Archer

My mom and stepdad got married when I was 8, he had two boys a few years older. They did their estate planning a few years ago and set up a trust for each of us, the trust are set to lock at the death of either of them. Hopefully that prevents any of the horror stories of a new spouse taking it all but I guess the survivor could empty the trust and give it away.

They sold 180,000 tickets for 4 shows, absolutely unbelievable. Stillwater may never recover.

@Not a cat did a good breakdown. Here is an old pre TCJA discussion on Bogleheads on the topic, it revolved around efficient use of taxable and Roth accounts and a smart use of tax loss harvesting. It’s even easier now with the inflation in tax brackets and changes in the laws as mentioned above. https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=87471&sid=2e26392f07ba9615c597bb23afc4ae15

Ibonds have no interest rate risk to their value which is why I am using them as an inflation indexed cash equivalent.

I’m using Ibonds as a leg in my cash equivalent to maintain purchasing power. They take a while to build up a decent amount but I’ll hit one year of expenses with my purchase in January, 2025. I plan to keep buying them as long as I can and as the amount continues to grows I’ll probably start reducing my cash holdings.

Kind of depends on how you want to look at it. The Boglehead guys will include taxes for purposes of estimating retirement readiness since you will have to pay taxes out of your savings as well. That’s probably the most complete approach. The challenge is figuring out what your tax liability will be in the future, the most conservative method and the correct one if everything is in a 401k/IRA is to just calculate off of current income tax rates. It gets a little more complicated if you’re using a blend of cash, taxable accounts, and tax deferred accounts. You can get close to $100,000 a year tax free if you work it just right with a blend of accounts.

An easy way to talk about this without using real numbers is in relation to yearly spend as X, i.e. if you spend $100,000 a year and have $2.5M you’re at 25X. Using the X discussion lets everyone scale up and down for their situation.

If you leave your job or get fired it must be paid back immediately or is considered a withdrawal with penalties and taxes, that is one downside.

CHK is going back to 2006 and going all in on gas and getting out of liquids. If your company hasn’t stated the same I wouldn’t be as concerned.

This is pretty much me minus the kids . Other than the early mornings the job isn’t too bad so I’ll try to get another 5-10 years out of it and really get a good safety cushion built up. I have started spending a little more freely with a good nest egg in place.

Part in the market, part on the mortgage, and part put back for commercial real estate. I view the mortgage as my safe investment and everything else is in equities.

There are free calculators and simulators all over the internet, do some research to see which are more valid and respected. Here is one that gets referenced a lot: https://firecalc.com

Not 100% this but this. You are correct in the base assumption that withdrawals at full marginal rate should be equivalent What is different is the first $647,850 you withdrew for the year will be taxed at 10-35% and not 37%. The income deductions for a pretax 401k removes income from your top marginal tax bracket, when you are withdrawing money you are starting to pay at the lowest marginal bracket Big pension or SS checks can change the decisions on pre tax or Roth because it will give you a floor of which tax bracket you start in and the rates that your pretax will be taxed at. I haven’t done the math but I could see where someone with a really good pension (say 80% income replacement) would want to do Roth because they will be in or very close to the same tax brackets from the pension incomes.

So full disclosure I am not a financial pro, just a guy who likes personal finance and hopes to retire someday so everything I say could be full of shit… I would argue it all still comes down to tax brackets; I’ll show my work… I’ll use 2022/2023 401K and taxes Let’s assume a MFJ couple earning $200k per year which puts them in the 32% marginal tax bracket. They invest $22,500 in their 401k earning 8% yearly for 20 years they will have $104,872. That $22,500 has 32% taken out of it before it can be invested as a Roth which leaves $15,300 to invest. Again growing 8% for 20 years the Roth is now $71,313. In 20 years the tax man comes due. Let’s assume they withdraw the entire amount to live on that year. The Roth is easy its taxes free so they have the full $71,313. The pretax 401k isn’t so lucky, using 2022 taxes they will owe $19,004 in income taxes. Taking these taxes out the 401k is left at $85,868 approximately 20% higher than the Roth. If this couple isn’t high earners but are just super savers and are in the 22% bracket the Roth ends up worth $81,800 so approaching the 401k. The tiered tax brackets really help the 401k because you are only taxed 12% on the first $40k coming out of the account where your investments were assumed to go in at your full marginal rate.