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Decided to payoff my mortgage.
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Track spend:
1) create a simple view in excel for all your spend activities (you can also get an app for this which links to all your accounts and tells you where you are spending your money)
2) identify areas where you can squeeze the spend for a bit more savings
Start saving:
1) Max out 401k
2) Create a brokerage account (Fidelity, etc.) and start putting money against ETFs: VOO or QQQ
3) Do #2 consistently on a monthly basis
Start reversing priority:
First max out your 401K, and put a fixed amount of money in brokerage monthly.. and then see how much you have left, and replan your monthly spend based on remainder. If that means your rent has to be 2100 so be it, if your food spend has to be 100 less so be it. Get rid of redundant subscriptions you don’t need. Buy cheaper gas. Stop impulsive buying of anything expensive (or cheap for that matter). Keep expense on your car also lower. Switch to better cheaper car insurance. All these things when you start to shave off small bits, it would help in a big way.
110K salary sounds like a lot but for where you are living it can blow away real fast on a monthly basis.
I live near Ramsey btw, things are costly around here. Good luck! Hope above helps.
dave Ramsey :-) is a good person to live close to. no wonder you have such knowledge.
Subject Expert
Do things in this order -
1. Create a budget where you are saving 15% of your income.
2. Build up 6 months of savings in High Yield Savings account. You don’t mention a safety net (husband, savings family) so it’s important you have good emergency savings.
3. Invest in Traditional 401k just to get any match (usually around 5%) choose S&P index Fund
4. Start putting money in Roth IRA. (Index stock fund) This has the advantage you can withdraw contributions and will supplement your emergency savings.
5. Put more money in Traditional 401k, (index stock fund) up to the max
This plan will likely see you through next 5 years.
Do not look at the investments going up or down. You won’t need them for 25 years, any crash will be meaningless in that timeframe.
Under no condition should you switch to safer funds when there is a crash.
You will not be retiring early, but could retire at regular age (around 67)
Social security will cover about half of your spending at that age.
You do have options to retire earlier if you aggressively save more (it’s possible you can live on $50k or less, though you might not want to)
Or if you climb the career ladder towards $200k, but it seems these are longer term goals for now.
Agreed! I think it’s good to remember that even in a HCOL city, you’re doing really well for your peer group. Some households won’t even see 6 figures in their lifetime, so if the path starts to feel hard, maybe think about lifestyle adjustments that help reduce your expenses. Rooting for you EA!
Start where you can. Does your company match? If they match try your best to at least put away that much to optimize. If not, start with 1% and mindfully adjust your life, then 2% and adjust again and so on
Realistically for your location and your job title, FIRE is pretty hard without depriving yourself of any joy. At this point it’s not too late to go back to school to learn a new skill. A friend of mine became a nurse in 2 to 3 years and is now making a lot more than she was before.
She isn’t looking to FIRE she’s looking to retire. Executive assistants have huge earning potential. She’s making more than an average nurse’s salary now.