Husband and I just finished paying off his student loan, which leaves us with no high interest debt. We have our mortgage ~1,300/month and my car payment ~300/month (0% interest for 4.5 more years) but that's it. Yay! Our goal now is to get on track with retirement savings, but we don't know what that means because of his pension contributions. We both make ~60,000/year. And here are our current contributions:
- $800 + $200 employer match is taken from my paycheck every month and put into a 401k. However my company was recently purchased and the match ends at the end of the year.
- $4/hour is added to a pension fund for my husband. This does not come out of his paycheck, it is in addition to his hourly rate.
My husband is a tradesman, and has every intention of finishing his career with his union. Therefore the pension is something we foresee getting money from. So our big question - do we count this as part of our 15% towards retirement? Or should we be saving 15% on top of that?
Other things that might be important to help answer our questions:
- We have a decent emergency fund.
- We want to retire young. Pretty much as soon as we are eligible according to the union, which is in 29 years (husband will be 60 and I will be 64). The trades are hard on your body!
- We live in the US.
Other questions:
- Since that is a young retirement age should we be saving more than 15%?
- I have been funneling money into the work 401k because it was easiest. Should we first max out an IRA?
- If so, can I contribute the $5500 max on behalf of my husband to an IRA?
Thanks so very much for helping us r/personalfinance!
Edit to add: I also wanted to ask about annuities. My husband can also contribute to a annuity through the union. Any opinions on if that is "better" than an IRA are appreciate. My thought is we shouldn't put all proverbial out eggs in the union basket, since pensions have been known to disappear in the past. Or am I off base, and are annuities a much better investment?
Submitted September 02, 2018 at 10:53PM by throwawaypensions https://ift.tt/2wDbr7P
