Financial moves to make before 12/31

[Parliament 14,153]

13 hours ago, Vintner said:

Roth 401Ks are goldmines for the crowd under 35. At least do the company match but the best advice is to contribute all that you can.  It’s hard to see the benefit when you are early in your career, because it’s taking away from your discretionary spending aka “fun budget”. The first $100K is the hardest but that will grow and the next $100K comes faster (barring financial crises…but that’s when things get cheap and markets will recover) and eventually the annual growth of your investments exceeds your contributions.
 

Keep the pedal to the metal if you can but I will say that as your earnings increase throughout your career you may choose to shift some to traditional 401K in order to moderate/minimize current taxes. 

Regardless of your vehicle keep making the biggest contribution that you can afford and keep it all invested in something.  Most companies 401K managers have crappy money market vehicles.

 

1) Your first >5 years out of college just crank your withholding to the max (likely 20%).  You were poor in college; just stay poor a few more years.  As stated above, you're gonna prime the pump and get you a gold mine someday.

 1a) They tell me your first million is a lot harder to make than your second. I hope so.  

[StassneyHorn 6,563]

There’s a good amount of finance influencers/youtubers ( I fucking hate that I just typed that out) that say getting to 100k is harder and takes more effort than getting to the first million, and that’s what every person in their 20s should focus on—getting to 100k. 

[EastHorn 281]

On 11/2/2024 at 3:24 PM, StassneyHorn said:

There’s a good amount of finance influencers/youtubers ( I fucking hate that I just typed that out) that say getting to 100k is harder and takes more effort than getting to the first million, and that’s what every person in their 20s should focus on—getting to 100k. 

The Money Guys are good but I feel like use it to sell their AUM but less militant than Dave Ramsey. White coat investor is good even if not a doctor. He can get pretty advanced but overall good advice. 

[The Original Greaser Bob 2,803]

On 9/13/2024 at 10:23 PM, Muny_Tex said:

On personal front, my plan for end of year is to continue tradition of only having kids born in Q4 so we can optimize the full year Child Tax Credit before all the bullshit comes due. 

Per Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, your kids will be shitty hockey players.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,419]

For the max 401k crowd (traditional or roth) check to see if your employer allows for after tax contributions. I'm in year 6 of my employment and just learned that I can contribute an additional 10K as after tax dollars to my traditional 401k and then have it automatically converted to my roth 401k account. It's a way of pushing up to $10K extra into my roth via payroll deductions.

Backdoor roth IRA contributions are tricky for me tax wise because I have traditional IRA balances. I believe this works around that issue or at least I haven't discovered it yet. as always don't take tax advice from someone named after a movie tough guy.

 

Edited Friday at 03:45 PM by Nice Guy Eddie

[BottleRocket 644]

Owen Wilson?

[BearSchlong 8,079]

Per Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, your kids will be shitty hockey players.

Greyshirted my kid in Kindergarten so he would be one of the older kids in his class. Worked pretty well.

[RDCanecutter 26,346]

When I want to save money, I just use the credit card. That way it's free.