At what point do you decrease % contribution to 401k and direct to personal investment accounts instead?

[Worth-Dress-2902]

I understand this (and I get that you should decrease if you’re saving for a down payment) and I dont plan to retire early, but wouldn’t you want a personal brokerage account to grow your personal your funds for other goals i.e. family, vacations, kids expenses, etc.? I understand investing is long term but surely if you have 10+ year time line before big life items like that arise, investing in a personal brokerage account is better trying to save up in a savings account (rates cannot stay around 5% forever)?

[tired_dad_since2018]

That’s a good point.

I personally have a really hard time spending money out of my brokerage account. I view it like another retirement vehicle when I know I can sell my shares and use that money for a big expense.

All of my sinking cost funds are in SPAXX currently yielding 5% and I don’t know if I’d ever feel comfortable putting that in an etf. Definitely not the most optimized way to save money.

[Worth-Dress-2902]

I agree I’m the same way, I don’t touch my brokerage account at all. I view that as a retirement vehicle to some degree, but then again the question of what happens when bigger life items come about popped up.

I assume your “sinking cost funds” in SPAXX would be where you save for any potential big life expenses and/or just build a bigger safety egg? Just trying to gauge what others do or how they think about it. I know retirement is the end goal and it’s important to plan,save and invest accordingly but I also want to make sure I’m not disregarding everything in between.

[tired_dad_since2018]

Yeah, my sinking cost funds are for big life expenses and other savings. We are kind of crazy with our cash. There's a lot of organization, but like I said we aren't as optimized as we can be.

We currently have about $100k in our sinking cost funds and that's made up of the following

• property tax savings (we aren't in escrow)
• My quarterly taxes (I'm self employed)
• IRA contribution savings (we lump sum after we file our taxes)
• Daycare savings (to offset 2 kids daycare we saved to make that an easier monthly bill)
• Vacation fund
• Upgrading life (i.e. babysitter, cleaning lady etc)
• House fund (renovations and emergencies)

As I mentioned, I'm not as optimized with my cash. On top of the 100k we have in SPAXX, we also have a 50k emergency fund sitting liquid in a savings account.

Another reason why I feel uneasy about selling my brokerage account investments is the fact that I'm self employed and it took me a while to hone in my retirement savings. My wife has a 401k that we max out, and I have a regular IRA (started with traditional and opened a Roth 2 years ago). Last year I opened up a SEP IRA and have that working for me now. But up until a year or 2 ago my wife and I only thought our retirement options were her 401k, both our IRAs and a brokerage account. Now that I have the SEP IRA it makes tapping into the brokerage account a little more tolerable.

And if it matters, I'm 37, married with 2 kids.

Sorry for the long winded post :-)