dmpi said:I was reading this and I thought, hey that guy's just like about where we are... I look again and it us! Now to answer your question. We have a few thing going for us. We have no kids, so we have only two exemptions. We paid off our house so we have no mortage. We use the standard deduction. We also max out our 401Ks (15K x 2 ). We happen to live in state with no state income tax. This year I think we paid around 42K in income taxes + 2600 in property tax. Every year we are getting closer and closer to paying AMT tax. Just a matter of time. I've run out of ammo to dodge taxes.
Azanon said:Scout.... continue to be blown away by these claiming 40-60% of gross saved just for retirement. I still havent decided if i believe them yet, because i dont know what's better for their behalf; believe it and think they're crazy, or not believe it and just think its human nature to lie. I make this statement light-hearted and not intended to offend.
Despite this i'll continue to think of my puny 22-25% of gross as massive, because it is compared to my peers.
Two thumbs way UP!! 8)dmpi said:We are strong believer in environmental causes. We have plans for the extra money. The plans are a bit fuzzy right now, but they involve buying up land to protect small animal habitat. My DW & I are both long distance runners, and we are blessed to be able to run on urban trails that actually contain wildlife. As the years go by we have seen the animal habitat slowly being destroyed by construction. We want to do our little part to help.
I'm sure some of you guys think this is silly.
I do my taxes by hand (actually by calculator) and the AMT tax is one of the most confusing parts of the tax code. I'm sitting on some capital gains and I can't figure out if its better to take a hit in one giant lump sum or spread it out over a couple of years. The logic of taking it in one giant hit is, AMT tax can only erase you deductions and after that it can't hurt you. Our deductions consist of just the standard deduction & 2 exemptions, so if I can do a big enough hit the amount I lose by not deducting will only be a small percentage.chinaco said:We are close to the AMT in earnings. I am careful when taking cap gains. (note... I do not do market timing) I ususally only take gains (still working) to diversify and/or rebalance the portfolio.
A few years ago we needed to rebalance the portfolio. We had alot of stock that had appreciated. We wanted to diversify the holdings. If I sold it all in one year, we would have been hit heavily with taxes due to AMT. I spread the stock sales over 4 years. Plus, the sale occurred after the market dump in 2000. The stock was down and (since it was a solid company would/did come back). It was a large cap DJIA company. I moved the money to the S&P 500 index.
ranch111 said:Alot more than 90% of Americans. Way more than anyone I know.
Azanon said:Scout.... continue to be blown away by these claiming 40-60% of gross saved just for retirement. I still havent decided if i believe them yet, because i dont know what's better for their behalf; believe it and think they're crazy, or not believe it and just think its human nature to lie. I make this statement light-hearted and not intended to offend.
Despite this i'll continue to think of my puny 22-25% of gross as massive, because it is compared to my peers.
this raises a good question.jasond said:Make about 80K
Save 15% with 5% matching.
Ten years to go.
Jason
Want2retire said:It is. That doesn't mean that the others here are lying. Of course some of them might be! But others may just happen to be in different circumstances from you.
Someone with no family to support, and a paid off home, and no debts, is going to be able to save a lot more than someone with a lot of obligations.
I am NOT a young dreamer (being 58 years old), so I hadn't posted yet. But a young dreamer could conceivably be in my situation. I live off of roughly 23% of my net pay, or 15% of my gross pay. It's easy because I have everything I really need, have no debts, no mortgage, and nobody to support, and last Christmas I was unexpectedly promoted and got one of those 15% raises that were discussed in another thread. But right now, I see no sense in spending it because I am used to a level of LBYM that I can sustain on the smaller income that I will have after ER.