I just received my first paycheck of 2015. I was so excited to see it that I accidentally awakened at 5am to view the paystub that’s sent at 4am. I wasn’t excited to see all the money I could spend, but how much that would be left with after trying to max my 401K in 6 months and the challenge of living on the remainder. After I opened it I was excited to see how much was going into my 401K. It was over $1,500 in one pay period, which is about how much I would input into my IRA every few months. A few months of work done in two weeks because of the miracle of tax-advantaged accounts. I was so excited. Continue reading “Challenge: Maxing My 401K in 6 Months”
Category: Finance
State of the Union: 2014
I thought it would be good to create an annual State of the Union to remember what I did each year regarding my investments and why. This was a big year – the first year I really dove in and learned how to have my money make money of its own.Through my reading of the books and articles I listed in my first post I’ve gone from knowing basically nothing about the stock market and calling my parent’s mutual fund manager to ask what 401K plan to enroll in to at least an intermediate level. And with that knowledge has come a sense of calm and an understanding that flexibility and knowledge are the only kind of security.
Continue reading “State of the Union: 2014”
My 10 Year Plan
Based on my end goal of financial freedom I’ve accumulated information from various books, blogs and traditional retirement calculators to determine how much I need to save to be able to live off of indefinitely. Overall I’m basing my calculations on the updated Trinity Study from 2009 that reinforces the 4% safe withdrawal rate for investments with a 75% stock, 25% bond asset allocation even when adjusting for inflation every year. Mr. Money Mustache makes a lot of excellent points about how this study in itself even builds in a large safety margin by assuming that a person would not adjust spending to account for economic reality, such as a recession, or substitute goods to compensate for the inflation of an individual item.