re: Anyone that would help me with my finances? Update (4/7/23) - Page 1

I have been following and You have been getting real good advice and seem to have a good plan. I Personally like to use ETF's in my IRA because you can sell in the middle of the trading day if you decide to make changes. I personally use VTI for whole market, VTHR for small cap and VWO for some emerging market exposure. Diversification is key for me but you need to do what is comfortable for you. Good luck!

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Putting the money in a traditonal vs roth ira seems to make the most sense to me (since I expect to be in the same or lower tax bracket later in life). And if I could put in the max for 2022 before april (12k for my wife and I) and amend my 2022 tax return. Then I could put in another 13k this year for 2023, correct?

I looked into doing all of that and found how to amend my return.

The money would be post tax, but that would be adjusted to pre-tax basically by the ammendment, correct?

Then I plan to up our 401k contributions over the year to max them.

So I would get max ira contribution for 2022. Max ira contribution for 2023, and most likely max our 401k for 2023.

Does all this sound correct and like a smart move?

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Impressive.

With those changes you will rapidly grow your retirement savings

One last thing some people find helpful. If you (collectively as husband and wife) earn a little over 100k annually and your goal is to save an extra X dollars a year?

Break up the goal for savings into days of work. You might find an extra two days of work nets you a thousand a month and allows you to max out your IRA or 401k in future years.

Got the traditonal IRAs for my wife and I set up with Fidelity and used a promo code to get 100 dollars for putting in 50. (plan to max them though)

Got the banks linked, but waiting for small deposits to finish verification. Then I'll fund them


I also looked into the Fidelity 500 index fund and decided to switch to that. So I switched our 401k past and future contributions to it.


Going to work on uping our 401k contributions this week to what we can now. And will increase later if we decide to remove ibond money later this year.

Once I get the Iras funded I'll do the tax ammendment for 2022.

Thanks again for all the help. I really appreciate it.

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Website is tough trying to figure rate etc but I think what it shows as interest has 3 month lag built in so that's what you get if you withdrew.....I think lol

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Until your I Bond investment reaches 5 years, TreasuryDirect will always show the current value minus the latest three months of interest. You have earned that interest, but TD won’t show it to you, because if you sold out today, you’d get the amount they indicate.

In the case of the November 2021 purchase, that $10,000 I Bond is actually worth $10,856, even if TD shows you $10,604

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Congratulations on the new job and more earnings! Keep plugging away and remember it's not a sprint.

You are doing a good job of planning. Keep spending time learning and planning.

Look into 20-year term insurance. The cost does not increase for 20 years. I bought some around your age with the intent that I needed insurance in my middle age years, but would not need it if my investments had me in good shape later. It worked for me and I let mine expire at the end of the 20 years.

I am a big low cost index person and have the majority of my stock money invested in a mix of S&P 500, Russell 1000, and Russell 2000. I own smaller amounts of individual stocks in my "play account". The play account kept me interested and kept me educating myself about the stock market. I generally buy and hold for a long time and made in excess of 500% on my winners over many years. Apple, Google, Waste Management, Amazon, Applied Materials, Nvidia were some of my winners. I had some losers, too. My play account was probably 15-20% of my stock market money. Also, I always wanted non-retirement investments because I knew that I didn't want to work to retirement in the high stress environment that my primary income was coming from.

I would not discount Roth IRAs and would fund both traditional and Roth retirement accounts at your age. Maybe at a 50-50 mix. There is no way to know what the tax environment will be in 20+ years. Tax diversification will give you options later in life. Plus you are in a relatively low tax rate at your income so Roth money held many years will generally grow more than tax deferred money.

Put some money in HSA accounts annually. We all have medical expenses so take advantage of the tax savings.

Once I built a decent amount of wealth, I moved some of my stock money into real estate. I could not have done this without penalties if I had only funded retirement accounts over the years. There are serious profit margins in real estate! It can be risky, but it is not that different than stock risk if the money invested is "investment" money and not money needed in the short term. My assets made it easy for me to get loans for rentals and new construction in the housing market. The spec house investment world is very lucrative.

I semi-retired at age 55 using this strategy. I say semi because I spend a good bit of time planning my real estate activities now, and am working on setting my kids/grandkids up using this strategy. Good luck! Keep learning! Keep planning! And Geaux Tigers!