Posting this on a throwaway, but I've been an avid reader here for at least the last 6-7 years. I started my career with a $43k salary and about $50k in student loan debt (some with interest rates of nearly 10% (!)). Now I'm 33 and have seen my salary grow to now $110k (including a job change earlier this year which bumped me up 23%). I've paid off all my debt, have an emergency fund in place, and bought a home earlier this year (for which the mortgage payments are 21% of my gross pay).
I track every penny I spend and most months I'm left with $1k to $2k extra which goes into general savings. I currently have $95k in retirement savings, and I'm adding 20% each month, plus another 4% in employer match. My calculations show that if I continue this contribution rate, with 2% salary increase and 6% stock market return per year, I'll have somewhere around $4 million at retirement (that jumps to nearly $6.5 million using a more optimistic 8% average return).
I'm kind of left wondering "What now?" The flowchart basically says "save for other goals" which I guess would be fun things and vacations at this point. Otherwise the other option is "retire early". Is that really where I'm at? Am I actually in a spot where I can live a little? I feel like I'm still in this mindset of scraping together every last dollar to pay off loans faster.
Submitted August 06, 2021 at 11:00AM by rvH3Ah8zFtRX https://ift.tt/3CgdVcy
