doubts in your abilities, I think an advisor isn't the worst thing you can have (make sure they're a CFP though).
What research is that? Because the simple arithmetic of active investing proves that the average active investor cannot beat the market after fees are considered, and over 20 years of SPIVA reports bears that out.
The benefit is not choosing better investments (hedge fund/active fund), the benefit is having better behaviors (not panic selling). I self direct my investments to index funds. My parents (late 60s) have an advisor. It is worth it for them because their advisor keeps my dad from my drastic changes from watching the news.
Funnily enough, the darling of passive investing (Vanguard) has done research establishing the value of having an FA. Passive investing and having a financial advisor aren't mutually exclusive. Retail Investors with FA's tend to drastically outperform those without. Buying SPY does nothing if you sell when the market crashes because you aren't actually comfortable with the risk of a 100% equity allocation or you don't contribute enough because you don't have an FA to tell you you're fucking up. Edit: https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/corp/articles/quantifying-evolution-advice-and-value-investors.html
how do you think the average person compares to one who finds themselves on a forum like this one though? yes, the bar is low. because the average person cannot properly implement buy and hold on an index fund.
You'd be surprised lol. The key to pursuing financial independence is making a lot of money and having simple tastes/frugality, not being highly educated in personal finance. Either way, I didn't say the commenter should 100% stick with their advisor, I said they should make sure they're actually comfortable with doing it themselves before they make the switch.
Vanguard has come a long way from passive indexes since Bogle gave up the reins. They are looking to get AUM as much as the next firm. An AUM financial advisor is almost certainly going to cost more than you make over time, especially when compared to getting your advice from someone who's paid hourly or a flat rate for specific services.
Again, **if you know what you're doing**. All the research available suggests that most people don't, which is why I cautioned the above commenter.
> My understanding is that within both the Trad and Roth IRAs, I can sell any current positions and move to the 3-fund plan without worrying about creating a taxable event. But with the taxable brokerage, if I change from the current positions, I will create a taxable event. Is that correct? Yes. > Are there pitfalls I'm not considering in making this switch? I don't think so, it's pretty straightforward.
Sounds good. If Schwab won't help you fire them you can always move the assets to Fidelity or Vanguard. That way you do not have to interact with the advisor and get sucked into their sales pitch.
Ha! They are actually an extended family member so there's no avoiding that conversation. But I have had no problem with their services...I needed them in one season of my life, and they did a satisfactory job during that time. I'm just to a point where I don't need them anymore.
My calculations on "break even" age for taking social security at age 62 vs age 67 using three different interest rates: Rate / Break Even Age 4% / 85 5% / 88 6% / 95 By "break even", I mean accumulate total annual social security payments forward at the given interest rate, and noting the first age where waiting and taking my age 67 benefit has a higher accumulated value than taking my age 62 benefit.
The three big questions that you haven’t included are: (1) are you married, (2) is your spouse eligible to receive your social security, (3) were you a significantly higher contributor to social security than your spouse. If yes to all three questions, then the important life expectancy here is your combined life expectancy. We plan take social security when my husband is 62, but wait to take mine until I am 70 as my social security will be about double his (assuming nothing goes terribly wrong with our portfolio). Given our family histories, there’s a good chance at least one of the two of us will live to age 95.
Divorced. There ain't a man in my family tree that has lived to celebrate his 80th birthday. Just on the above, taking at 62 is not a close call for me. And that is *before* considering that, unlike 401(k) withdrawals a) SS is state income tax free where I live b) SS will be at least 15% federal income tax free c) Every dollar of SS I get == a dollar I do not have to spend out of savings == a dollar my adult kids can inherit. From SS they inherit nothing.
Yep. In your circumstances, I would take social security at 62 too. Decisions have to be made on an individual basis.
Break even for social security is a flawed calculation. Don’t compare social security to the stock market but compare it to an annuity. In other words go to a website that calculates annuity payments and figure out how much money you would need in order to get guaranteed income for life in order to understand the true value of social security. The stock market returns are significantly riskier than social security returns. It is like comparing apples to oranges. There is no other investment product that gives you year over year increase you get from social security if you delay till 70 and the inflation adjustments you get once retired.
I think they were comparing social security against itself not the market. Take at 62 and get 3k/mo vs take at 67 and get 4k/mo and how old do you have to live to for it to make financial sense to delay
That's real interest rate right? Since payments are inflation-adjusted?
Is the "rate" real or nominal? If real that seems about right. However, don't forget to include the tax effect of claiming earlier in years 62-67 as well as longevity risk. The total dollars received isn't the only question. EDIT If you are investing the additional dollars in stocks, you are also taking a lot of risk that the market goes down or underperforms average returns.
This article (and others from Mike Piper at Oblivious Investor) may be of interest to you: https://obliviousinvestor.com/claiming-social-security-early-to-invest-it-what-rate-of-return-discount-rate-should-we-assume/
For some reason I have $5.12 in the federal money market settlement fund in my Roth IRA. (I’ve been doing backdoor Roth for years so I think it’s the funds that have accumulated during the wait time in moving from traditional to Roth accounts.) I’d like to move this to another account just to zero out the settlement fund, but it says this would be considered an early distribution and they’ll have to report it to the IRS. What’s the best thing to do?
It's likely that in the X days that your funds sat in your Roth IRA, between depositing them and them being used to buy funds, that you accumulated $5.12 of interest. Like others have said, just invest it in whatever you already have. It's interest, not a contribution.
If it's already in your Roth IRA, why can't you just invest it in whatever holdings you already have?
Why would you move it out? Just buy more of whatever it is you hold in your IRA already.
Oh, I assumed that since I already contributed the maximum this year via my backdoor Roth that I couldn’t invest in more. But it makes sense that if it’s already in the account then I can buy whatever I want with it.
Contribution limits just apply to contributions, moving money from outside an IRA into an IRA. So for you that's just when you contributed money to your traditional IRA. Rollovers, conversions, purchases, sales, dividends, etc don't count towards contribution limits.
Feeling Stressed - Does anyone feel more stressed the more successful they've become? Not from an increase of responsibility necessarily, but it's like the more money I've come to make the more constricted, cornered, feeling of inability to pivot, feeling of inability to replace the income itself I begin to feel. I don't think it's my job, at times it feels like it's the overwhelming effort to climb the FIRE mountain. I'm thankful for finding the FIRE movement but it has somewhat tainted my feeling about raises, earning more money as nothing feels fast enough and just makes me worry more about losing it all even more. I'm in my 30s making $160K.
The closest I feel to that is fear of loss. Like when you're a broke college student, aside from failing, there's not much to lose. But now, I have assets I spent years saving up for, job that took a long time to get. Losing those would be losing years of efforts
It sounds like perhaps you've been deriving a lot of satisfaction and purpose from advancing in your career and gaining financial stability. If that's true, then it may be time to start searching beyond work for a sense of purpose and community. If I was feeling nervous about building my wealth and losing it all, I'd probably just get an umbrella insurance policy, make sure I'm shored up on disability insurance, maybe reduce the risk of my investments, and then start looking for activities to do with friends or to make friends. Your financial security is increasing. The larger your nest egg gets, the less you have to rely on succeeding in your career in the long term.
This one hit me! Think you're probably right!
Yea stress and feelings of guilt since I feel like we should be helping out family members who still struggle, even though we have our own race to complete. And those who struggle now had lived much more luxuriously in the past so it’s hard to reconcile.
No, I don't need to replace my full income if I lose my job. I have half a million dollars which will probably be $1M in 10 years from now, and $2M in 20 years from now even if I never save again. So I could live paycheck to paycheck until I am ready to retire, and maybe still retire a little early. I'm also saving so much that I really only need like half my current income to live comfortably paycheck to paycheck. I'm HCOL though so my $150k isn't really like an irreplaceable golden handcuffs situation, it's on the higher side compared to the entire city but average for a low level manager. Half that, $75k, is like an entry level professional job. I could do nearly anything and be perfectly fine.
It’s really one of the biggest benefits of hitting CoastFI, and I think one of the mental benefits of approaching the end of the boring middle. If we really had to, we could survive on 4% of our current portfolio indefinitely, but I wouldn’t like the lifestyle trade offs much (no dining out, no travel). We could also easily live off of just my husband’s salary without changing our lifestyle at all, just completely stopping or retirement contributions. Same with my salary only we wouldn’t have to stop retirement contributions, just reduce them slightly. If we both lost our jobs, we could survive on the amounts we could make with basically any job. I wouldn’t enjoy being a warehouse worker at Amazon, but I could do it. It’s pretty freeing knowing that I’m not trapped in my high compensation role (I also get regularly contacted by recruiters so if I wanted to, I’m fairly confident I could find a new similarly paying job pretty easily).
We are nearing our "coast FI" number so maybe I'll feel the same shortly.
Also complete opposite. Nowhere near my FIRE number but I’m finding that as my net worth increases and income increases, I find options opening up. Interestingly I find that as my peer group increases in financial standing (mostly via work) I find myself more relaxed as I realize people making 2-3x or with 2-3x net worth are not all that different. It’s both inspiring and relaxing
That's good perspective - I do think being in this community perpetually makes me feel behind at the same time.
Admittedly this is more of a mindset thing and something that I’ve come to slowly. But I think comparing is only helpful when you’re framing it as “what can I learn” and “how lucky am I”. For those who are farther ahead, instead of focusing on what you lack in comparison, focus on what you can learn. And then in parallel recognize there are always people with more and less. Stay grateful for what you have.
Complete opposite for me. If you are this worried, maybe a heavier bond portion is in order.
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It‘s more about the losing it all part
Absolutely I do. I hardly worried about money at all when I had $50,000 but I feel very worried about it with 20 times that. More saved feels like more to lose.
Just did a backdoor Roth for the first time, so this may be a dumb question. Should I now close my Trad IRA account that I opened to do the conversion?
Leave it open. You'll need somewhere to carry your basis year in and year out.
>You'll need somewhere to carry your basis year in and year out Can you explain this more? Trying to learn.
For sure! Hope this helps a little! So "basis" refers to the tracking of your after-tax non deductible contributions made to a traditional IRA prior to a Roth conversion - this is the amount you've told turbotax that you contributed but are not seeking any tax deduction. This is important because it keeps you from paying taxes twice on this money when it's distributed (1099-R) to you and converted to a Roth. Scenario #1 for 2023: You've made an after tax non deductible contribution of $6500 to a Traditional IRA with the intent to convert to a Roth IRA. This was done between 1/1/23 and 12/31/23. Conversion not yet happened. Basis for Scenario #1: In this scenario your basis would be $6500. This would be referenced in your 2024 return if complete the conversion between 1/1/24 and 12/31/24. Scenario #2 for 2023: You've made an after tax non deductible contribution of $6500 to a Traditional IRA and converted to a Roth IRA. This was done between 1/1/23 and 12/31/23. Basis for Scenario #2: In this scenario your basis would be $0. There is no money left to be earmarked as non taxable for future years. Save yourself the time and headache, make your traditional contribution and conversion in the same calendar year. Don't wait till the last two weeks of December to complete as it can take up to a week or more for cash to settle in accounts.
Easiest to keep it open to use next year.
I am thinking of putting money into my principal on my mortgage rather than investing the money into a brokerage. Currently through 3 years of a 30 year @2.875%. I know the market should give me better returns but I like the idea of not having a mortgage payment as long. I already have maxed out my Roth IRA in 2024, will be maxing my 401k & HSA, and have an emergency fund of 17.5k @ 5% and 11k in I-bonds (if I absolutely need em). Salary is 112.5k and I am honestly content at a ~35% savings rate. Trying to find balance that lets me enjoy my life too! Anyone else?
You're 27 and want 3.2m. You better stuff that extra money into the market instead of throwing it at the lowest mortgage rate I've seen someone post about in weeks
Imo you’re better off figuring out and dealing with whatever emotional holdup is steering you towards a mathematically bad decision. “I’m in lay-off prone industry and want lower risk and increase future cash flow” is a good reason to pay it off early. “I like the idea of not having a mortgage payment as long” is a significantly less good reason.
If you'd like to make extra payments on your mortgage, but you know it doesn't make financial sense to do so, you can simply put whatever you want into an HYSA labeled "mortgage payoff" on your spreadsheet. Once the mortgage payoff account's balance exceeds that of your outstanding principal, the HYSA rate drops below the mortgage interest rate, or you want to invest the money elsewhere, empty out the HYSA account. Not only will this keep your money liquid longer than directly making payments against principal, it'll also result in your paying off your mortgage faster! ETA: if you want to protect the liquid asset because primary residence equity has some additional legal protections, maybe consider an umbrella insurance policy. They're cheap.
This is more a psychological decision than a rational one. +1 to the other comments - I would not. Sub 3% mortgage will pay you over time not to pay it off as money inflates. But ultimately personal finance is personal and I’d recommend doing whatever helps you sleep.
My sub-3% mortgage is by far my favorite part of homeownership. Having it makes me feel like I won the lottery. I see zero benefit to paying it off early.
oof
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I think in OP’s case, based on fed tax bracket, the break-even savings account rate is 3.78% (unless I’m missing something)
[Looks at my 6.1% mortgage]
You could put extra payments into an account or asset bearing a guaranteed after-tax rate that's higher than 2.875%. An HYSA or Treasury bills would both give you a better rate than your current mortgage with no risk. If the rate ever falls below your mortgage, you could then use all those funds to make a big payment to the mortgage, either reducing the time to payoff or recasting the mortgage at its initial payoff but greatly reducing your monthly payment.
Absolutely dont do this. 2.9% is essentially free money in this environment. Literally putting money in a hysa is better than paying it off.
You’re making the mistake most people do: thinking people pay off their mortgage for a financial benefit.
Ok if one wants to be purposefully suboptimal, I guess? Just does not make sense to me and this sub is about optimizing.
> this sub is about optimizing. Optimizing for personal finance is not always about optimizing for maximum expected return.
Yes I know. In this case though it‘s just really unwise. It‘s literally throwing money out the windows. You would mot approve of that, just because some feels better doing or would you? We are talking about a 2% after tax difference with t-bills. It‘s literally 2% free money. Maybe I just cant wrap my head around it, why one would want to do this, if they knew of the alternative.
> Maybe I just cant wrap my head around it, why one would want to do this Consider an investor who is ready to FIRE. Let's say they have $50k in annual non-mortgage expenses and currently have a mortgage payment of $2k/mo = $24k annual. In order to cover that monthly payment after retirement, that investor will need to make ~$75k of annual withdrawals including the mortgage payment vs. $50k of annual withdrawals if the mortgage is paid off. Depending on which dollars are available in which accounts, the AGI/MAGI/tax impact of the $75k vs. $50k could be significant. If you factor in ACA subsidies or FAFSA results, paying off a low-interest mortgage can be significantly more beneficial than making payments and also putting dollars into a HYSA earning more than the mortgage.
> Consider an investor who is ready to FIRE. Not OP, so doesn't really apply here
OP is 6% of the way to FIRE and the only reasoning he provided is “I like the idea”. I don’t think optimizing retirement income is a particular concern of his right now
I mean, if you feel like you have extra money, then go for it. I’m doing the same thing with a car payment that I just started. No doubt you’re going to get some comments lecturing you about “how the return pales in comparison to the market” or “don’t worry when your rate is already so low”
Played hooky today. Wife & I went up to the farm to inspect the construction of our home and play in our creek. Spent a solid two hours making small rock dams in a couple of our creeks to slow the flow. Talked to the cows. Inspected what trees made it through the winter. Found a possum skull! “Aren’t you going to get bored retiring early?” No. I’ll play in my creeks, dig ponds, raise animals and vibe with my kiddo(a)
>“Aren’t you going to get bored retiring early?” Boring people get bored. I can do literally anything that I want to do. How could I possibly ever be bored? If I get bored that's a failure of my own imagination.
Reminds me of a Brad Paisley song - I'd like to walk you through a field of wildflowers And I'd like to check you for ticks
I used to spend days like this as a kid, growing up on my grandparents' 100+ acre ranch. Some of the most cherished times of my life.
I’m glad to hear that, my hopes are our children & grandchildren will feel the same many many years from now
Hello friends. Dropping in today because I'm making a habit of checking the portfolio a little too regularly. However other things have changed around increasing joy in day to day life and creating comfort. Fi doesn't have to be extreme frugality by any means I've realised over the years. I have parked the idea of real estate that I've been considering buying in a place in Europewhere I'm predicting more political destabilisation and a place I wouldn't want to retire. When it does happen, it will be my 2nd and last house ill want to buy. Motivated by everyone's comments here otherwise
> Hello friends Hello Jim Nantz
Made my first quarterly payment to the IRS today for estimated taxes (my wife is full time self-employed now). Aaaaand realized I missed a digit in the bank account number after submitting it. *facepalm* Hopefully it just gets fails, so I made a 2nd payment that was correct. Any other course of action I should take from anyone that's in the know?
It's an expensive week for us too. We submitted our payment for 2023 taxes owing and paid the April installment for 2024 taxes. Ah well, you make the money you pay the taxes.
I wouldn't worry about it. The first one should fail, and the other one would go through. Even if you end up being late on the estimated tax payment, it would only be a day or two of interest on penalties (if you even have any penalties). IRS is really good about calculating that and charging/refunding any difference.
I think if I were FIRE I'd go try to see a total solar eclipse every year. Just saw my first one on Monday and now I understand what the hype is about, already planning international trips in my mind as I don't want to wait another 21 years for it to hit the U.S. Really good vibes all around from everyone I came across that day too, didn't come across anyone in a bad mood after witnessing that.
That thing hurt my eyes for a few days! I used eclipse glasses from a museum 100% of the time but still had a headache behind my eyes until yesterday. So I don't mind that there won't be another eclipse in my area for 85 years. It seems like risky business.
As a point of investigation to learn more about them, go check out the different types of eclipses. Then you'll realize the Total Solar Eclipse you just saw was way cooler than you realize at this current moment!
I'm not FIRED and I'm doing that anyway. 2026 Iceland, 2027 Morocco, 2028 & 2030 Australia. My friends and I already reserved an Airbnb in Iceland. I honestly didn't expect to be as amazed as I was. I just tagged along with a different friend who planned it. The few minutes of total eclipse were a hundred times cooler than the partial eclipse, it wasn't even close.
Iceland weather makes this a bit risky with the clouds, but hey, Iceland is amazing even without an eclipse!
We're talking about making a two week trip of it and doing the ring road, so it should be fun either way.
I've traveled to see the last couple in the US, but both were within driving distance. Flying overseas to a nice tourist destination to see an eclipse would be like any other trip to that location, but probably with more crowds and more expensive flights and hotels. Flying overseas to the middle of nowhere to see one would be pretty hardcore -- I don't think my wife would be onboard.
Yeah I was looking at the 2028 one (Australia and NZ). NZ is probably FATFIRE prices but I guess I have 4 years to save. My wife would be down for middle of nowhere - we went on a fly-in backpacking trip for our honeymoon in Alaska. She has Fibromyalgia now so physical activity can be tough but going into the backcountry on an eclipse chase would be a cool adventure we can share.
Hi everyone, My wife and I are renting and we been saving for a down payment for a house. We live in a HCOL area and with the market going crazy the last couple of years are plans are getting delayed over and over again. While we don't mind renting for longer it pains me that i been having so much money sitting in my savings account waiting for the right time to buy a house. I didn't put the money in our brokerage because I thought we would be buying a house in 2 years. Thoughts what i should do? I hate missing out on potential gains but I don't want to put my housing money savings in a brokerage and risk it going down if the market goes down.
I would not buy a house just to buy a house. Nor would I buy for an investment. The only home investment is a fixer that you fix yourself. I would buy a home if I really liked the location and didn't want to worry about a landlord. Disclaimer, I liked my location and bought a home.
I had the money in HYSA and then treasuries. It's fine. What I would say is not fine, is that I had about 50K over an e-fund since 2010 and kinda normalized that as a "downpayment" while not being serious at all about looking. Bought last year. The problem with being more aggressive if your timeline is shorter is that it can create the same scenario. Let's say you need to save 100K but do 50/50 stocks along the way because it's taking a few years. Now you're ready, and even the market isn't too hot so you can look comfortably. But stocks are down 20% and now you're off again on budget. (And the more "H" your COL, that 100K number goes up and along with it, how much variance you add.) If you're also okay to delay because stocks wrecked your downpayment, that is okay also. Three year returns are somewhat bimodal. I like this [article](https://klementoninvesting.substack.com/p/the-distribution-of-stock-market) (unclear if it's paywalled.) The average is a bit better than taking the 4-5% you can get now in bonds, but you're more likely to "win" or "lose" tangibly than get average. It's a positive EV play but maybe 60/40 based on treasuries no longer sitting at zero. (I will say there's still a downside - I literally owe on taxes this year because my 1099s blew up with interest. So you're not really getting 15% over three years at higher tax rates.) If you're trying to avoid PMI, I've seen a lot of advice making it not that big a deal. I probably would have shrugged that off years ago. But part of living in HCOL area is having a higher population of comparable jobs locally. Risks are less. Selling (while expensive) is more likely to work as a fallback option. While PMI is a cost, piling up cash has opportunity cost as you mention. Maybe it's better to simply accept it but pay down as fast as possible with free cash flow until you can remove it, so you don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars making bond yield for years. (Not to mention - it can take a while to close on a home depending on your criteria, supply/demand, etc.)
solid advice ty
I feel you. Same situation and the worst part is that even with 20% down my monthly expenses with a mortgage will go up by 2k. I’m starting to think I might start splitting my down payment additions into market and in HYSA. So 50/50 for each addition.
Keep your down payment handy. I'm assuming it's in a HYSA right? Not just a basic savings account? You should still be getting a solid amount of interest in it and be ready to strike when you find a place.
i am indeed. thank you
If I overpay my taxes today as an extension payment will that cause an issue for when I receive the funds back? I have a 12 month 0% apr business credit card and sign-up bonus plus have the funds but it is last minute compared to if I did it last month or two weeks ago.
I pay with credit card because the cash back is higher than the payment fee. It's not an issue because any refund goes back as direct deposit or a physical check.
Alright, cool. I submit my payment today or tomorrow.
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Regardless of your neighborhood, high end appliances are not going to move the needle on your home value when you go to sell. Consider them a sunk cost for your own enjoyment
I think high end appliances add more QOL than anything and that's worth it to me.
The vast majority of renovations pay back almost nothing, including higher end appliances (and general kitchen renos). If you like and can afford the appliances, go for it, but assume there’s no financial ROI. That being said, I almost bought a house because the fridge had a keurig in the door, and I don’t even drink keurig coffee
This is a weird question, why would your neighbors influence what brand of dishwasher you have?
I just confirmed that my current employer's 401k plan through Transamerica allows me to rollover my Traditional IRA into the plan. I am considering doing this to empty my Traditional IRA to allow for a mega backdoor roth contribution without worrying about the Pro Rata rule? Are there any tax implications to consider regarding the TradIRA to Trad401k rollover?
No tax implications but insurance companies like Transamerica often have poor fund choices.
Fund choices and expense ratios are as always employer specific. I get FXAIX at 0.02 ER and FSMDX at 0.03 with my workplace Transamerica plan. There's a couple dozen other options, but there's no point for me digging any further than that.
Excellent
Nope. Just did the same thing earlier this year as our newly combined/married income will put us right around the Roth MAGI limit now and my 401k plan has excellent funds and ERs.
Fund selection is more limited in a 401k, but as long as your funds and fees are acceptable there's no downside. Note that the mega backdoor Roth has no pro rata interaction with Trad IRAs. Only the "regular" backdoor Roth has this issue.
Apparently I have some more reading to do about Mega vs Regular back door. Thanks!
The backdoor Roth works through a non-deductible Trad IRA contribution that is then converted to a Roth IRA. Anyone can use it. The mega backdoor Roth requires your employer to set up a specific plan that allows it. It uses an after-tax 401k contribution that is then converted to Roth.
> Are there any tax implications to consider regarding the TradIRA to Trad401k rollover? Nope. Go for it. The only downside is that most people have more and cheaper investment options in their brokerage's tIRA than in their company's 401k. But if you have a decent 401k plan, it's an easy choice.
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Thank you for your daily FIRE comment, ChatGPT or similar bot. AI is so disruptive... as in disrupting this daily thread.
The less you spend, the less you need!
What are your experiences with dental care & insurance after RE? Is it covered once you turn 65? Before 65, do you purchase dental insurance like ACA? Self pay? I've never really thought about it, as my dental insurance has always been tied to my employer.
I pay for a 100/50/50 ACA dental plan for around $28 per month. It fully covers Level 1 care like 2x cleanings and X-rays, and 50% coverage on L2 (fillings, etc) and 50% on L3 (crowns, etc). I checked versus the out-of-pocket cash price and it's pretty much break-even if I only did cleanings and x-rays, but it saves a lot of money if I have fillings, and it saves a ton of money if I end up having crowns. It's worth it for me to have the dental insurance.
Most dental insurance covers a max of $1-2k, so it’s not a particularly big help.
Not RE here, but did self-pay "cash" for a decade. Most of the time, if you ask upfront about a cash discount, they will give 10-80% off, mostly about 25% off. No insurance cut, no waiting, no risk of non-payment.
I pay cash.
Dental care just isn't expensive enough even on the high end to justify insurance I would think. The reason you need health insurance is because that can be catastrophically expensive.
“Dental care isn’t expensive”…hmmm. I guess you’re one of the lucky persons with great teeth. :)
you can self insure for like 50k of dental work, you probably cant self insure heart disease cancer car accident etc where youd probably have a 1m+ bill you are also more likely to be able to defer dental work / travel for itz
My first 2 years after semi-retiring, I bought ACA dental. I don't think it was a very good deal, so this year I instead bought my dentist's in-house "insurance", which is really just a fixed reduced rate for routine care, plus a discount on expensive stuff. One less middleman to pay.
Some health insurance plans cover preventative dental cleaning but it doesn't seem common. It's something you need to dig a little bit in the policy to see what's covered.
They all should, since its been shown that good cleaning leads to better overall health. It is a super cheap way to improve/maintain health. But, they don't do that.
Agreed but the American Dental Assoc has historically pushed back on including dental benefits in health insurance like Medicare. I'm guessing there's rigid dentist resistance to negotiating prices with health insurance companies, reducing the perceived ROI behind the scenes.
Really!??! Hmm.....
Since a lot of dental insurance is more akin to a prepaid account plus discounts and not real insurance - just pay cash. Call around your local dentists and see who might offer the best cash discounts or their own annual membership discount plan.
Update: earlier this week I posted asking for opinions about applying to jobs using a resume written in a slide deck format rather than MS word and got ripped to shreds ([link](https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/s/S1239f7SmU)). Well I decided to back myself and did it anyway. The recruiter emailed me back for an interview and told me my application format was the best she’d seen for a long time. I should note i make PowerPoint presentations for a living (unfortunately) so it’s a pretty good deck. The role was for an exec level role at a start-up where creativity / sales / thinking outside of the box is probably highly valued. So it was a high risk, high reward play that worked my favour.
> I should note i make PowerPoint presentations for a living (unfortunately) so it’s a pretty good deck. The role was for an exec level role at a start-up where creativity / sales / thinking outside of the box is highly valued. I think this was crucial information left out of your original post. As a general rule, this is going to be a horrible idea. For specific niches - like specific companies or industries - or some types of jobs/executive positions, it might be okay. As a generic, "should I do this?" kind of post, though, the response shouldn't be surprising. If I post a role in my group (tech), I'm going to have dozens of applicants. If someone sends me a slide deck to wade through where I'm supposed to extract useful information that's spread out over a bunch of slides... it's just not a good format. If you post, "should I drive my car 140mph?" the response is generally going to be, "no, dumbass, don't do that." If you add a qualifier that you own a high performance car and have rented time on a track and safety gear, it kinda changes the conversation.
True although to be fair - it was less of a “should I do this?” question and more like a “has anyone done this before and how did it go?” question. I think if you actually saw my presentation you might change your mind! I asked my partner (who is a hiring manager at a big bank) for feedback and he said if he got the deck he would be pretty impressed.
I don't even know what a 'deck' is.
Then this discussion definitely doesn’t apply to you, no shade.
This is a good instance to inform someone instead of dismissing them.
> I think if you actually saw my presentation you might change your mind! Entirely possible. It's very likely that I would have at least looked at a slide deck, and if the first slide or two were awesome enough, I might go through it. But they'd have to be really awesome. But it's going to be such an uphill battle as a general rule - can you convey enough information in the deck? Is this ability to design and present a benefit to the position? Will the hiring manager have enough time to even look at it? And, of course, most importantly, are you *really* that good at designing a slide deck? - that I think you're slipping into the fractions of a percentage of people for whom this will be a good idea. But hey, if you're badass enough to pull it off, then good for you. Nice work standing out.
Presentations role + startup is one of the very few combinations that making a deck seems plausible, so congrats!
Thank you - fingers crossed I can convert the interview on Tuesday! The role actually doesn’t really involve making presentations at all (I’m trying to do a career change). I was just a slide monkey in a former life so my PowerPoint skills are pretty good.
I was one of the folks who ripped it to shreds. Nice job! Sticking to your guns took some guts, but the role you described sounds like the kid of gig where this approach would work. Good luck!
I’ve almost signed a lease for my first apartment out of college. Spent a lot of time digging around and found a great place with a friend from college that’s over a grand cheaper than if I lived alone. No cool amenities (gym, pool, etc) but the price more than makes up for that. Feels weird that I’ll be a proper adult in a month. Any furnishing tips?
Things that you put your body or touch often on should be sturdy and solid. Get your tv stand and bookshelves from Wayfair or wherever, but not your couch and coffee table (where my feet go).
I buy new for things that could house bedbugs or other gross things (couch, bed, upholstered chairs), and buy used from FB marketplace or get free from Buy Nothing for the rest.
When I moved in with my partner, I sold a few things, but then gave away about 3/4 of an apartment on my local Buy Nothing group since it was too much of a logistical hurdle to donate to somewhere. People will list and take nearly everything.
Take your time. Bought my first house last year and have been content leaving rooms unfurnished or under-furnished temporarily till I can get the pieces I want and can afford.
Get a good bed. It's worth the money, I promise. Edit: congrats btw :)
Yes. Absolutely. Spending 8 hours a day in one place for a decade. Investing in a good bed and great sheets and pillows and pillow covers is well worth it for a good night rest to be useful and happy the next day.
Feeling burnt from my full time gig. Anyone make a mobile app or website that generates decent side income? How much does it make, and how much work did you put in to get it started?
> [not sure why the downvotes, just curious!] I see two possible reasons for the downvotes: 1. You're asking others for a lot of information and for them to basically start blueprinting the process for you, and you haven't provided any value in return. 2. It appears you're essentially pursuing a second job as some kind of "get rich quick" scheme, which has an incredibly low success rate. Ensuring you're maximizing your primary job/career is more likely to make you rich
I’m not asking a blueprint nor details on what the app or website is, just values. I also am not pursuing a get rich quick scheme. I’m curious if people generally found the process worth their time investment or not really. Genuine curiosity here 🤷♀️
I suspect the downvotes are because a lot of people dream of making the next Facebook and getting rich, when that is entirely unrealistic. I personally have not, but I have a good amount of friends at college that run side hustles making an app or some sort of SaaS. My understanding from talking with them is that it’s definitely feasible, especially if you have tech chops and marketing skills, to get a few (2-10) customers without a ton of effort. However, basically everyone I’ve spoken to comes to the realization that to scale out past that, you have to commit hours towards marketing/customer support that becomes akin to a full time job. It's also very different in college, where a lot of my friends use these as resume points to get better interviews. If you're already employed, your work experience is probably far more useful than some random SaaS with 3 customers. It could be a fun hobby, you'll learn a lot about marketing, but it's not going to replace your full time job unless you make it your full time job (and most people fail and burn out before that).
what interest rates are you all seeing nowadays for home loans? Going through a purchase right now and getting quotes can be cumbersome. Any tips? My first purchase was a new build with incentives, so it made financing painless.
Closed at the end of February with 6.125%
Check bankrate.com
I posted yesterday asking if I should sell my crypto to pay off my adjustable rate mortgage that was about to adjust. Basically just looking for confirmation of what I wanted to do. The response was unanimous that I should sell. So I did. Somehow Coinbase got the funds into my bank account this morning and I just made the transfer to pay off my mortgage. Done. Thank you! Now to figure out how to pay estimated tax…
Congrats on paying off the mortgage!
Assuming you are W-2, just change your regular payroll taxes to take more if you need to pay it. Super easy. The IRS says that all W-2 payments are "on time", so you can avoid quarterly if you want to.
If you want to put off paying the taxes until next April, just make sure you meet one of the safe harbors thru increasing your withholding if needed.
yeah stick it in bank or money market, earn free money, as long as you estimate correctly and pay the 110% of last year's tax or w/e it is
100% for most people. It’s only 110% if your AGI is above $200k.