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Background: DINKs age 32, no debt Annual pre-tax retirement savings $62K (His 401k + match, Her 403b and 457b) Annual post-tax savings $51K (His and Hers Roth IRAs + $40K to investments) Goals: The main goal of 2015 is not to lose too much savings momentum with a baby coming and my career changing (postdoc ending, going for faculty jobs now). 1. Maintain maximum funding of 401k + match, 403b, and Roth IRAs 2. If I don't have a job starting fall 2015, pick up a lecture or two to max my 457b 3. Decide where we're going to save for college and begin 4. At least $30K to investments. Don't spend too much on the baby, future us, PLEASE!
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Dec 14, 2014 22:44
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 01:25 |
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balancedbias posted:401k (or 403b) + 457 =17.5k + 17.5k = 35k Yep, the pretax accounts are 3 x $17.5K ($52.5K) plus my husband's annual match and a bit of deferred comp ($9K). I actually forgot about my annual deferred comp ($3K) so the total there is $64K, making the total into retirement accounts (+ Roth IRAs) = $75K. balancedbias has it right about the $40K going into a taxable brokerage account. We're saving pretty aggressively to try to make up for the fact that we were both in grad school until age 28.
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Dec 15, 2014 03:02
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Baja Mofufu posted:Goals: Well, I was working on our taxes and I realized that when we decided to simplify our portfolio at the beginning of 2014 we realized about $50K of capital gains. Why did we do this at the beginning of the year and then not think about it until now? Not really sure. Anyway, we're looking at approximately $12K of taxes so that's affected our goals a bit! There are worse problems to have, though. 1. Still possible. Husband will definitely hit his 401K max + match. I've decided to take the maximum amount of maternity leave offered to me (20 weeks, 8 unpaid) so it'll be more difficult for me to hit my 403b max, especially since my employer missed my January 1 contribution. We haven't started saving for the 2016 Roths yet because of the tax bill but the 2015s were done the first week in January. 2. No change. Waiting to hear back from 2 places about a job. 3. No change. Baby is due in April. We're planning to start a Coverdell ESA and a 529 (the Nevada plan with Vanguard). We're going to contribute to the ESA this year and grandparents would like to make contributions to the 529. 4. Probably failure. Only $1K so far. Would have been $5K but...tax bill! At least we haven't spent too much on baby stuff.
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Feb 23, 2015 02:47
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legsarerequired posted:I've been trying to find information on this too and it's surprisingly difficult to find. According to this website, it looks like you can withdraw the principal, but earnings are subject to penalty (Source). The funds could also be used for another relative's education. That's my understanding. Since you're opening it before the kid is born you'll presumably name yourself or your spouse as beneficiary, so when you have the kid it would be like a typical transfer to a family member. There's no "we didn't have a kid" loophole. We were considering doing this but neither of us is ever going to school again and we had no relatives who haven't gone to college yet until our daughter was born.
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Jun 12, 2015 21:38
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Baja Mofufu posted:Background: End of Q2 update. 1. Making good progress. 2. BWM incoming. I had my baby and I've decided to stay home with her for a year. I was planning to put her in day care and go back to work but every instinct I have is screaming not to leave her. Hopefully that doesn't sound like my uterus is aching... On the plus side we are completely prepared for this financially. We were only living off my husband's income, our rent is less than a quarter of his take home, etc. 3. Opened a 529 at Vanguard with cash baby gifts and some of our own money. Still need to open the ESA with TD Ameritrade; that requires a phone call so who knows when that will get done.  4. As I said in my Q1 update we will probably not make this goal since we've only done about $5K. ETA: this was due to a $12K tax bill, not baby spending. We've actually done pretty well on that and haven't spent over the budget yet. Not going out anymore helps.  I also have a 3-year net worth goal just for fun, and we hit our mark for this year already. So that felt pretty good (until a big downturn of course). Baja Mofufu fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 18:35
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Baja Mofufu posted:Goals: Update time. 1. Done. 2. Done, I'm working part time until the end of 2015 when I'll take a year off to spend with my daughter. 3. Done, 529 opened with Vanguard. Set up the link for grandparents to donate, which is working nicely. ESA opened at TD Ameritrade and maxed for 2015. 4. Fail. The 2015 tax bill set us back $12K, and I haven't been keeping up with this at all. So far we've put in about $10K. We will not make this goal, but if we can do $15K I'll be happy. Should be possible since more than half of the difference is sitting in our checking account. Babies are too distracting. Overall I'm comfortable with the amount we spend on the baby. I'll update at the end of the year with how much we saved in goal #4. Otherwise I count this year a success.
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Nov 30, 2015 07:48
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 01:25 |
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Original goals | Horrible $12K tax bill in February | End of Q2 | November (includes updates on goals 1-3) 1. Maintain maximum funding of 401k + match, 403b, and Roth IRAs DONE 2. If I don't have a job starting fall 2015, pick up a lecture or two to max my 457b DONE 3. Decide where we're going to save for college and begin DONE 4. At least $30K to investments. Don't spend too much on the baby, future us, PLEASE!...I marked this as a fail in November, but we rallied and saved up 15K as of today. Plus the 12K tax bill that means we’re only 3K short of the 30K I wanted us to save this year. Coincidentally, that’s about how much we spent on baby stuff…so I'm calling this a NOT BAD! Happy 2016! Tag me please!
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Jan 1, 2016 06:16
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