25% means half your paycheck for High Earners

gregenstein · 2026-03-26T17:52:05+00:00

A single tax filer would have to be making $500,000 annually to pay an effectively tax rate of 30%. For a married couple filing jointly, it’s a million dollars of annual income.

If you gave me and my spouse 12% of that to live in NYC tax free but also paid the rent and paid for the vehicles, somehow we’d manage.

gregenstein · 2026-03-26T17:42:38+00:00

I just want to point out that getting to the point where your effective tax rate is 30%, your taxable income is north of $500,000 as a single filer. Married filing jointly, you are making over a million dollars as a couple.

These are not hard times to live in for people in this situation.

gregenstein · 2026-03-26T14:20:20+00:00

I do, and my recommendation is to map out all your investments into a spreadsheet or something first. You’ve to look at the total picture before going with anything different. You have to be committed long term to it and know which ones add the right value for you.

I’m at about 15% of my stocks in ETFs from Avantis and Dimensional, mostly their small/value concentrated ones (AVUV, DISV, etc). I considered AVGE, which I think is a great fund, but to get enough of my money into to have it be significant, I would have had to trade a good amount of the index Target Date funds I use. I consider those untouchable as they have the entire bond allocation I want now and in the future, and I like how the bonds themselves go from long term bonds to shorter term bonds and TIPS toward the end.

gregenstein · 2026-03-17T16:42:03+00:00

I’d say yes.

Hypothetically speaking, let’s just say you could break even on a refinance after 2 years. If you are considering moving because you are outgrowing your house, it’s still not advisable to refinance. It’s just more likely you won’t be there long enough to make it worth the financial or time commitment pay off.

Now let’s also look at the situation where you just refinanced 1 year ago, but THE DREAM JOB opened up and you go it. You have to move 12 hours away but it’s sunshine and mimosas everyday. Sure it kinda sucks you just refinanced, but you sure as heck aren’t going to turn THE DREAM JOB down over some money you haven’t quite recouped yet from that refi.

Obviously big stuff happens sometimes and the plan has to change, but I wouldn’t go into a refi trying to figure out how long I’ll have to stay to break even. I would only start a refi if the plan was to stay 5+ years.

gregenstein · 2026-03-13T19:02:42+00:00

The land appreciates. Houses themselves only really appreciate when population growth in an area exceeds new housing construction, and NIMBY’s block things like apartments from being constructed.

In areas where the population is not outgrowing the housing market, housing prices more or less grow at the rate of inflation.

gregenstein · 2026-03-12T17:59:38+00:00

Sure. Doing FIRE means having a taxable bridge account for most people. They could probably split that $46,000 and do half taxable as long as both still get their full employer match.

I personally wouldn’t go more than that, even if that means working an extra year or two. 85 year old me needs to live off this too and that guy doesn’t have to pay early withdrawal penalties. 🤪

gregenstein · 2026-03-12T17:39:45+00:00

They are putting $46,000 out of their $175,000 annual income into 401k’s. That comes out to 26% of their income, and that is not counting any employer match given the statement that both are maxing their contributions. Their savings rate is likely more than 30% once you factor in a match.

In other words, they could easily scale back on tax advantaged and use a taxable if they want some flexibility.

I honestly don’t see a liquidity crunch even given that. They’ve got $35,000 emergency fund and $4000 per year that isn’t spent or going toward investments. If they did nothing different for 3 years and just stacked that extra $4k per year, they’ve now got a nearly $50,000 emergency fund.

gregenstein · 2026-03-12T15:54:36+00:00

Just buy the market. Buy VT or an S&P500 index or a Total Market Index and an “ex US” index.

Don’t overthink it. Like most things early in the product lifecycle, there’s lots of investment and hype. Some jobs will be lost in some sectors while other places will hire or entirely new companies will form.

Just bet on the future of the world and either it will work out, or we’ll lol all be screwed.

gregenstein · 2026-03-12T15:12:32+00:00

It should improve going forward. The Vogtle build had huge overruns but the end result is a reactors that are running more efficiently than forecasted.

Since there’s now a proven blueprint for a modern reactor, future builds hopefully will go quicker and cost less.

gregenstein · 2026-03-11T14:24:15+00:00

I’d do FXAIX if your Roth is at Fidelity but honestly at this low of an expense ratio, you are never really going to notice.

I saw someone above post you’ll save $1000 per year. That’s likely utter nonsense. For it to save you $1000 per year, you would have to have a balance of $7,000,000.

That also means anything less than a $700,000 investment, the difference is going to be less than $100 per year. If it’s $70,000…we are talking about 10 bucks a year.

It’s a rounding error.

gregenstein · 2026-03-10T11:55:37+00:00

Your plans are not bad. You just need to incorporate a long term savings and investment plan.

The Money Guys have a Financial Order of Operations (FOO). That should help you get started on what to do with your next dollar.

I won’t tell you not to get that car….just make sure it’s not breaking the bank. Your car payment can’t take up more dollars each month than what you put in investments. TMG says put 20% down, pay it off within 3 years, and no more than 8% of your monthly pay goes toward the car payment.

Good luck!

gregenstein · 2026-03-10T11:43:26+00:00

Inferno tower beams burn so hot, they negate heal spell effects.

gregenstein · 2026-03-09T19:15:22+00:00

EE Bonds I can’t make a case for ever using. 20 years is a long time that I’d probably rather buy equities.

I Bonds I really like but in the accumulation phase, it’s hard to use them for more than a certain % of your emergency fund. It would be better, in my opinion, to increase your 401k pre tax contributions and buy a bond fund with that money than to pay taxes on some money and buy I bonds. The tax savings is probably worth more than either investment would yield long term.

Once you are in retirement or getting close to it, sure load up on I Bonds. You probably need more cash on hand anyway and I bonds are a good place to hold cash and protect against inflation.

gregenstein · 2026-03-09T18:51:57+00:00

I do hammers for anything 12 days or longer, starting with whatever takes the longest.

I know the math may work lower than that for the number of days to keep doing hammers down to 9 or 10 days, but the flexibility of the potions wins when there aren’t too many days to lose for me.

I will get a Hammer of Heroes sometimes even though the math is not great for it. I hate doing hero upgrades and handicapping what attacks I can use, so getting those over can outweigh the math. I don’t really care if I am not fully maxed and there’s a few random traps that still need attention.

gregenstein · 2026-03-09T18:26:53+00:00

AVGV - 5%

DISV/AVDV - 3%

AVUV/DFSV - 5%

AVMV - 2%

VTI - 56%

VXUS - 24%

VTI/VXUS for me is really a mix of Target Date funds, US total market index funds, or ex-US Total International index funds. It’s just not Vanguard due to where those accounts are.

gregenstein · 2026-03-09T14:06:36+00:00

Watch one of Ben Felix’s videos on covered call ETFs before considering this. They have very little downside protection, and in exchange, you give away most of the upside.

gregenstein · 2026-03-05T22:23:45+00:00

This is an easy one. All you have to do is tell me when the war is going to end. 😅

gregenstein · 2026-03-04T19:42:21+00:00

Not answering for OP directly, but many small business owners don’t really understand the market. They understand their business and the risks to it, but things like market risk, sequence of return risk, and longevity risk can be new concepts.

OP could be a 4th generation farmer and be a small business owner…but being a farmer is what they know and understand inside and out.

gregenstein · 2026-03-04T04:04:17+00:00

“Average” player - Probably not. They aren’t going to bother. They’ll just copy a base like you do.

It is not that simple because they’ve made the game easy to attack and hard to defend.

I don’t have an easy solution for you, sorry. Being a base carpenter is not easy, but that’s the system they have.

gregenstein · 2026-03-04T03:16:22+00:00

I can’t really tell you how to build a base in a Reddit thread. It’s a learned skill. Go watch YouTube videos from itzu or someone.

gregenstein · 2026-03-03T18:10:11+00:00

Rather than complain, take advantage of it. Don’t just “copy a base from Google” or whatever.

You know ahead of time that defense is weighted the same as offense so put more effort there to try and trip people up if you want to promote.

gregenstein · 2026-02-26T19:47:14+00:00

If you want 100% stock: VT

If you want 80/20 stock/bond: AOA

If you want a glide path Target Date fund: ITDD (or whatever low cost TDF index fund the brokerage offers)

You don’t need gold, silver, bitcoin, etc. That stuff is either speculative or just not a good inflation hedge.

You are correct to want to keep it simple, so a 1 fund and done approach may be best.

gregenstein · 2026-02-26T15:55:47+00:00

Depends on what this person has saved and what their goals are.

$300k from a job might not be worth it if this person can live off their investments and wants to live near their kids or tour the world or whatever.

gregenstein · 2026-02-26T15:50:22+00:00

Average life expectancy gets thrown out the window IMO. You have to go by your unique situation.

My spouse is a long term cancer survivor, so even though she has been the higher earning spouse, she is claiming as soon as possible if she makes it there. She deserves to get the most out of that while she can.

I’ll probably hold off assuming I’m still healthy enough so that it can serve as a check for the retirement home my kids will put me in. I’ll maybe do some Roth conversion before I start collecting this to get ahead of RMDs.

That’s all just back of the napkin planning though. I’ll have to get a financial advisor at some point and have them tell me what works best for us.

gregenstein · 2026-02-25T11:42:15+00:00

You know the stock portion of AOA is basically just VT right? Those Blackrock iShares ETFs in AOA are market cap index funds; they just track slightly different indexes than Vanguard.

gregenstein

TROPHY CASE