The Intersection of FIRE and Disney

[jen7233]

Good discussion here. There has already been a few different takes on what works for everyone. Different strategies work for different people. I am in the buy a few years old car and drive until it dies camp, but I don’t really care about cars. I just read an article in the paper that the average car payment is now $561 for 69 months, which just seems crazy to me. For the average middle class family it would be very hard to save money and build wealth with those kind of payments.

I drove my last car until the quotes on the work it needed exceeded the value of the car, a point where it basically was dangerous to even be on the road with it with some of the things it was doing. Well, we fall now into that average car payment as addressed in that article, mine is very close to that amount, but less months financed. I do hate paying it, but it's not breaking the bank for us, but yes it's certainly less money that we can put away.

 

[alryan]

I can't believe I read this this whole car buying discussion and commented that a $561 car payment for 69 months is crazy without sharing my story. I still think it is, but I'm feeling a bit like a hypocrite so here it is...What not to do when buying a car!! It's 2003, and I am 30 years old, recently divorced, and because of that really at a pretty low point in my life. I said I don't really care about cars, and really I don't. For reference my first car after graduating for college was a Ford Taurus. I mean what 22 year old buys a Ford Taurus..but anyway. For whatever reason, I really don't even remember, I see this Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder and have to have it. I buy a new one around $28,000, 0% interest for 3 years, $796/month!! Mind you, I am working as a waitress at the time, probably earning about that in one year! But with my reasoning I could "afford" it because the very same week I bought a duplex. My house payment was $525 and my renters paid $500. So I bought a car for as much as my annual salary, with a payment around 60% greater than my house payment. CRAZY, CRAZY, STUPID!!! For sure the single biggest financial mistake I have ever made. Now, did I love that car? I did, I loved driving with the top down with the sun on my face, it was fun. BUT, what if I had instead invested that money? That one decision probably cost me 5 times what I paid for it.

But, we live and learn and can't undo the stupid mistakes we've made in the past. So I learned from it. We've recovered and we'll be fine. But had I done that a few more times the chances of being financially independent at any age would have been pretty slim. I think that is the danger of payments. You see that monthly number, without seeing that whole picture. If I had saved $796/month for 3 years, would I have written a check out for $28,000?

 

[jen7233]

I can't believe I read this this whole car buying discussion and commented that a $561 car payment for 69 months is crazy without sharing my story. I still think it is, but I'm feeling a bit like a hypocrite so here it is...What not to do when buying a car!! It's 2003, and I am 30 years old, recently divorced, and because of that really at a pretty low point in my life. I said I don't really care about cars, and really I don't. For reference my first car after graduating for college was a Ford Taurus. I mean what 22 year old buys a Ford Taurus..but anyway. For whatever reason, I really don't even remember, I see this Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder and have to have it. I buy a new one around $28,000, 0% interest for 3 years, $796/month!! Mind you, I am working as a waitress at the time, probably earning about that in one year! But with my reasoning I could "afford" it because the very same week I bought a duplex. My house payment was $525 and my renters paid $500. So I bought a car for as much as my annual salary, with a payment around 60% greater than my house payment. CRAZY, CRAZY, STUPID!!! For sure the single biggest financial mistake I have ever made. Now, did I love that car? I did, I loved driving with the top down with the sun on my face, it was fun. BUT, what if I had instead invested that money? That one decision probably cost me 5 times what I paid for it.

But, we live and learn and can't undo the stupid mistakes we've made in the past. So I learned from it. We've recovered and we'll be fine. But had I done that a few more times the chances of being financially independent at any age would have been pretty slim. I think that is the danger of payments. You see that monthly number, without seeing that whole picture. If I had saved $796/month for 3 years, would I have written a check out for $28,000?

Would you have written the check? I actually did write the check for my last car in 2009 prior to this one for $26,000. It was a nice feeling to not have a car payment, of course in hindsight I wondered a few things, first I probably should have bought a Toyota or Honda, second was I right to pull the money out and pay in full? There have been a few times over the years of owning that car that I wish I had left that money alone and made payments, and let the interest accrue. Probably a flawed view, but it was a feeling I had often, why did I pull that money out of the fund to pay this off at the buy. Anyway, just another perspective of how a large purchase draws out all kinds of feelings. Large purchases in general give me anxiety overall, our last home I hated putting down the $50k deposit from our nontaxable account, just a dreaded feeling, then I think, well that's the point of saving money for specific purposes, but to actually make the transaction, feels like a whole other thing. We rent now, had to move and had to sell versus being long distance renters, but just saying that I also hate the feeling of pulling out saved money for large purchases.

 

[castoral]

Would you have written the check? I actually did write the check for my last car in 2009 prior to this one for $26,000. It was a nice feeling to not have a car payment, of course in hindsight I wondered a few things, first I probably should have bought a Toyota or Honda, second was I right to pull the money out and pay in full? There have been a few times over the years of owning that car that I wish I had left that money alone and made payments, and let the interest accrue. Probably a flawed view, but it was a feeling I had often, why did I pull that money out of the fund to pay this off at the buy. Anyway, just another perspective of how a large purchase draws out all kinds of feelings. Large purchases in general give me anxiety overall, our last home I hated putting down the $50k deposit from our nontaxable account, just a dreaded feeling, then I think, well that's the point of saving money for specific purposes, but to actually make the transaction, feels like a whole other thing. We rent now, had to move and had to sell versus being long distance renters, but just saying that I also hate the feeling of pulling out saved money for large purchases.

My husband has LOTS of feeling when buying cars. Its more annoying to me than anything else. Our first "big" car purchase was the $40k+ Suburban. We HAD the cash in the bank, but DH couldn't let it go. We ended up taking a very low interest loan on it. Every month I'd make a big point about how much our money earned sitting in savings vs how much interest we just paid. It would drive my husband BONKERS. Lol! We paid it off in maybe 4 months. This is a habit for him...he doesn't like to let money go so I kinda love to tease him about it. He currently has a $8k mower he bought last Jan. Its not really a big enough purchase that we even really talked about it (its like a $10,500 mower he got a great last min deal on before his friend quite a job selling them). Long story short, its on a zero % CC for 5 yrs. OMG I HATE paying that $250 every month!!!! Every month I give him crap. He's right, its 0% but STILL, that $250 comes out of the budget. Period!

 

[alryan]

Would you have written the check? I actually did write the check for my last car in 2009 prior to this one for $26,000. It was a nice feeling to not have a car payment, of course in hindsight I wondered a few things, first I probably should have bought a Toyota or Honda, second was I right to pull the money out and pay in full? There have been a few times over the years of owning that car that I wish I had left that money alone and made payments, and let the interest accrue. Probably a flawed view, but it was a feeling I had often, why did I pull that money out of the fund to pay this off at the buy. Anyway, just another perspective of how a large purchase draws out all kinds of feelings. Large purchases in general give me anxiety overall, our last home I hated putting down the $50k deposit from our nontaxable account, just a dreaded feeling, then I think, well that's the point of saving money for specific purposes, but to actually make the transaction, feels like a whole other thing. We rent now, had to move and had to sell versus being long distance renters, but just saying that I also hate the feeling of pulling out saved money for large purchases.

Do I think I would have written that check? I don't think so. Could I have even delayed gratification for 36 months and continued to save $796/month? Maybe not. Probably not. And while it is certainly possible to have too much anxiety, I think that anxiety we feel with parting with such a large sum of money is for the most part healthy. It makes you really evaluate spending all that money. But your case of having that money sitting in a savings account or whatever and then you decide to finance because the math makes sense, well that's a different story. A much smarter one than mine!

But, I can relate to the anxiety with taking money out. One thing that has helped me is putting a name for each account. So I have a Capital One savings account with many sub account with different names. So when that expense comes up, for me it is just a little easier to take that money out. Really, it's no different than one big account, but it does ease some of the anxiety. Now, granted we haven't had to take out more than a few thousand dollars yet. Our next vehicle purchase hopefully won't come up for about 5 years and we'll see how I handle taking such a large sum out.

 

[alryan]

Exactly!! I think for many natural savers it is easy saving that money. Parting with that money...not so much. So having a spouse to push you and balance things out can be a really good thing! Hopefully you won't have that payment the whole five years!

 

[castoral]

It looks like a few others are using rental properties as a means to FIRE so I thought I’d share our journey as well as our most recent project. Quick history...

Bought our first property in Jun 2012. I grew up essentially “flipping” properties, although we lived in them. So we’d move (in the same town) every 18-24 months. So in 2012 my mom was still a realtor. Went through a bank owned condo and said we HAD to buy it. $69k, fully remodeled, rent in the area was $900/mo. Couldn’t get financing ANYWHERE on condos as a 2nd property though. Ended up getting it for $65k, $13k down. Rented it the day we closed for $900/mo. Just sold this property in June 2018 for $101k. Didn’t put anything into it! We eventually did get financing on it. Profit was about $350/mo + mortgage equity pay down.

2nd property actually popped up across the street from Property 1. Got it for $49,200. I *think* my parents financed this for us for a few months but eventually we got a loan combined with property 1. Rented for $950/mo for 24 months. Tried to re rent again and I just got mad at the quality of renters and sold it. *Should* have held on but coulda, woulda, shoulda...sold for $87,500. Profit of about $20k.

Flipped another condo on the golf course. Only two years old but these people were disgusting. 4 week flip. Purchased $80k and sold $111k, stuck about $5k in with flooring and paint and lots of elbow grease. This was a cash buy.

We took a little break buying our new home in Nov 2016....but...the day we closed I asked hubby to go check out this property that popped up.

Jan 2nd 2017 we bought another rental. This was another cash buy. So hubby offered crazy low ball but close in 2 weeks. The lady was going into a nursing home and this was her last asset so they didn’t care (nursing home got it all). They were asking $69k and we got it for $52k. This was our first property not in an A+ neighborhood. It’s more a B/B- working class neighborhood so we were a little worried. Renovated for $20k, appraised at $105k now. We rent for $950. We learned A LOT on this one. Our first renter was a habitual liar. Young, dumb, said her mom stole her credit. Blah, blah, we fell for it. As close to a nightmare as we’ve been. Got her out 15 month later when we did not renew her lease. Now have amazing tenants going on 12 months. Profit is about $8500/yr.

We PROMISED no more rentals till we got our current house done. We had a big flood/insurance claim in our kitchen/basement (one that took nearly a year of fighting and insurance covered roughly 30% of the actual cost).

And yet....DH was bored and went to an auction Dec 23rd. (What UPS employee is bored during Christmas?) It ended up being the only auction that day (7 others cancelled). Auction starts and a “professional” dropped out at $40k. Just DH and one man back and forth, $500 at a time and he finally got it for $88k. Went through a huge legal thing because it was actually sold 3 times but we were the highest buyer. Received confirmation a few weeks ago and keys 2 weeks ago (she willingly handed them over). It’s by far our biggest rehab! No AC/baseboard heating all needs replaced, windows/roof, ceiling caving in....total hit job. DH made 60 dump truck loads to the dump!!!! It’s now an empty shell and tomorrow we start to put it back together. The good news, even though it’ll likely be a $30k rehab, we have the cash, and when it’s done it’ll value at $180k. Rent will be $1400-$1500/mo. We’ll keep the extra 3 car garage for ourselves to store our boat in the off season (we have a 5 1/2 car garage + barn and somehow we don’t have room?!?!). Expenses are only $700/yr insurance and $1400/yr taxes!!! My absolute biggest fear is finding GOOD renters. Our area is developing QUICK so I’d *like* to find renters who are building, but have to be fair of course. It’s in a top 4% school district but in the country. My kids go to school there. Small town, everyone knows everyone. My biggest fear is renting to friends. I don’t mix friends and business. Ugh! So fingers crossed. Hoping to have it up for rent by Jun 1st.

 

[alryan]

It looks like a few others are using rental properties as a means to FIRE so I thought I’d share our journey as well as our most recent project. Quick history...

Bought our first property in Jun 2012. I grew up essentially “flipping” properties, although we lived in them. So we’d move (in the same town) every 18-24 months. So in 2012 my mom was still a realtor. Went through a bank owned condo and said we HAD to buy it. $69k, fully remodeled, rent in the area was $900/mo. Couldn’t get financing ANYWHERE on condos as a 2nd property though. Ended up getting it for $65k, $13k down. Rented it the day we closed for $900/mo. Just sold this property in June 2018 for $101k. Didn’t put anything into it! We eventually did get financing on it. Profit was about $350/mo + mortgage equity pay down.

2nd property actually popped up across the street from Property 1. Got it for $49,200. I *think* my parents financed this for us for a few months but eventually we got a loan combined with property 1. Rented for $950/mo for 24 months. Tried to re rent again and I just got mad at the quality of renters and sold it. *Should* have held on but coulda, woulda, shoulda...sold for $87,500. Profit of about $20k.

Flipped another condo on the golf course. Only two years old but these people were disgusting. 4 week flip. Purchased $80k and sold $111k, stuck about $5k in with flooring and paint and lots of elbow grease. This was a cash buy.

We took a little break buying our new home in Nov 2016....but...the day we closed I asked hubby to go check out this property that popped up.

Jan 2nd 2017 we bought another rental. This was another cash buy. So hubby offered crazy low ball but close in 2 weeks. The lady was going into a nursing home and this was her last asset so they didn’t care (nursing home got it all). They were asking $69k and we got it for $52k. This was our first property not in an A+ neighborhood. It’s more a B/B- working class neighborhood so we were a little worried. Renovated for $20k, appraised at $105k now. We rent for $950. We learned A LOT on this one. Our first renter was a habitual liar. Young, dumb, said her mom stole her credit. Blah, blah, we fell for it. As close to a nightmare as we’ve been. Got her out 15 month later when we did not renew her lease. Now have amazing tenants going on 12 months. Profit is about $8500/yr.

We PROMISED no more rentals till we got our current house done. We had a big flood/insurance claim in our kitchen/basement (one that took nearly a year of fighting and insurance covered roughly 30% of the actual cost).

And yet....DH was bored and went to an auction Dec 23rd. (What UPS employee is bored during Christmas?) It ended up being the only auction that day (7 others cancelled). Auction starts and a “professional” dropped out at $40k. Just DH and one man back and forth, $500 at a time and he finally got it for $88k. Went through a huge legal thing because it was actually sold 3 times but we were the highest buyer. Received confirmation a few weeks ago and keys 2 weeks ago (she willingly handed them over). It’s by far our biggest rehab! No AC/baseboard heating all needs replaced, windows/roof, ceiling caving in....total hit job. DH made 60 dump truck loads to the dump!!!! It’s now an empty shell and tomorrow we start to put it back together. The good news, even though it’ll likely be a $30k rehab, we have the cash, and when it’s done it’ll value at $180k. Rent will be $1400-$1500/mo. We’ll keep the extra 3 car garage for ourselves to store our boat in the off season (we have a 5 1/2 car garage + barn and somehow we don’t have room?!?!). Expenses are only $700/yr insurance and $1400/yr taxes!!! My absolute biggest fear is finding GOOD renters. Our area is developing QUICK so I’d *like* to find renters who are building, but have to be fair of course. It’s in a top 4% school district but in the country. My kids go to school there. Small town, everyone knows everyone. My biggest fear is renting to friends. I don’t mix friends and business. Ugh! So fingers crossed. Hoping to have it up for rent by Jun 1st.

What do you mean, it's not as easy as it looks on HGTV?! I've often thought that rental real estate may be something we would do to get some income in retirement, but honestly not sure if we want to deal with the renters. At any rate, it's really not feasible until we can access our retirement accounts, so we'll have to wait and see. Those memories of lying in bed trying to sleep while the upstairs renters are still up at 3 in the morning die hard.

 

[castoral]

What do you mean, it's not as easy as it looks on HGTV?! I've often thought that rental real estate may be something we would do to get some income in retirement, but honestly not sure if we want to deal with the renters. At any rate, it's really not feasible until we can access our retirement accounts, so we'll have to wait and see. Those memories of lying in bed trying to sleep while the upstairs renters are still up at 3 in the morning die hard.

Lol, I wish! My husband is self taught handy and he’s pretty amazing! He can do pretty much anything as if he can’t he watched a YouTube video, HA!

But seriously, my biggest advice is ALWAYS stick to your standards. No matter where it is, there ARE good renters. All of our renters BUT the one who we should have followed our gut on, have had excellent credit and not one late payment. They treat the places as if they did own it. It’s always been worth it for us to wait till those come. We do put a little more effort into our Reno’s (I call it the Wal-Mart Joanna Gaines style) and I think that attracts better renters too. We manage our properties through Zillow and do the credit checks there. We also require 1 months rent as a deposit and if they have a pet, 50% of one months rent non refundable. We are very strict on our late payments and mention that up front. Honestly, using this criteria, we’ve always got good tenants within a month and they typically stay 24-36 months on average.

 

[AmyAnne]

I think that is the danger of payments. You see that monthly number, without seeing that whole picture. If I had saved $796/month for 3 years, would I have written a check out for $28,000?

And this is exactly why the salespeople focus on it. The last time we bought a new car (in 2002), the salesman kept talking about "low monthly payments" and we kept saying, "this is what we can pay, total cost." It took a good three or four attempts to shift the focus from monthly payments to total cost (we did need to finance a part of the purchase, but we wanted the shortest time with the lowest overall cost rather than the lowest monthly payment stretched out over a longer time).

 

[jen7233]

My husband has LOTS of feeling when buying cars. Its more annoying to me than anything else. Our first "big" car purchase was the $40k+ Suburban. We HAD the cash in the bank, but DH couldn't let it go. We ended up taking a very low interest loan on it. Every month I'd make a big point about how much our money earned sitting in savings vs how much interest we just paid. It would drive my husband BONKERS. Lol! We paid it off in maybe 4 months. This is a habit for him...he doesn't like to let money go so I kinda love to tease him about it. He currently has a $8k mower he bought last Jan. Its not really a big enough purchase that we even really talked about it (its like a $10,500 mower he got a great last min deal on before his friend quite a job selling them). Long story short, its on a zero % CC for 5 yrs. OMG I HATE paying that $250 every month!!!! Every month I give him crap. He's right, its 0% but STILL, that $250 comes out of the budget. Period!

Mine has thoughts too on car purchases. He actually wants to finance in all cases, I'm the one usually saying no let's not. He knows the current car I've got parked in the driveway is driving me crazy that I'm making payments, but, of course last car as I said I paid in full when I bought it, and I sometimes questioned myself. I'm just always looking at the what if, I think I drive my own self crazy with second guessing! We've been together over 20 plus years so we have some car buying experience with each other to know what we are going to each say. Funny about the lawnmower, my DH bought a trailer before that we've since sold, but I literally hated making that $175 a month payment for years, and talked him into letting me pay it off I was so glad when that was done I felt like that loan was around forever, you can make trailer payments apparently longer than average car payments to the tune of 10 years!

 

[DIS_MERI]

Part of the reason for my car buying question is the my bonus DD22 bought a brand new vehicle for the first time this week. She's just finished her LPN and gotten a "real job" and she has been itching to buy for years. We bought her a car as her high school graduation present and it was still running fine, but it's an 04 Saturn Ion3 approaching 100K miles, and it sometimes showed a little personality lol. But she bought a Jeep, so she's cut her mileage almost in half and got a hefty payment to boot. I hope she doesn't regret it. She did thank me for an awesome credit score (I put her on one of my cards as an authorized user a couple of years ago, and since we pay it off every month and don't use more than 25% of the line, she has a good score). I gave her advice, about half of which she didn't take, lol. But that's part of growing up....

The last 2 vehicles I bought (an 01 Dodge truck for bonus DS19 and an 09 Cobalt for DS18, who has now decided he doesn't want to drive, so he will get some cash and DD16 will get the Cobalt), I bought with cash. My dad is a GM retiree, so I've had more than a few new vehicles. I do understand the appeal. I have a 10 Acadia (that I got in 13) that is showing some personality (I can't get it to replicate the things it does to me for the mechanic ) and with low interest rates and 10% gains on investments this year until this week, it got me thinking about what I want to do when it's time to replace that....

 

[1st*toright]

I'm having one of those months where unexpected expenses keep popping up. The excellent, flexible (and cheap!) day camp I had planned to send my little one to this summer isn't running this year due to construction on their facility. So I had to pony up way more $$ for summer camp than I had planned (the new place looks great, but it is 2x more expensive). I'm putting $$ towards a trip DH is taking next month (which isn't unexpected, but I have been a slacker about budgeting for it, and now its here). I should not complain - the net result of all this stuff is just that I'm not socking away what I want to be in savings (I'm not even having to draw from my emergency fund), but since I'm already feeling like we aren't saving as much as I'd like, missing a month of putting money away is bugging me.

I do feel like we should be saving more, just based on our annual income, but we live in a high COL area and the things I'd have to start cutting out to save more money are things I really value. At this point, I think trying to make any serious changes in our spending would not be worth the cost (I keep tinkering at the edges, but any more big reductions would come at a significant cost to our quality of life at this point).

So that leaves trying to make more money - which would also come at a lifestyle cost (we are pretty flat out timewise as is, with jobs and kids and life). If we were to prioritize other kinds of money making opportunities, it would come at the cost of time with each other/time with the kids, which seems in short supply already.

I really am not intending to complain - we are super lucky to be looking at all of this with choices as opposed to necessities. More curious about how folks measure the time/money part of FIRE, when there are so many competing priorities.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

I'm having one of those months where unexpected expenses keep popping up. The excellent, flexible (and cheap!) day camp I had planned to send my little one to this summer isn't running this year due to construction on their facility. So I had to pony up way more $$ for summer camp than I had planned (the new place looks great, but it is 2x more expensive). I'm putting $$ towards a trip DH is taking next month (which isn't unexpected, but I have been a slacker about budgeting for it, and now its here). I should not complain - the net result of all this stuff is just that I'm not socking away what I want to be in savings (I'm not even having to draw from my emergency fund), but since I'm already feeling like we aren't saving as much as I'd like, missing a month of putting money away is bugging me.

I do feel like we should be saving more, just based on our annual income, but we live in a high COL area and the things I'd have to start cutting out to save more money are things I really value. At this point, I think trying to make any serious changes in our spending would not be worth the cost (I keep tinkering at the edges, but any more big reductions would come at a significant cost to our quality of life at this point).

So that leaves trying to make more money - which would also come at a lifestyle cost (we are pretty flat out timewise as is, with jobs and kids and life). If we were to prioritize other kinds of money making opportunities, it would come at the cost of time with each other/time with the kids, which seems in short supply already.

I really am not intending to complain - we are super lucky to be looking at all of this with choices as opposed to necessities. More curious about how folks measure the time/money part of FIRE, when there are so many competing priorities.

My attitude is that I can only sacrifice so much for FIRE. While it is a priority, I also realize I’m not promised tomorrow and to enjoy today as well. If you feel that you’re doing the best you can, then rejoice in that!

 

[1st*toright]

My attitude is that I can only sacrifice so much for FIRE. While it is a priority, I also realize I’m not promised tomorrow and to enjoy today as well. If you feel that you’re doing the best you can, then rejoice in that!

Oh sure, show up with a good attitude and patience. I would expect no less from you.


ETA - just to be crystal clear - not intended as sarcasm. @SouthFayetteFan generally does offer good perspective. Don't want to get in trouble with the benevolent dictator

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

Oh sure, show up with a good attitude and patience. I would expect no less from you.


ETA - just to be crystal clear - not intended as sarcasm. @SouthFayetteFan generally does offer good perspective. Don't want to get in trouble with the benevolent dictator

Haha!! I think it can be challenging though. You read these blogs or compare yourself to others and think “I SHOULD be doing more!” I fall into the trap - but I’m also not about to sell my car and start biking around my neighborhood. That would bring me no happiness! It’s kind of morbid, but I often picture myself old and on my death bed when making financial decisions. How would I feel? Would I regret passing on this? Will this bring me some level of happiness and satisfaction.

I did it the other day with a golf camp for my daughter. It’s kind of expensive. Seems unnecessary and certainly doesn’t help me towards a FIRE goal. But I enjoy golf and to withhold this opportunity from my daughter might cost me a lifetime of memories on the golf course with her. Old me “regrets” saying no to golf camp because she fell away from the game. LOL! So we did the camp!

 

[amalone1013]

Haha!! I think it can be challenging though. You read these blogs or compare yourself to others and think “I SHOULD be doing more!” I fall into the trap - but I’m also not about to sell my car and start biking around my neighborhood. That would bring me no happiness!

Ha! Exactly! Sorry, I'm not biking 18 miles one way to work. The only bikes I like are the ones in the gym where I can set my book on it to read. And I'm not moving within biking or walking distance of work, which would not only cost as much or more as our area now, but I also regularly hear gun shots in the neighborhood when working early or late

It's very easy to compare yourself to others. DH and I have two friends and we have to remind ourselves of this often, as they put a bit of pressure on us on where are we in the house buying stage. One is my cousin where it's like, wellll, if I could buy a cute little house for $100k I would but that place would run $350k out here, so unless you want to chip in... (also that's my cousin with the badly flipped house... and now the car that caught fire). DH has a friend that bought a house out here last Spring and that one's like, welllll, your dad gave you $60k for your downpayment (20%) which is awesome that he could and he also gave you another $20k to pay off your student loans (but you didn't, you spent that money on vehicles... your choice) and we have families who aren't able to give us large cash gifts, but they offer help and a minimal cost living situation, so we took that and we prioritized paying off our student loans to be in better standing for a mortgage and are now saving a down payment at a rapid rate, so... yeah we're gonna keep doing what we're doing!

 

[Budzooka]

Thinking about changing my approach to retirement savings in that we are contributing the maximum $19K to 401(k) on both my job and my wife’s job, and we do that equally over 24 pay periods throughout the year. But I am going to change our contribution to the amount of our paycheck early in the year so that we can get that money in and have more time in the market. We have the money in savings, so we will just change it zero once we have contributed the maximum and replenish savings.

I would be willing to write a check immediately to get the funds in there but don’t think that is an option because it needs to come out of wages.

The only downside I can think of is if an extreme situation occurred, such as job loss or some prolonged absence that would result in unpaid time off after all our PTO was depleted. Certainly need to weigh that risk, but not enough to deter me. Anything else I’m missing?

 

[WVMomof3]

Thinking about changing my approach to retirement savings in that we are contributing the maximum $19K to 401(k) on both my job and my wife’s job, and we do that equally over 24 pay periods throughout the year. But I am going to change our contribution to the amount of our paycheck early in the year so that we can get that money in and have more time in the market. We have the money in savings, so we will just change it zero once we have contributed the maximum and replenish savings.

I would be willing to write a check immediately to get the funds in there but don’t think that is an option because it needs to come out of wages.

The only downside I can think of is if an extreme situation occurred, such as job loss or some prolonged absence that would result in unpaid time off after all our PTO was depleted. Certainly need to weigh that risk, but not enough to deter me. Anything else I’m missing?

I saw somebody talk about doing this in another FI place I have been reading. The only thing I can think of is if your employer matches. The poster who did it said their employer matches go in whether they pay or not. (I guess that wouldn’t be called matching then but I guess their employer put in a certain percent whether they contributed or not.). My DH’s only puts in if we put in so that would not work for us.

 

[WVMomof3]

Also in my reading someone asked what was the biggest obstacle to FI and someone put this meme. So true!!