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workingforgoldie OP t1_jaeqr0e wrote

Reply to comment by Rave-Unicorn-Votive in Are we on track to retire early? 30 + 33 SoCal currently setting aside 28k per year. by workingforgoldie

Should I instead just up my 401k contribution instead of the 50/wk into the index fund?

I guess if those are the options I'd rather do retirement over a house, so that would be upping my 401k contribution by 700/mo? (50/wk from index fund -> 401k and 500/mo from house -> 401k). That would be ~17% to ~22.7%.

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Rave-Unicorn-Votive t1_jaes0ad wrote

> Should I instead just up my 401k contribution instead of the 50/wk into the index fund?

If that money is really for retirement, yes.

>I guess if those are the options I'd rather do retirement over a house, so that would be upping my 401k contribution by 700/mo? (50/wk from index fund -> 401k and 500/mo from house -> 401k)

That's less of a math decision than the previous question but if you don't want to split your focus (which if you do at your current income will likely feel like treading water because you won't make big strides in either direction) then, yes, go all in on retirement.

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workingforgoldie OP t1_jaetkse wrote

This might be a completely separate discussion but would it be possible to focus on the house, buy in ~10 years, and then when we are ready to retire, sell the house to rent instead?

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Rave-Unicorn-Votive t1_jaeuqni wrote

You could. Some people prefer the dedicated retirement savings rather than the house-as-retirement savings but if you go into it understanding you need to sell the house to access the money I think that's a better way to approach it than the more common "but we won't have a house payment in retirement" strategy.

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workingforgoldie OP t1_jaezm7l wrote

Thank you. So what I got from all of this is to not focus on both a house and retirement. One or the other.

Now I need to research the house + sell for retirement approach. If that is feasible, that would save us a lot of stress moving every few years. That alone might be worth the trade off of a few years of retirement. Gotta think about it more.

One more thing I was thinking of while changing my 401k contribution - if I put everything in my 401k, I won't be able to pull anything out until 59.5. In that situation wouldn't I want to have some in non-tax-advantaged investments if I wanted to retire early? Unless I just retire at 59.5+. Which might be the case due to income anyway.

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