Hoping someone can take the following snapshot of my situation and provide some sound next steps. Overall, I'm finally at a place where I'm making decent money and have caught up on debt.
Annual Income: 103K
Mortgage: 325k
Home value: 545K
(Currently I think of this as my nest egg. I live in a growing, active urban core and got lucky picking my home/lot. Did a DIY renovation and am seeing the value easily tick up.)
Investments: I currently am not enrolled in my employers 401k w/ 2% match. Was using the extra cashflow to finish my home reno. Now that it's done, I'm looking at enrolling. The following are additional 401k's and pension funds I've accumulated from other jobs, in descending order of employment. I'm most curious about what to do with these. Combine them? Leave them where they are? Start a ROTH?
TRoweP: $8431
Only contributed a few years to this. It's currently super sluggish and returning ~3%. (The company the account was tied to doesn't exist anymore).
TIAA: $15,300
I've had this account for 7+ years, but was only contributing/employed for a couple. It's currently returning 13 - 18.9% YOY for the past 2 years, which seems really, really high. Is that normal?
TRS PensionFund: $29,300
This earns 2% as long as I don't move the money out. If I reach retirement, I can claim a lifelong benefit. Using their calculation of benefit, that currently works out to ~800 mo. Could probably hit $1K by the time I'm 65. Note, if I return to this industry I can get started contributing again where I left off, which also shoots the ROI up to 8% with the match.
Savings Bonds: $24,100
My dad had bonds cut from his salary in my name 20+ years ago. I'm sitting on 175 EE bonds, in mostly $50 denominations, that are about to start fully maturing. There's probably ~$8,000 more in interest waiting to collect. The last bond will fully mature in 2028.
Cash Savings: $5500
This is scary. Know I need to get this up.
Other Debt: $2400
Car paid off. Just a couple CC's that I keep pretty low.
I live a pretty frugal lifestyle, but have been burning through cash thanks to the home renovation. Now that it's done, I'm seeing a pattern of about ~$1500 leftover a month to burn. What should I be doing with it?
Upcoming needs I'm considering:
Auto: $300-400 mo payment
My current car is 14years old. Need to upgrade, unfortunately to something a bit high end, thanks to my line of work.
More home stuff: $50k Detached dwelling
Exploring adding a studio/apartment in the backyard. My house is small and this would add some much needed work space, in addition to being easy rental/AirBnB income. The loan would also include much needed landscaping. Thinking I'd get 30% of the investment back if I sold the home.
Stupidly, for the first time in my life I'm getting serious about retirement, hope you all can set me on the right track.
Thanks.
Submitted December 15, 2019 at 08:08PM by throwandawaytoday https://ift.tt/2EmWWZk
