Hey all, long time lurker here but figured I would be brave and say hi!
Quite enjoy reading the posts here and all the success stories. DW and I are 35/36 respectively and are targeting 49/50, or earlier, as our party age for ER. DW is in mechanical engineering/design and I'm in the IT field. We currently have one little one of about 6 months as well.
Current general plan is to save save save, pay off our current mortgage, ~$290k left with 13 yrs to go, and use the funds to buy a lake cabin in the pacific northwest outright. We have no other debts, yay!
We currently have ~$215k in a mix of non-deductible traditional iras / 401k's / 403bs and ~$40k in a taxable account. Unfortunately roth and/or deductible IRAs are out of our bracket.
We've spent the last few years paying off student loans and some other personal debt to get to mortgage only and shifted last year to focus on creating an ER portfolio in the taxable account of high quality dividend paying growth stocks- investing is a fun hobby of mine so spending time researching companies fits well with my free time activities. One of our IRAs is also in a similar setup with high quality dividend growth stocks and both have been doing great for their targeted purposes. The remainder of our retirement accounts are all in low cost index funds. We also have a fully funded HSA and are building up a 529 plan for our infant.
Just got our full estate plan wrapped up and term life insurance covered as well. We are putting ~$40k/year into the tax advantaged retirement accounts (excluding employer match) and ~40k/year into the taxable account. Excluding mortgage payment and investment dollars, we are running at about $2-2.5k expenses a month for everything else and live in sunny and expensive southern ca.
Looking forward to posting a bit more in other areas of the forums soon and welcome any thoughts or feedback. Thanks for being a great community!