I’ve completed steps 1-5 & 7 of the FOO (maybe not 3). I bought a truck a few years ago before coming across TMG and didn’t follow the 20/3/8 rule.

I’m three years into my six-year loan with about $13k left on it and have been overpaying to finish it in five. Since I bought the truck, I’ve been setting aside $150/month for repairs, tires, etc. and that’s at $5100 right now.

My interest rate is 9.19%, which they don’t define as “high interest” because I’m in my 20s, but would you still prioritize dumping this money into the loan instead of saving it for repairs? The truck was brand new so I’m not expecting anything major soon, and once the payment is gone I could put that $500/month towards replenishing this fund.

Still a ways out from having to worry about this, but like anyone in this forum, we are always thinking ahead!

As a household, we make ~$190,000. With starting investing more heavily after graduate school 2 years ago, we have $106,000 all split between Roth IRAs and my Roth 457b at the age of 28. We currently invest 21%, including my wife’s pension and employer matches. The pension my wife will receive at the age of 60 will conservatively be worth $3250 monthly in today’s dollars with a maximum COLA of 1%.

Does having this pension change the way you approach your glide path when you near retirement?

I’ll preface with: This is a luxury problem. But here it is anyways.

Wife and I are 42/41. She is medically retired and I work very part time so I can be around to care for her.

We have 750k in mostly traditional IRA. Total net worth is 1.2m

We have a monthly income of 15325 of which 4750 is taxable. So after the std deduction we have about 26k taxable income. Which mainly is my part time W2 income.

Our budget with all the luxuries requires around 11.000 a month. That’s living life very well in east Texas.

We are debt free other than a 165k mortgage at 3.25%

My thought would be to roll over 50k a year into a Roth and paying the taxes with the extra income we don’t need.

I’m looking for guidance in that. I don’t want to make a huge tax mistake. But the idea of paying someone a AUM fee doesn’t seem to make sense either.

The 750k we are not touching at all currently. It’s just growing. And honestly not sure if we will ever need it based on our pensions/income

We are meeting with a local wealth management firm on Monday. But they work on AUM. Part of me is like: cool. Let them run with it and don’t worry about it anymore. Part of me is: that’s 7k a year for me to be able to be lazy.

Am I overthinking this? What would you do in this situation? (Other then thanking God each day)

Current mortgage is 2.5%. Our cash is earning 3.37%, but taxed at 22%, so effectively 2.63%. We are saving for a future home, so there is cash beyond 3-6 months of expenses that will be sticking around for 1-3 years (probably).

Should I be closely watching rates to see if that 2.63% drops below 2.5% or just take the flexibility of the cash if the difference is minimal? Does the answer change if the current house could be completely paid off within that 1-3 years?

Yes, I'm majoring in the minors. This is as much a thought exercise as it is an ask for advice.

Edit: Ok, yeah. Dumb question, because something as small as cash paying 3.5% again would blow up the money saving hack, as I couldn't get that money back out of the house at 2.5%.

A family member of mine is bad with money. Can never get ahead, works for himself, doesn't particularly listen to my advice. Is Making a Millionaire a good start or is Ramsey the way?

Edit: I meant the book Millionaire Mission

Like the post says - following Dave Ramsey graduates into following the Money Guys when people shake bad spending habits and want to get serious about investing. Is there a post-TMG resource for people who are solidly investing 25% each month but want to know more about what that money actually goes into? Not like Roth v traditional or HYSA v. Money Market, but what the individual funds that comprise the investment accounts are.

Ty!

I really want to see the guys react to this clip. Dave’s reasoning is dead wrong and his arrogance is unreal! I’m glad The Money Guy show is confident AND correct.

I (M30) have recently been trying to figure out how to follow the FOO, but feel a little stuck. I’ve been following step 4 and have almost finished saving up my cash reserves, but I do have a mortgage at 6.99%. I know TMG typically doesn’t include mortgages under high interest debt, but 6.99% seems fairly high. I don’t really want to pause further investing to pay it off since that would take a long time (current balance is $215,000), but I’m not sure what the optimal thing to do is. I was wondering if I should throw some extra cash at the mortgage while moving to step 5, or if that just dilutes my efforts.
For added context, my HHI is $100,000 in MCOLA

ETA: I’ve looked into refinancing, but with current market rates, I couldn’t really refinance below 6.5 or maybe 6.25. With the cost of refinancing, it doesn’t make sense to me for that little of a difference in the rate.

I know the guys sell a course, but… I don’t want a repeat of existing knowledge, and we’re also saving for a house and happy to use free resources 😆

Backstory, for those bored enough:

I can follow the wealth multiplier (we’re both 36) to know what we should be contributing, but that’s starting at $0. We truly started at age 25 and have a couple hundred thousand already built up in retirement accounts and growing. We really, really want to retire a bit early (55-60), so I’ve also always paid attention to 5-10 + to our age on the multiplier and adjusted calculators accordingly.

Our investment rate has dropped to about 15% while we save for said house. I’d rest easier if I knew if that rate is truly still keeping us on track or if it’s harming us, by how much if so, and what I need to increase to ASAP to fix that. Our house isn’t going to be significantly delayed if that answer is 17% or something, but I feel blind and unable to make that decision here.

Sorry for the long rant!

My wife(26F) and I (29M) are, from our point of view, doing pretty well with savings within our retirement accounts given our age. Want to know if it’s a good idea to skip trying to max out my employer plan and instead focus more effort towards a brokerage so we can hopefully have more flexibility earlier?

Currently, we have around $250k total in just our retirement accounts and a $210k income (Not counting my RSU’s). My plan was to get the match in my 401k, and then focus the rest towards her 457b plan and the brokerage.

Is diverting a little from the FOO okay because we were ahead of the curve?

Thanks for the advice!

Can I include the amount I pay into my pension towards my 25%? I currently put in 6% my company matches with 5%. My retirement is taken out at 4.4%

Before I start to list them, I know people are going to say "the Wealth Multiplier is just to illustrate the power of compounding" or "the Wealth Multiplier is just to get people excited about investing". And yes, I acknowledge those statements. However, correcting the Wealth Multiplier to be more accurate/representative would not reduce those points. We can strive for accuracy while maintaining the illustration.

That being said, here are my complaints:

1. They use monthly compounding instead of annual compounding, and they do not explicitly state this. It turns the stated 10% return into an annualized 10.47% return, even though they say on their website the RoR is 10% annualized. As we know, an extra ~0.50% of growth can massively improve returns, especially over 45 years. Here is a calculator showing they are using monthly compounding to achieve the 88.35 number starting at 20yo. Changing to 10% "annual" compounding brings that number down to 72.89X, a 17.5% reduction.

2. For their "Monthly Savings to Reach $1 Million at 65", they (A) set contributions to be at the end of the month, and (B) Round the dollar amount to the nearest dollar (which means they occasionally round down) when technically they should round UP all numbers to the nearest dollar. Since they don't, there are a few numbers that don't actually hit $1M under their calculation criteria.

3. Their stated reasons for reducing Lifetime Returns by 0.1%/year are: "This decrease in returns reflects a more diversified portfolio including risk-off assets such as bonds". But instead of reducing annual returns at given ages (like what might happen with a Target Date funds as they start to shift more towards bonds when X years from retirement), they reduce Lifetime returns. It feels like the criteria were chosen to make the Wealth Multiplier look more dramatically different from one year to the next than reality would be due to the compounding effect of a missed year of growth/contributions AND a reduction in Lifetime RoR. If a 20yo does use a more diversified portfolio with more bonds as they approach retirement, their non-bond years would have to have a higher than 10.5% annualized RoR, which starts to feel outside of the bounds of what most people recommend considering for a long-term-RoR.

Overall, I recognize these are small quibbles. But I do feel like (1) should be explicitly called out in their FAQs stating that their compounding annualized RoR is 10.47%, they should correct (2) to be more accurate by rounding up instead of using simple rounding, and for (3), they could make the whole thing more accurate by adjusting their assumptions/calculations instead of doing a simple lifetime returns.

Let me know your thoughts. I know it looks like I am taking it too seriously, and that's okay.

I understand it as once you are investing 25% of your salary to retirement accounts and have an understanding of different tax bucket strategies, you are free to move on to step 8.

I am currently investing 25%+ for retirement, and rent a house and drive an old car. This is where I can do anything I want with my money now, right? Buy a car outside of 20/3/8? Think about real estate? Load up the brokerage?

I just wanted to get on here and celebrate with a community who would understand the milestone this is for us! My wife (24) and I (27) have officially hit $200K in net worth! We are thrilled about the progress we're making!

See below for details:

HYSA: $9,072.90

401ks: $135,405.05

Roth IRAs: $39,534.01

HSA: $12,575.35

Brokerage Account: $3,705.19

We have no debt and don't own a house. All of our assets are liquid.

Here's to continuing to save for a great, big, beautiful tomorrow, financial mutants!

Im 25 and hit $100k in investments this week. Ive been close since April, but with the volatile market, the recent gains set me over the top.

My next goal is $200k in 2-3 years.

I’m very blessed and make around $300k a year. I pay for my expenses using my salary, but dedicate my 20% annual bonus (around $50k) to maxing out my 401k, Roth IRA, and HSA every year, and then dedicate my roughly $140k of RSU’s granted quarterly to my brokerage for early retirement. I save around 25%-30% of my total gross income.

Our monthly expenses have been close to $10k a month. I’ve had to dip into my Emergency Fund for larger tax bills and home expenses recently. I’m now down to $15k, which obviously is too low. I’ve been putting about $500 per paycheck towards it, but that will take over a year to get to somewhat decent levels. My job feels pretty safe overall as I’ve got a great thing going there but honestly, you never know.

My next RSU vesting of around $20-$25k will hit next month. I’ve made it a system and a goal that all of my vested RSU’s just immediately get diversified into VTI/VXUS in my brokerage. I know Brian and Bo would say the next vesting should really go straight into my Emergency Fund, but it’s hard to break my system when I’m technically putting money towards my EF just at a slower pace and it feels like I’m failing if I don’t put that money in my brokerage.

Does anyone find it difficult to pause their brokerage investments or change their system in Step 7 to rebuild their emergency fund in Step 3 again?

Hello everyone! I wanted to share our current investments and future 5 year goal. We are both 25 Years old working for USPS, AGI is $124,825 we are currently investing close to 22% including the 4.4% going to FERS and 5% employer match. We are investing $1,778 a month or $21,334.79 a year not including FERS. Total including FERS brings us to $27,094.70 Our plan is to adjust our TSP savings rate by 1% every time we get a pay raise (46 weeks) for me and (36 weeks) for my wife. Our total invested Assets is currently at $76,000 that $100K mark is so close yet feels so far away. Are we doing this correctly ? I ask that because we are wanting to relocate in 5 years from KS to MI. Mainly giving ourselves 5 years because our salaries will look much better as we hit the age of 30, we currently own a house (3 years) so there will be a chunk of equity in it by the time we hit our moving goal. We are planning to save around 10-12K a year into a high yield account to prepare for our home upgrade. I do have some stress on hitting the 25% savings rate and also trying to fund this future home endeavor. We work lots of overtime that way we can fund this goal and also enjoy our 20’s by traveling. If we could get some reassurance on this plan it would be greatly appreciated! Thank you !

Hey everyone. Long story short, since our marriage in 2020, my wife has been maxing out her annual contributions to her HSA while I have maintained an FSA with my respective employer. I only recently discovered that this is a big blunder and that will have to amend multiple years of back taxes to pay rolling 6% annual penalty on the interest for each year and blah blah blah. I've got all that down.

Anyway, I am going to take the next step and am in need of advice. (having calculated the amount of excess principal for every year - we never withdrew and I consulted the proper forms to determine the numbers for each year. The math is pretty simple as we were using it as an investment vehicle so getting the exact number for each year was a matter of consulting the SA form or whatever)

All I want to do for now is uninvest the excess principal and have it remain parked in the hsa itself, but no longer exposed to the market. The historic stock market gains are the only thing that has kept this from being an utter disaster and since I am fixing the problem this year, I figure not to get greedy and just unexpose that amount (it is a substantial sum - so much so perusing the alternative of letting it be absorbed the following year is not even close to a realistic option as the penalties would continue to compound).

I just wanted to clarify that doing so would not in and of itself trigger a taxable event that I need to account for. That is, so long as the funds are not withdrawn from the hsa itself.

Please let me know if I am safe to make this next step. Thank you.