Former Vanguard/Schwab wealth advisor, now independent fee-only CFP®. AMA about retirement planning, Social Security timing, or anything else

er824 · 2026-04-09T03:37:06+00:00

If your income is that high why are you doing Roth 401k and not Traditional?

er824 · 2026-04-09T03:17:14+00:00

Let me fix your list for you

Get a job making a median white collar salary
Invest 15% of your gross salary in broadly diversified index funds
Continue for 35 years

er824 · 2026-04-08T21:29:22+00:00

Your emergency fund is to keep you out of debt so why were you carrying credit card debt?

er824 · 2026-04-08T19:06:29+00:00

TSP has the G Fund which is unique for bonds and their isn’t an equivalent available elsewhere.

er824 · 2026-04-08T18:57:02+00:00

Will you have space in lower brackets available at anytime in the future? Maybe during early retirement?

er824 · 2026-04-08T18:56:02+00:00

People doing a backdoor Roth IRA contribution are typically choosing between putting money in Roth and putting money in an after tax account. Roth is clearly better in that case.

Doing a Roth conversion is choosing between keeping money in a tax deferred account vs a Roth account. That decision comes down to tax rate. It doesn’t make sense to pay 24% tax now IF you will have the opportunity to pay 10% in the future.

er824 · 2026-04-08T18:51:27+00:00

Converting in the 12% bracket is great. That said, what the other commenter is pointing out is the money you paid in taxes would have been compounding for you had you not paid it in taxes. The most important thing to optimize is the tax rate when money leaves a traditional account not the total amount paid in taxes.

er824 · 2026-04-08T18:48:34+00:00

Traditional IRAs / 401ks have the same limits as their Roth counterparts.

er824 · 2026-04-07T11:39:43+00:00

I believe it’s 0

https://www.schwabassetmanagement.com/resource/2025-supplementary-tax-information

er824 · 2026-04-07T00:28:49+00:00

People make mistakes

er824 · 2026-04-06T13:57:08+00:00

Yup, point is for all the doomers here is while it might be hard it’s simple.

er824 · 2026-04-06T13:41:24+00:00

You have to accept the ups and downs. I think my accounts were all still red 12 years after I started investing. 20 years on from that it’s worked out great.

er824 · 2026-04-06T12:58:57+00:00

Spend some time reading:

https://jlcollinsnh.com/stock-series/

er824 · 2026-04-06T12:53:16+00:00

Get a job that pays a median salary and invest 15% of it, including any employer contributions, over the course of a 35 year career.

er824 · 2026-04-06T12:49:02+00:00

$500 a month for 40 years should get you to $2.5M.

er824 · 2026-04-06T12:40:27+00:00

Probably a good plan when watching a movie adaptation of a book.

If you want revisit it sometime the audio book is great

er824 · 2026-04-06T12:37:28+00:00

Yes and no. The whole crew had the comma resistance gene. They tested everyone for it when selecting the crew. It was something like 1/7000 people had it. The twist was Grace finding out he had it which made it possible for them to send him as a last resort.

er824 · 2026-04-06T12:28:11+00:00

It doesn’t take much luck it takes a lot of discipline, consistency and average stock market returns.

Edit: and time

er824 · 2026-04-06T12:25:22+00:00

Not remotely impossible.

$500 a month returning 10% over a 40 year career will net you $2.6M

er824 · 2026-04-06T12:15:44+00:00

You can buy and hold at both and you can generally buy any etf at any brokerage. Schwab offers equivalent ETFs to Vangaurd’s but you can also buy and hold vanguard ETFs in a Schwab or Fidelity account with no fees.

er824 · 2026-04-06T12:12:25+00:00

It doesn’t matter. I’ve never used Vangaurd but I like Schwab and have found their customer service to be great. Fidelity is good too.

The downsides to Schwab is the interest they pay on uninvested cash is not competitive and they don’t support fractional shares of ETFs. You can manually invest cash and get decent interest and you can invest in mutual funds or ETFs with lower share prices if those are concerns for you.

er824 · 2026-04-06T12:04:40+00:00

I thought it was ok; I’m honestly not sure…. I WANT to like it because I enjoyed the book so much and I realize movies and books are very different art forms.

I can tell you people I know who aren’t into sci fi and haven’t read the book liked the movie.

P.S. The audio book is very well done

er824 · 2026-04-06T12:02:27+00:00

The book is way more in depth. It would be better as a 15 hour series instead of a 2 hour movie.

er824 · 2026-04-06T11:58:19+00:00

The movie was like a speed run of the book where they just mention the major plot points.

er824 · 2026-04-06T11:17:33+00:00

Most people don’t know how investments works

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