Recent content by Yachi

Sorry for your loss. I'm a dad with young kids who's planned for insurance needs for my family. Here is what I would suggest to my surviving wife: Year 1: don't make any changes (house, schools, you're working status). Stability is important to our children. Use funds from insurance or...

OP, are you sure your parents understand that you don't need the inheritance to retire early? Their reaction makes more sense if they think you are going to use their money to not work anymore.

My thoughts (My wife and I both graduated college around 7 years ago, it was expensive then): Other countries have cheaper (free even) higher education paid for by higher taxes. We have lower taxes instead that have benefited us early-retirement savers. It seems fair to use the taxes-saved...

I'm surprised not to see more responses where people retired, only to find they didn't have enough money to live the life they wanted. Is this because of overly conservative planning, or did people adjust expectations? I could probably pull off Early Retirement Extreme with my current asset...

Agree with putting your numbers into fireCalc. You have: $300,000 in taxable account $800,000 in inherited IRA $600,000 in 401(k)/IRA $11,000/yr in non-COLA pension $25,000/yr in non-COLA pension starting in 2031. Using the 4% withdrawal convention, you should be able to withdrawal $68,000...

Usually when they talk about life expectancy, they quote life expectancy at birth, which is a ridiculous thing to use for indexing retirement age. Many of our gains in life expectancy at birth have been made by reducing infant mortality. While this greatly affects life expectancy at birth, it...

An older neighbor in my neighborhood was just admitted to a long term care facility following a stroke. The way I understand it, he needs to sell his house to qualify for medicare coverage for a better facility than the one he's in. I'm interested in his house for a rental. Could he sell me...

You could park it in a trading account and sell Cash-secured Berkshire Hathaway January 2018 puts for $130. You'll make 2.65%. Berkshire has an aggressive buy back in place to repurchase stock when it sells for less than 1.2x book value. Current book value is 109.19, so Berkshire would...

You can buy index funds in a Taxable Investment Account, 401(k) or IRA. I would not put funds in the 401(k) or IRA that you want to use 2-5 years from now, as you might get hit with penalties for withdrawing them. If you want to buy index funds in a Taxable Investment Account, realize you...

I see two different questions: Should I pay off my mortgage if I'm still working? I would say no, the interest rate is lower than you can make in the markets, and you have a job to support your expenses. You don't have to worry about a 4% withdrawal rate yet. Using a 4% withdrawal rate, is...

If you're interested in higher coverage, Geico states their coverage can go as high as $10 million for qualified applicants. I have no idea what makes someone a "qualified applicant".

I didn't realize it, but I am in a tax bracket with 0% capital gains. It looks like I'm in the 15% tax bracket. Thanks to Animorph, I realized I can use 401(k) contributions to ensure I stay in this tax bracket (sometimes I have overtime, and I might get a sizable raise next year)...

I currently fund my 401(k) to the maximum company match level, this costs me around $4,000. I've stopped funding my Roth IRAs. I don't have room in my current budget to fully fund my 401(k) and IRAs, although this may change several years from now when my wife starts working. Due to...

I'd love to retire as early as possible, so you could put me in this category. I'll take my stab at responding. First the why: In college I was constantly told despite studying all the time, that this was going to be the best time of my life. I didn't realize how true it would seem until I...

@Texas Yours was one of the thoughts running thru my head. It would help if paying off one loan freed up a sizeable payment to help with the others, but they're all such long-term loans that it's mostly just me throwing my savings at it. I understand the disdain for the margin loan, but it's...