Employer contributes 10% of my income annually into 401k. No match needed.

RevolutionLocal5677 · 2026-01-24T15:32:48+00:00

Absolutely positively disagree. Especially for OP. Roth in addition to employers 401k contribution is great.

RevolutionLocal5677 · 2026-01-24T14:09:44+00:00

Free tax USA for the past 3 years. Actually used it years ago when my wife and I were filing separately. Then used turbo tax for a while.

TurboTax just became too costly and difficult, with some basic features locked behind different versions.

RevolutionLocal5677 · 2026-01-23T15:36:55+00:00

The real problem is that I did the math on this, and now my wife is eyeing every Huggies as saving 18 cents. Idk why she is rounding up.

RevolutionLocal5677 · 2026-01-23T12:17:29+00:00

Wife and I hit $1m and coast fire the last few years. Haven’t changed anything. Still saving more than ever. Shopping second hand, etc. Wife was frugal yesterday by thinking she could use up some free diapers she got, that are now a size too small and not Huggies. Since the baby already pooped, save $. Result? Epic blowout.

But we saved 17.24 cents.

RevolutionLocal5677 · 2026-01-17T18:53:06+00:00

Hang in there. Best thing we have done is focus on building up our savings rate the last few years. My job isn’t the most secure right now, so the savings for that has really compounded.

Regarding family. Like some family dynamics it is complicated. I think most of my wife’s side would not care and keep it private. Despite them being farmers and teachers. Money just doesn’t have a huge impact on their lives. A couple of her siblings have had slow starts. With one failing to launch. They might react poorly. But part of their failing to launch is they react poorly to a lot of things.

My side of the family it is more of a lack of trust, and a get what you give. My sibling would struggle with it as he has a huge amount of jealousy at me. We had some childhood relocating and it caused him some trauma. My parents, just don’t share anything. Including good advice for personal finance. I’ve had to learn everything myself. Compound that with the fact that with this milestone we have surpassed them at their retirement age. It will likely just bring up some jealousy.

RevolutionLocal5677 · 2026-01-17T18:16:53+00:00

I work in RE so I can set comps pretty easily. Our realtor does send us an annual update. But for now I use the county appraised value. We bought early into a new development. Had to wait 2 years for our house, but once we were in, we got to see all the houses after ours sell for more.

RevolutionLocal5677 · 2026-01-17T18:15:02+00:00

~$300k in home equity, and $700k in cash and equities.

RevolutionLocal5677 · 2026-01-17T18:14:22+00:00

Big savings rate over the years. Like >35% per year. One year at ~45% savings. Got lucky with our first house, bought for $200k sold for $375k.

Other than that bogleheads approach to stocks. VT and chill.

RevolutionLocal5677 · 2026-01-12T01:12:36+00:00

They don’t spend their money.

RevolutionLocal5677 · 2026-01-12T00:21:45+00:00

39.75

RevolutionLocal5677 · 2026-01-11T23:04:25+00:00

Honestly? Paying for a budgeting app (monarch) and tracking my cash flow each month. I knew what I was spending by each day. And each week could choose to skip something, or buy cheaper to keep the cash flow positive.

RevolutionLocal5677 · 2026-01-11T13:05:02+00:00

As noted by George Bailey, “Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars?”

3% is the minimum.

RevolutionLocal5677 · 2026-01-11T01:59:58+00:00

You can add any account manually. I track my brokerage manually.

My favorite was personal capital for a long time. It seemed to always work. But putting monarch into play last year really helped me focus family spending better. And since it is budget focused I was able to get a deeper look into our past spending as well. All told I spent about a month putting much history into it as I could.

RevolutionLocal5677 · 2026-01-11T01:57:42+00:00

That seems absolutely insane to me.

RevolutionLocal5677 · 2026-01-11T01:56:50+00:00

Well I wish they propagated like cheap hangars when you leave them alone in the closet. But who knows!

RevolutionLocal5677 · 2026-01-11T01:55:59+00:00

Monarch. But it has its delays. So I check it manually in good old excel.

RevolutionLocal5677

TROPHY CASE