I come from poverty, I'm also living in a foreign country (although will become a citizen within the next year). My first job about 4 years ago put me around $30K for the year, about two years ago, I landed at about $60K/yr, and as of a few weeks ago, I just landed base $110K + $10K-$20K benefits package.
Walking into this, I have $13K in student loans, $2.2K on a credit card (relocated across states recently and threw it on my CC, paid down about $3K since moving), and about $3.5K in savings. First, I know I need to kill the credit card and then build an e-fund. E-fund should represent 6-9 months of expenses, and current expenses are about $1.8K/month, so maybe $10.8K to $16.2K.
My salary is listed at $2.1K/wk, and the benefits are composed of a 401K match (about $4K), a stock match (about 15% at 15% of total salary), a multi-year vesting schedule of about $7K/yr (as I understand it, this is a gifted amount of stock), and a likely 10% bonus per year. I can count on everything but the bonus, though I think the bonus is likely guaranteed for the first few years given past trends (dangerous, but I don't depend on this).
If I did the math right, it should be $110K base + $4K match + $2.5K stock + $7K vest + $11K bonus == $134.5K. There are a few hidden gotchas here, for example, to get the $2.5K stock return, I need to put in about $16K (e.g. I invest $16K, I get $18.5K return), the 401K match "doesn't exist" for another 30 years, etc.
If I'm preparing correctly, I'll aim for max contributions to my 401K ($18.5K), which should return about $4.5K on my taxes. So getting into what I actually have to work with...
$2.1K/wk, lose about 30% to standard deductions, lose about 15% to stock, and 17% to 401K. So, if a bi-weekly paycheck is gross $4.2K, I lose about 60% off the top, or take home around $1.7K. However, at tax time, if that's when I divest/sell my stock and count my bonus, I should have $7K from stock, $4.5K returned (via 401K deposits), $19K from 15%@15% stock, and a (possible) $11K bonus.
So if I haven't lost anyone here, and I haven't missed anything obvious here (I may have double counted something because the numbers still seem too high), I should have $41.5K leftover around tax time. The assumption is that my monthly expenses, $1.8K, are handled by my $1.7K bi-weekly, giving me $1.5K monthly (give or take) to play with.
I'm sorry for how long this got, I wanted to be thorough. So if I'm doing well here, I should have about $1.5K/month, plus about $40K/yr to do something with, after maxing my 401K with company matching. So, ... I have some room to make good financial decisions, and still have fun, right? I've lived a really long time watching every damn dollar bill.
For example, is the $18.5K 401K contribution going to guarantee a comfortable retirement in 30-33 years? I anticipate having a paid off residence, and needing no more than $60K/yr (in today's dollars) to live off of. If I did my math right, I'm not sure I'm actually going to hit that $60K goal from my 401K. So, I'm looking for feedback here, in case I've missed anything or I need to work 30+3 years or something else in that direction. All of this is contingent on my salary not increasing (how do I account for this?)
Submitted August 13, 2018 at 06:46PM by anxietyfromsituation https://ift.tt/2OzMtN9
