In February, the immediate effects of the Trump tax cuts will take effect, resulting in average take home increases of $200-300 a month per household. Edit: This is due to tax bracket changes, resulting in new W-4 withholding tables, resulting in less being taken out of your paycheck.
The average social security payout is $1,000 per month. The median retirement savings of families between 56 and 61 is $17,000. Those numbers make me uncomfortable.
I want to encourage you to not squander the $300 a month your family is about to receive. If you start at age 25 years old and invest $300 per month into mutual or index funds and do the stock market average of 7-8% (after inflation), you will be a millionaire at age 65. That would mean you could safely withdraw $40-50,000 per year in retirement in addition to social security. I have a feeling that gets you a lot closer to the quality of life you currently enjoy than the $12,000 a year social security (might) give you.
Do yourself a favor February 2018. When you figure up how much your take home increase will be, either up your 401(k) percentage at work, or go to a private brokerage and open up a Roth IRA and auto-transfer that amount to it every month. Future you will thank you when you aren't eating Spam or Ramon Noodles 3 meals a day.
Edit: For details on the changes in the new tax plan, please see the previous Megathread
Submitted January 31, 2018 at 08:57AM by BankruptcyLawGuy http://ift.tt/2BGNzQv
