I’m not sure what the problem is with how your father passed. He had a bunch of money and spent it. Maybe that was his plan. Knowing how much you can withdraw (3-4%) is kind of easy for someone who knows the basics of investing. You haven’t provided any details that day he didn’t retire because nobody told him he had enough money

I’m not sure what you’re hoping to get out of EJ other than a false sense of security.

In terms of your wife’s family being happy with EJ - based on what? For someone handing off wealth management, they have no basis of comparison. Are they comparing their returns to the market? It’s like evaluating a doctor - for the most part, outside of bedside manner, how can you evaluate if someone’s doing a good job? A doctor who had a patient die from cancer may be doing a better job than one whose patient lived

Hi! I know paying more for your car is a good idea because you can pay it off faster but if the 550 is not set to be going towards your principal just pay the 476. I do the same thing when I pay more for my car but honestly the more money you pay the more goes your interest instead of the principal. Cut out the coffee, now this is a hard one because I know we need our coffee and cut out the eating out. Shop only if you need to really need something new. We don’t have to follow every trend there is, that’s another 200 you can save. If you cut those out you can save $574

To add my two cents to your great explanation, at age 28, I'd be 100% in equities with 0% bonds and treasuries. But to each his own. OP took an aggressive approach and appears comfortable with the risk.

Maybe both of us are reading Freddy's comment wrong, but I agree, this is diverse in what I would consider to be an appropriate way.

If you are withdrawing from a traditional ira to buy the home, you would most likely not pay the penalty, but you would still pay the taxes on the 10k, and the taxes would be dependent on your income.

This is where asset allocation comes into play. The “general” rule on social media is to have an emergency fund, then invest the rest in 100% S&P500 index funds. We know not to touch the emergency fund. But, if your investments are 100% equity (stocks in the S&P500) how do you rebalance?

Asset allocation adds in a cash and bond position to your investment portfolio so you have three areas to invest your money; cash=opportunity funds, bonds=income, and stocks=appreciation/growth. Everyone’s allocation should be unique to their risk tolerance and your portfolio should be rebalanced periodically (every 6 months or annually works well).

We have a 15% cash, 15% bond, and 70% stock allocation. As stocks were going up in 2020, rebalancing told me to sell stock positions and rebalance my cash and bond positions. As stocks tanked earlier this year, my rebalance had me buying more stocks and reducing my cash and bond positions.

Asset allocation follows buffets, be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. You can never time the market efficiently and emotions always come into play. But, having an asset allocation in place and rebalancing to the set allocation removes all of that. You simply sell/buy what is needed to get back into balance.

Haha yea, how could I forget the app.

Switch fields to something in STEM that makes more.

That’s fair. I’m not really sure how to even approach that portion if investing. Just don’t want to get down the road and realize i’m in the same position as my dad.

Source - I rented out half of my duplex for ~ 5 years. I'm not sure how it would work with renting out a single shared dwelling space, but might be worth investigating.

Also look into if your employer offers any after tax contributions with in service distributions to use the mega back door roth to go over cap as well as making use of the new 529 to roth conversion for the tail end of a 20 year plan to fund your roth with up to 35k.

May I ask where in Pittsburgh? The buses actually are pretty good here, and supplementing that with Uber or Lyft works well.

Or, catching a Lyft from Highland Park all the way across to Greenfield to see friends is like $30 roundtrip for me... which I could do every day all month on an $800 car budget.

https://www.lyft.com/rider/fare-estimate

If you live in the suburbs, all bets are off, but the city is actually pretty good at this.

Since you have a roommate/tenant, you could possibly take advantage of real estate rental deductions, if you were to report that income using Schedule SE (might be a different name now). You'd have to pay taxes on the rental income, but you get to deduct a proportional amount of acquisition expenses (closing costs + purchase price, any capital improvements to the structure) on a depreciation schedule, and can also deduct the proportional amount of more regular expenses (property tax, insurance, mortgage interest (I think), landscaping/trash removal etc). The "proportional" part is usually set as the proportion of square footage that is rented out.

If you go this route, a CPA is a godsend for preparing the depreciation schedule for the property.

You should look in to the funds op has chosen.

You've learned to invest yourself. Learning how to calculate when you have enough and how much you can withdraw to not run out of money is just as easy.

You get to keep the fees too, which over 30 years is a LOT.

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To clarify, Vanguard charges 30bps, or 30 basis points, which is 0.30 percent. So for every $100,000 invested they charge $300.

Is no one here pointing out that they want to have a social life even though they plan to move out of the COUNTRY. Downgrade internet plan, keep the lights off, sell the car and get a 1k beater for the 6 months, stop eating out and keep groceries to 150 and you’ll have like $700 every month to save for moving.

Ok I have to ask you - what do you do for a living? Ive been in the same field for over 20 years with a Masters Degree (required) and I don't make that much. Please advise me.

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Actually. Here’s an explanation.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/basispoint.asp

Interesting about the Vanguard Personal Services. I’ll have to check that out. They can answer all of those questions? What does .30bps mean? I’m not familiar with that.

You have to pay for the Vanguard Personal Services. .30bps for assets under management.

It’s ok. It’s cheap and the offerings are Vanguard so an automatic win.

Edward Jones and the ilk will try to put you in annuities and other bs. Unsure about the fees. I don’t trust them though.

They’re not even fiduciary.

I’ve tried personal capital and it was overly complicated and the returns were meh. The tech is good.

Vanguard is boring as fuck. But good. But the tech is atrocious. Like 2003 level app and interface.

Yes, there are IRA custodians that will allow you create a self-directed IRA that lets you invest in almost anything that is legal for an IRA to invest in (real estate, private equity, private stock, unregistered/private REITs, private notes, etc.). One of the more well-known is "Pacific Premier Trust", but there are many competitors for you to compare and consider.

In my experience such IRA custodians charge much higher fees than "ordinary" IRA custodians, and certainly way more than discount brokerages like Vanguard, Fidelity, etc. That is just the nature of the beast. If you're going to do this, you will have to accept the higher fees as part of it. There will likely be ongoing quarterly and/or annual maintenance fees, and pretty much any action you take in the IRA, including buying the notes you're talking about, will require paying a substantial fee for them to handle the paperwork.

Sell the car and buy a beater for $500. Insured collision only. When you move, sell the beater - you could probably still get $500 for it, or $200 for a quick sale

Target date funds are designed for people who don’t know how to invest their retirement money. They are well-diversified. They are automatically re-balanced on a regular basis. The asset allocation automatically adjusts as you get closer to retirement. You pick the fund closest to year you turn 65, then just put money in regularly.

If you want to learn more, look into three fund portfolios and index funds. They aren’t necessary if you have a target date fund, but some people like to be a bit more involved with their money.

FYI, I did three fund portfolio until a few years ago, when I switched to target date fund.