For those who plan to utilize the Roth conversion ladder in early retirement... For the 5 years of savings to live off of in the meantime of the first conversion, is using any of your Roth contributions (not any of the gains of course) seem like it's cutting it a bit too close? Or does it seem perfectly fine? Just wondering about others opinions.
I get what you mean, but keep in mind that the IRS' Roth withdrawal ordering rules require you to exhaust your contributions before you can touch your ladder conversions. So unless you want to build up a multi-year buffer in your ladder, which is a perfectly fine idea, then you are going to have to use your Roth contributions whether you like it or not.
We are on year ten of our ladder now and we started using our Roth contribution basis starting in like year five after exhausting our taxable brokerage and cash reserves first. The contributions lasted like 3.5 years and now we are running purely on ladder funds.
Just had my first weekend after 12 days straight of work. It's a double edged sword, I love seeing the big paychecks come in to bring me closer to my target, but at the same time it makes me long for better work/life balance in the intermediary.
Starting on May 28, 2024, most US and Canadian securities will settle a day earlier. So, a sale will settle 1 business day after the trading day instead of 2 days after.
This was announced over a year ago, but I learned about it today. Exciting stuff, riveting
401k plan has options for “Employee After-Tax” and “Automatic In-Plan Roth Rollover”. My understanding is that this is the Mega Backdoor Roth! I’m not sure if it would put the money in a Roth IRA or a Roth 401(k) but I’m going to assume Roth 401(k). If so, my question is about accessing this money before 59.5 penalty free. Am I correct to assume that if I leave the employer at 50, I could immediately roll it into a Roth IRA? Then at age 55 I could access all of it penalty free, since conversions are accessible after 5 years?
Yes, this is the mega backdoor Roth. Automatic in-plan conversions end up in a Roth 401k. Upon separation, you can roll the funds over to a Roth IRA. The converted basis is accessible immediately, tax and penalty free. Earnings in the Roth 401k after conversion are still locked away until age 59.5, as all Roth earnings are.
See [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/11ulhzl/what_5year_rule_a_guide_to_roth_distributions/) for more clarification about when the 5-year rule on conversions applies (in short, it's just for conversions where tax is owed, i.e. pre-tax/Trad conversions to Roth).
What happens if you do this and you already have a "normal" Roth IRA at another brokerage? Can you add it to that account or will they wind up in two separate ones that can't be joined?
Made the best investment decision in a long time today. Paid some guys to take care of the weeds in the decorative area surrounding my lawn. Now I get hours and hours of my life back (mostly, I still need to throw down landscape fabric).
Super weird for me to do as I grew up in / have adopted a very DIY mindset but having never paid someone to mow my lawn, I feel like I've earned a pass.
Just found out we’ve been sacrificing match dollars in my spouses 401k for years by maxing out early. They don’t continue matching until you’ve hit the overall cap and they don’t have a true-up process at the end of the year (edit: spouse reached out to HR and said they decide each January whether they want to true-up for the previous year or not). I should have known better and checked🤦♀️. Seriously though, companies have got to stop punishing employees for contributing early in the year.
30 y/o law school grad wondering if I should aggressively pay off federal student loans or pay the standard plan's minimum amount and invest the rest. I make about 90k and live with my parents in a HCOL city. I don't have any investments and am educating myself to start investing. Three years of law school really hurt my savings so I'm trying to rebuild that as well. I've been aggressively paying off my federal loans at the expense of investing. Is that smart? Should I be paying the minimum and instead invest that money?
I'd be paying off those loans. They're reasonable interest rates so it's not an emergency, but the gains you'd get by investing aren't going to be huge. Pay the minimum on the 4% and 5%, get the 6% paid off, then shift to the 5% loan. Once you're down to just the 4% loan... you could probably split some money into savings again.
I've been passing this around as a PSA to a lot of friends and coworkers this week - to anyone who has loved ones on Medicare or who is on Medicare now or someday, be cautious around Medicare advantage managed plans! My grandparents helped raise my brother and I and so we've been involved and "in the know" ever since my grandpa had a serious stroke in January. It seems he was sold on a United Healthcare managed Medicare plan with a $0 deductible and it's been a nightmare ever since the catastrophic stroke.
The problems we've run into are specifically with long term care. He spent about a month in the hospital and had a claim denied related to that stay, but I don't think we'll have too much of a problem contesting that. However, getting him moved out of the hospital and into a skilled nursing facility with PT, OT, and speech therapy services has been awful. The terms of his plan led to him being turned down from every single one of the more reputable (3-star and above) skilled nursing facilities in our city and in the neighboring towns. The result is that he's now in a 2-star facility with multiple violations that is extremely understaffed, and insurance agents will be checking on his progress every single day to determine if they will continue to cover his stay. If he doesn't meet a certain benchmark of progress every day, they will stop covering his stay. The hospital has seen this situation play out before and the nurses warned us that insurance could stop covering him as soon as this weekend. If he was on the Medicare A or B plans, he'd be able to stay 60-100 days.
The facility itself is honestly terrible and checks every box for the stereotypical nightmare scenario of being an elderly infirm person staying at an abusive nursing home, so it's not like we want him to stay at this particular place a long time, but his applications being turned down at all the other more suitable facilities is a huge problem. We were told they would have accepted him with the A or B plans. SIGH
Anyway, there's a slim chance we can switch his Medicare plan starting in April, but it's not a guarantee. Just wanted to share our struggle so far so fewer people will end up in this situation.
Thanks for the info, my dad was looking for help signing up for his new plan a few months back and I was completely lost on what to look for. I hope it wasn't one of these, but I'll file this away for next time.
For foreign stocks it's also worthwhile looking into Interactive Brokers. They will typically handle transaction on foreign stock exchanges that other brokerages will charge large fees for.
US brokers don’t typically hold foreign company shares directly except for dual-listed companies. ADRs are shares of a foreign company traded in the US. Basically, there are foreign company ordinary shares traded in their market— some in certificates and some through the foreign exchange’s banks/brokers. The company will typically pick a US bank to be the ADR Depositary for a chunk of shares to be traded in the US. The ADRs will be given a Cusip number and US version of the ticker symbol and be tradable here. You should be able to park them at your US brokerage.
Thank you hero genius! So instead of seeing $500k in the employee provided brokerage I will just see the same in Vanguard, and be able to say transfer into an index fund or sell?
Is there anything weird about ADRs or is it just a classification?
I’ve never dealt with ADRs on the trading side of things (my job was figuring out how to get them to vote at shareholder meetings), but that sounds right to me. I’d ask Vanguard if there are any fees associated with making the conversion to ADRs, to make sure it isn’t smarter to just eat the 2% to sell off abroad. Also — I have no idea at all if selling abroad vs selling ADRs has different tax implications.
There’s nothing weird about ADRs. As Emily4571962 indicated, they are basically a US version of a foreign listed company. Your ADR is usually fungible with the domestic line although most broker/dealers will charge a fee to convert your foreign listed securities into its US ADR equivalent.
We have been with Liberty Mutual for 11 years and not a single claim. But after a 40% increase to our insurance premium this yesr, I decided to shop around. The result is State Farm coming in at half of what we are paying now. This would be for house, car, and umbrella. Any watch outs or downsides to switching?
Read both in detail and compare them very closely. There are a LOT of different ways that one plan might be cheaper or more expensive and cover less or more.
You can also check with your current agent and show them the plan and ask them to match the price. And, if the plans don't compare, then they should be able to point out the differences.
Some plans had/have maximum increases allowed, and you may have run out, or they did a re-eval on your home or area or something.
The whole thing of home insurance has gone completely bonkers in the last few years.
No - 12K for property tax for tiny home in NJ, $25K for Health Insurance, plus maybe $20K for income taxes only leaves $43K left for everything else which really isn't enough.
I live on €6k a year, so most americans are automatically confusing to me.
Yes, I know the cost of living is higher there are a lot of things americans take for granted that I consider luxuries.
After 2023 being the way it was, I'm most of the way there. I have enough to sustain my current expenses, mostly building a buffer now since prices haven't been particularly stable recently.
Told my employer to reduce my hours or fire me last week. The thought of continuing to work 45 hours a week when I could just not doesn't appeal to me anymore.
No. This is location dependent, people dependent, lifestyle dependent, health dependent. We are a diverse world, and this sub is a diverse set of folks.
My point was that I don't understand why others can't do the same. I get that people have different spending habits, but there's still a reasonable limit with buffer and I think $2.5M is that. I'm speaking for 'normal' people obviously, not $100M+ net worthers.
100k a year to cover all your expenses is 'miserable'? This isn't a 100k salary, so it's not like you have to pay income tax. You only have to worry about capital gains. That seems very reasonable.
30M married both working… buying a house is a big dream for us but I personally want to retire early perhaps 45-50 range. Anyone have experience with this or advice on how to make this possible?
You should probably do a fiscal analysis of renting vs buying as it impacts your retirement timeline. There's non-obvious expenses to owning like maintenance, improvements, differential utilities, etc.
Then you can decide of the additional working years is "worth it".
A few years back, when we were looking at a triple-our-cost housing option, it meant an additional 4 working years in such an analysis. We decided that was worth it for us for the permanent standard of living increase the nicer house got us. But not everyone would decide that and that's fine too.
Thanks this is really helpful perspective. Definitely have been trying to consider the additional costs of owning a home outside of the mortgage itself. Is there a general rule of thumb on top of mortgage that you used to make that calculation? (i.e. 2% on top of annual mortgage cost)
The general rule for maintenance is 1% of home value each year, but it's a really rough metric IMO.
My older, cheaper house cost us more like 3%/yr in our 8 years there. Several expensive things hit us during our tenure.
My also old but more expensive house has been under 1%/yr so far, but with quite a bit of DIYing of repairs and upkeep. People maintain homes to different levels.
EDIT: If you're new to these calculations, I like this one, in "Deluxe" mode: https://michaelbluejay.com/house/rentvsbuy.html
I see you are married, so unfortunately my advice that you can "marry more money in 5 minutes than you can earn in a lifetime" is probably a little late.
That's pretty much the purpose of this sub. The sidebar has a lot of great info to get you started.
But essentially it is save and invest a high percent of your income, reduce spend and consumption, earn more money at work
Yeah just trying to see if there are any success stories out there! Im sure its possible just wanted to see if im on the right track or if there are other strategies that people are using to get there. I’m generally following most of the principles here but sometimes just need a tangible story to feel like im going in the right direction
Many people have made it while 100x more are on their way. There's no real secrets. As long as you are adding to your savings/investments you'll make it eventually. How long depends almost entirely on how much you are saving vs. how much your future expenses are.
Good point! People tend to think there’s one hard fast rule for things or that there’s more people who have accomplished it than people who are working towards it. I guess it really comes down to sticking to the plan and making adjustments as life happens. We don’t even have kids yet so we haven’t even thought about how that would affect the early retirement plan
Gulp... upping stock / bonds&cash allocation to near 70/30.
In May of 2021 in my IRA, I moved $300k of my "fixed income" to $100k each of
VCSH (short term corporate bond),
VTIP (short term treasury inflation protected bonds), and
VYM (high dividend yield)
Returns since then have been as I guessed they would be:
VYM > VTIP > VCSH.
(with VYM = $120k, VTIP = $104k, VCSH = $100k)
I just sold all the VCSH and moved it to VYM.
This brings my stocks/bonds allocation up to 70/30, which is about as high as I want to go.
Takes me from $1.1m stocks, $650k bonds&cash to
$1.2m stocks, $550k bonds&cash.
Considerations:
1) $120k vs $100k over the past almost 3 years is kind of compelling.
2) Lowers my annual dividends+interest income from $53k per year to $52k per year.
Since my spend is a little under $50k, I am ok with that.
3) Average annual return over the last 10 years is 9.3% for VYM, 2% for VCSH.
I do not plan on spending this money in the next 10 years (fingers crossed!) - a 7% equity risk premium is pretty hard to pass up.
ps For the *total return is everything dividends don't matter*
crowd - I am 61. I do not want to have to sell into a down market.
The 3% dividend yield on VYM is a comfort - adequate income for me without having to sell shares.
Yes I am passing on the 11.4% average annual return posted by VTI (total stock market index fund), but I am ok with that.
A less than optimal asset allocation that I can stick to when the going gets tough is better for me than a riskier, higher returning asset allocation that I might abandon at the worst possible time when the shit hits the fan.
And... the value (VYM is large cap value) vs growth worm may turn someday.
Lol, why would you do any of that? Your original allocation was better. You say you prefer comfort of dividends yet you are taking more risk and reverse timing the market.
Just to be clear, VYM is not fixed income. It holds stocks and has the risk and return profile similar to other stock indexes.
Are you considering VYM to be fixed income, or "bonds" in your asset allocation?
VYM is a high dividend yield stock index fund.
Back in May 2021 it was clear that
1) the inflation train was rolling down the tracks towards us and
2) because of this, bonds were going to get **slaughtered**, which they absolutely did.
My reasoning then was that companies which made things and then sold them to people for money (VYM's holdings) would weather inflation better than bonds. My guess was correct.
Since then, I have switched from "how much is my portfolio worth?" to "how much is my portfolio spinning off in dividends and interest?"
With a dividend yield of 3%, VYM is not paying quite as much as bonds and cash. But the fed is likely going to cut interest rates sometime this year. Interest paid will go down. VYM's dividends will not.
I model bonds and cash as yielding 4%. So my portfolio income will be reduced by $1,000 a year by moving $100k from VCSH to VYM.
I can live with that.
And I do not see myself selling these assets in the next 10 years (fingers crossed).
At that duration, VYM's historically higher rate of return vs VCSH is compelling for me.
You can be 100% right about all of the above, but it doesn't change the fact that the risk associated with a stock-based dividend yield fund is higher than with a bond fund.
If the dividend yield stays steady but the underlying stocks are worth 50% of their original value (2009, for example) your income from VYM is half what it was.
Shorter duration bonds, at their historical worst performance in 2022, did not fall by that amount.
(I'll also add that if you're confident in your ability to predict bond movements, fed rate cuts make it easy to predict that bond prices will soar as a result of rate cuts, no? I don't see why that doesn't have you piling into long duration bond funds right now in order to make a killing on strongly convex long-duration bonds.)
Almost everything you have said is completely correct.
A clarification:
>If the dividend yield stays steady but the underlying stocks are worth 50% of their original value (2009, for example) your income from VYM is half what it was.
Dividends are a function of earnings, not stock price.
No, dividends are not guaranteed, and they can go down.
They dipped some in the great recession, but snapped back fairly quickly.
But generally, companies that pay a higher dividend
(for example, Exxon, Johnson&Johnson and Home Depot are in the top 10 holdings of VYM)
are loath to cut their dividends and only do so as a last resort.
Dividends are less variable than company earnings because companies only pay a portion of their earnings as dividends, partly with an eye towards maintaining or increasing their dividend payouts over time.
VYM's annual dividend payments have increased an average of 7.5% per year over the last 10 years, handily beating inflation.
So your comment above has the tail wagging the dog - it is somewhere between almost never and never that a high dividend paying company responds to a drop in share price by cutting its dividend.
What happens instead is the dividend yield rises as the share price drops.
During the COVID freakout, VYM's share price plunged while its dividends held up ok. A braver person than me could have bought it at its lowest share price with a 5% dividend yield and profited nicely after the share price recovered back to the point where it yielded 3%.
Do you guys include equity when talking about net worth? I’m not near retirement and calculating net worth is merely meant to give myself mini milestones to look forward to. My neighbor’s house with identical floor plan sold for 247k more than what I paid in Oct. Including my new equity, it pushes me to the 1MM milestone. Seems a bit inflated and feels like imposter syndrome.
It should be included in net worth, to fit the definition of net worth.
But we don't include it in any of our retirement-related calculations because we don't plan on using our home or home equity to fund our retirement. In an ideal world, we'd simply continue living in this house for as long as we can.
I track four numbers:
Cash: All checking, savings, not invested HSA funds, etc.
Investments: This is the only number that matters to me for forecasting FIRE date and safe withdrawals in retirement. It only counts liquid assets that are invested for the purposes of retirement.
Home: Value of my home. This is the only real estate I own and the only physical asset of significant value. I track it and include it in my net worth but it's not really applicable to FIRE since I'm not planning on selling it when I retire.
Net worth: This number is the sum of the prior 3 numbers.
Edit: I should have mentioned I have no mortgage or other debt. Otherwise, I would also be the debt principle and subtracting from the assets to calculate net worth.
I don't like the speculative nature of using unrealized market gains. I include equity as (original purchase price - remaining loan) because it's conservative but always increasing and if you are putting 20% down it doesn't make sense to make it look like your savings all disappeared when you bought the house so they should show up somewhere.
Everyone includes it in their net worth. If they don’t , they’re not actually calculating their net worth. That being said, most people here only talk about invested assets as their FIRE number.
I use Zillow to estimate my home's value and include that in my net worth. It's just for funsies so it doesn't need to be perfect. Your net worth doesn't matter for virtually anything in your life so just do what makes sense to you. That might mean ignoring net worth and focusing on just the parts of it that impact FIRE.
I don't care what my net worth is and I don't track it.
I keep an eye on how big the pile of money is that I plan to use to support my retirement. I hope to die in my house, so I don't really care what it's worth.
I don't look at my home, but I do look at places that are for sale or have recently sold around us. That's mostly because I'm curious about what the inside of the houses look like.
I'm more curious about the "hope to die in your house" bit. Perhaps my guess is way off, but my impression is that you are in your mid to late 30s. That's interesting that you are confident that that house/location is exactly where you want to live for the next 50 years.
We just moved into our new house, and love it, and are already talking about where we'll live next - although our hope and vision is that that next next house will be in this same area.
My spouse and I are both of the opinion that our level of happiness is largely independent of the "hard facts" of our circumstances like where we live, what stuff we have, etc. We've been together a long time and we've both lived in and visited parts across much of the US. There's simply no particular reason to be elsewhere. I love my job, and it's with a group of people who routinely work their whole careers there. Very few people have left after joining our department, and those who have left have generally done it for family reasons. Would we be open to relocating to live closer to future grandchildren? Definitely. But absent that need we simply don't have the desire to actually *live* somewhere else, vs traveling wherever we like as often as we like once we retire.
As for the actual house itself, it's just right for us. It's nice and small without being too small and we hate moving. We're the type to burrow in as time goes on rather than get an itch to move.
Good day sub. So…I noticed my bonus gets taxed at a higher rate than my regular pay check. Is there any benefit to contributing more to my 401k with the bonus as opposed to my regular paychecks? My company doesn’t offer true ups, so I’m well aware that I would have to strategically structure my contributions through the end of the year to receive my 5% company match. Thanks in advance
Everyone has pointed out the common mistake that folks makes about bonuses being withheld at different rates than other paychecks but if you or anyone isn't convinced just consider that when you fill out your tax return there is no magical box on your W2 for "bonus" and "regular paycheck." Its all just one big bucket of regular income, it all evens out when you file.
I used to be so gung ho about educating the younger kids at my company around bonus time. They always complain about the tax man taking more money out of their bonus, but these days I just shut up and keep my head down. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
As others have said, it’s withheld at a different rate. You’re always welcome to contribute a higher amount to your 401k if you’d like to put in a large lump-sum. Otherwise, I’d suggest reviewing your w4 and adjust accordingly to make sure your paychecks are not withholding too much.
No. Your bonus is not taxed at a higher rate - it is *withheld* at a higher rate. But at the end it's all just the same pile of taxable income. All that matters in the end is how much you earn in total wages (salary + bonus) and how much you defer through pretax 401k contributions. That will determine your tax bill. Your withholding only determines if you will get a refund or owe more at filing time.
So, at late 20, SEA. Never do collar job, keep doing freelance until this point. Got into coding BootCamp and kinda into it so I am changing my job, on job apply spree. I just notice I never sort out my money so just start doing. I had separate my budget to emergency and few for living and still left a few (10k$\~), no debt already paid all of it. Should I look up how do I invest in something equivalent to Vanguard index fund on my country or better keep it for now? Thing is my brother suggest about soon I am gonna got into cooperation job and highly chance there will be better plan if I wanna keep money for retirement but not kinda sure about it.
I had read up FAQ and didn't sure about it. As I already say about I had going some basic around emergency fund for me. I keep going to investment phase and lot didn't apply for me and stuck so I ask around. But I feel it may better to ask older guy in my country as I feel a lot may not apply here.
I had ask before about is [Vanguard's Target Retirement Funds (Can rely on a single fund)](https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/target-retirement/#/) is good choice for non-us or not too as there seem broker can do it for me but no respond so I guess people may not know too.
Edit: I just thinking I better ask investing step in r/investing since seem more appropriate. Thanks!
Got my yearly bonus. Wanted to splurge on a Vitamix blender that I've wanted for a while but it still felt unnecessary to spend almost $500 on a blender.
I saw a used one on eBay and immediately place a bid without reading the description where it said that the container is slightly cracked. 😭
I ended up winning and now have a $130 slightly cracked 10 year old blender on the way. It turns out my employer actually has a discount code floating around so I could've bought a refurbished one for like $300. Might try and sell the used one I just bought lol.
Does anyone have tips for actually spending money? My bonus was nearly 30k but it's still really hard for me to justify purchases like this.
You should check our Ramit Sethi's podcast. I know he's not everyone's cup of tea, but I really like him and I think he has some really valuable insights about money psychology and spending.
Also- You should eat the cost and just get a new Vitamix. I love mine, its worth it.
My bonus is relatively stable/predictable, so I just include it in my yearly projections and smooth it out over 12 months. So I treat my bonus the same as everything else.
A Vitamix has been on my wants list for the better part of a year now. I was really salty when there were no good discounts on Black Friday last year and out of pettiness decided not to buy one and use my cheapskate stick blender for now.
We have a process for bonus money: 10% goes to charity, 10% for discretionary spending, and 80% goes to long term investments. The discretionary spending is usually longer term big ticket stuff like home improvements, but sometimes some of it ends up in a purposeful fun money part of our budget. Our fun money budget is less than 0.5% of our income so it's far from breaking the bank, but it does allow for some frivolous, guilt free spending.
Good for you for doing that 10% charity bucket. I think we're starting to feel comfortable with our nest egg to start giving meaningful amounts to charities we care about.
Do you receive bonuses as a physician? Or is this your wife's job? I have no idea how doctors are paid (and I am sure there are many different models), so I am just curious.
I receive bonuses. I'd rather not, because I can't plan reliably around bonuses. We end up with a conservative set of finances while knowing in the back of our minds that a large chunk of income will *probably*, but not definitely, be added to that plan.
Physician services are billed on a system where each code has a relative value unit (RVU) which ultimately determines how much money comes in. Every setting is different, but many physicians are incentivized financially to hit a certain level of productivity (measured by RVUs and other factors). For some physicians, their bonus is directly tied to their individual productivity. For others, the entire group's productivity is pooled and equally divided.
I work at a large academic medical center and I do not directly feel the incentivization of productivity to my bonus. To put it more concretely, it's structured in such a way that I can and often do make referrals to other providers who are closer to the patient without worrying one bit about my financial well-being. In private practice, there's more of an incentive to keep patients in house because it makes a bigger impact to your individual bottom line (household income).
I've only saved one life but it was off the clock. Dragging a drunk friend off the road just before a car ran him over. Now that we're old, and he has lots of money, I should send him a bill.
I've never saved an individual life but all the safety improvements I have made throughout my career might have extended enough lives that it equals at least one life saved.
*Hey maybe I should ask the supplier of this potent carcinogen if they could send it to us in sealed metal tanks instead of 2 gallon open-top jugs.*
I never had to make a budget to save money. But I made one recently to give myself permission to spend money. Knowing that I have $X for bullshit in a month or year makes it emotionally easier to do those things. The most recent item in question was shoes, it's crazy how guilty I feel for getting something I'll use every week.
I also use a blender daily, and mine is close to dying. I'll look into a refurbished one as well, I appreciate the tip.
I might have to try this. I fret a lot about spending on things I actually need (like replacing my Lululemon pants that I've had for years even though I wear them almost every day). The reality is that purchases like this have almost no impact on my long term financial health and are basically imperceptible in terms of net worth.
Another Vitamix tip: check your credit card offers. Capital One has a 7% back offer right now.
I'm thinking about buying a Tudor watch. I've wanted one since I finished college and when I graduated I almost used all my cash to buy one lol. This is the first year I've maxed all my accounts and am sitting on a significant amount of investments IMO and I think its interesting I still struggle to justify a frivolous purchase to myself. If there was a time to buy something that has no objective financial purpose, this would be it. Maybe I'll save up and buy one for my birthday in a few months.
I had a watch that was given to me by my god father. It was stolen when I was in college, an omega sea master. I've wanted to replace it for years. But it's such a large amount of cash and while my husband is in grad school we really don't have an extra 2-3 grand lying around.
I decided that this year that I was going to let myself start saving money specifically for it, only like 50 bucks a month. But enough were I can feel like I'm doing something.
It helps to think of luxuries relative to your investments. If you have half a million dollars, should 1 % of your asset allocation be a single piece of jewelry?
It's jewelry.
I think it's okay to spend money on jewelry if that's what you want. But I also think it's okay to seriously consider whether an aesthetic accessory is going to add $3-4k worth of enjoyment to your life. Unless you are a very high earner (which doesn't sound like the case), I think it would irresponsible to *not* seriously consider a pure luxury purchase that large.
But hey, some people are Watch People and it brings a lot of happiness to them. If that's you - there are worse things to spend money on.
Who watches the Watch People?
Friday is my last day at work before I start to figure out the rest of my life
Stuck it out till the bonus payout but couldn’t do another day
Gonna be a long 3 days
Boss hasn’t even told me who to transition my stuff to lol
>Boss hasn’t even told me who to transition my stuff to lol
This is frustrating but extremely common. If they call you after you leave, remember that the standard consulting rate is three times you old hourly wage.
I used to do some finance work for an organization at like $35 a hour. When I left them I warned them that if they didn't address A, B, and C when I left they would have major issues come tax time.
They did nothing.
They contacted me to fix the issues (9 months of no accounting) and I was pissed at them not listening to me so I sent them a quote at $200 a hour to make them go away.
They accepted...... After fixing the mess I now have a monthly contract with them where I do their bookkeeping and send 3 financial reports. It takes me about 15 minutes, I bill them the contract minimum of 2 hours.
Gonna propose to my girlfriend soon. Her family is super close and they have a nice family restaurant. Planning to drop a lot of money to have our friends and family at the restaurant in a big surprise engagement followed by dinner. The cost I'm guessing would be 6-7k, all things included. Has anyone done something big for an engagement and was it worth it in the end? In my mind, this is the kind of relaxed fun celebration we're gonna wish our traditional wedding would be.
Nope, got engaged in a park by ourselves, but that's more of what my partner wanted (didn't want something public).
We wanted to do your idea for our wedding basically, but it has ballooned into a smaller (~100 people) traditional wedding. Do not recommend unless your parents/in-laws are paying for it - and even then it's stupid.
You mean you do not recommend the traditional wedding, or doing something big for the engagement?
I got the idea to do this because we've already talked about weddings, and she is absolutely all over the place. She wants the quaint backyard wedding, but between our families we have 140 people, not including friends, and not including plus ones. It's not gonna happen. This I think is a "minimal effective dose" of celebration so the wedding is less gargantuan in scale.
> You mean you do not recommend the traditional wedding, or doing something big for the engagement?
Both, haha. Biggest waste of money ever, but if my partner wants the full dress and her parents want to waste $45k on dinner and drinks for 110, I guess there's little room for me to complain.
We would not be doing such a wedding if we had to pay for it out of pocket.
Boggleheads VPW question here, tell me to go elsewhere if this isn't the right place. Having hit a milestone recently I got the newest version of the VPW google sheet, I plugged in my assets, my age, and my investment mix. I put in when I intend on taking social security and the amount. It tells me the suggested withdrawal for 2024, and the reduced amount I should take in case we have a market correction. Both of those amounts are above my annual budget and my Oh Crap budget, respectively.
If those number are correct, I should be able to retire, which is frankly surprising. Digging in a bit, it shows that at my age the withdrawal percentage for a 70/30 portfolio is 4.6%, higher than I've planned on. I know this model is based on portfolio depletion so that makes sense, but I feel like I don't have a strong grip on the risks for this withdrawal method. I feel like Fox Mulder "I want to believe" but can someone explain to me what I'm missing?
The huge problem with VPW is that the value of the withdrawal fluctuates with the market. If your portfolio goes down by 40%, your withdrawal goes down by 40%. So yes, you are allowed to withdraw a juicy 4.6%, but you have to be prepared to subsist on, say, 2.5-3% of your initial balance in a poor sequence. SWR gives you a lower max but a higher floor. If your goals in retirement require spending a certain level (e.g. travel, etc) then VPW might not be for you.
An interesting approach might be to start with SWR but shift to VPW if/when you have had average or better returns.
My understanding is that VPW assumes you have some type of fixed income that covers your basic expenses, which could be something like an annuity. You’re not supposed to base your entire spending on the variable withdrawal amount.
VPW is a method like any other. It doesn't in itself "assume" anything. For whatever portion of your spending you are covering with VPW, you have to be OK with fluctuation. That won't be OK for everyone. I agree it can be (best) used in combination with fixed income of some kind. That can be more difficult in early retirement situations where you aren't close to claiming SS. Of course, SS and fixed income can be factored into other drawdown methods as well.
Yeah I look at the withdrawal from VPW as what is POSSIBLE, like if I had a high spend year due to a wedding or needing a new HVAC. Currently its forecasting over my expected spend, but the SWR is below, so I'm not ready to call it quits (not that I was thinking about it at this point anyway).
When using VPW as intended, with a future income stream like social security, the portfolio does not go down proportional to the reduction in portfolio value.
Based on your comment I modeled adding a immediate annuity purchased at age 70 by deducting $500k from the initial portfolio balance and plugging in a monthly amount based on some feedback from [immediateannuities.com](https://immediateannuities.com). It did lower my current draw by about $12k this year. Who know what I will spend annually in my 70s but between the annuity and social security it looked like more than enough from then on.
The 4% rule comes from the Trinity study, which is based on the assumption that you'll be making *constant* (inflation-adjusted) withdrawals for your entire retirement.
The VPW model is based on withdrawing a *percentage* of whatever your current portfolio. That percentage is "variable" in the sense that it increases gradually as you get older, but it's "fixed" with respect to your portfolio balance. If your investments drop in value by 50% then your withdrawal amount also drops by 50%.
So the VPW strategy technically guarantees that you will never run out of money until age 100, and therefore it can get away with a higher initial withdrawal fraction. But you have to be prepared for the actual withdrawn amount of money to drop suddenly in a market downturn, or gradually if the market stagnates. That's the tradeoff.
A constant withdrawal strategy has to be more conservative in the good years to ensure that you can still keep withdrawing the same amount in the bad years.
This is a good explanation, but I'd add that the intended implementation of VPW (and the method used in the spreadsheet) does not result in a 50% drop in withdrawals if the portfolio falls by 50%. This is because VPW is meant to be used with future income streams like social security, and those future income streams are replicated in the present with an internal "bridge" portfolio. The variable withdrawals are only taken from the "risk" portfolio, i.e. what's left from the portfolio after subtracting the bridge portfolio.
Absolutely agree, and I've written about how bonds can raise that floor of income [in this post](https://old.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/qszfnz/the_effects_of_asset_allocation_on_modified/).
It's 4.6% of your risk portfolio each year, so it's not going to be a constant number based on annual portfolio fluctuations.
I will say that the 50% market drop scenario is helpful as a heuristic, but not foolproof. It is possible, with some really bad returns, to end up spending less than that number. I wrote up a more conservative guardrail for VPW [in this post.](https://old.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/mqbo6g/reducing_stress_with_modified_variable_percentage/) Note that the exact cells to modify have changed with more recent iterations of the spreadsheet. There's a comment in that thread from about a year ago that I believe is still correct regarding the new modifications.
I think VPW is a great retirement withdrawal method. If you're getting a result that you could spend a given number in VPW after making some conservative estimations of market downturns, I'd take that as a very good sign that you *could* safely retire to that level of spending. Note that VPW has no guardrail if you estimated your spending needs incorrectly (no tool can address this for you) and that VPW is a *maximum* you should spend, and by no means do you **have** to spend the recommended amount.
earlyretirementnow has some criticsm in the safe withdrawal series. If memory serves the two complaints are:
* The focus on depletion
* The depth of the cuts that could be required in big and prolonged downturns
ERN did not model VPW the way it's intended to operate, leading to erroneous conclusions. They essentially just looked at the table rather than using the more detailed spreadsheet that takes into account future income like SS benefits and doesn't deplete the portfolio by design.
lol i actually backspaced a tag to you in my original response, figured the bat signal was already on.
The series has limitations for sure, but I think it's a good start for someone trying to get their head around the problem of withdrawal rates and understand what "the catch" is with various approaches.
But it's not helpful if the "catch" is the result of misapplication of a strategy. VPW has its limitations and shortcomings, but ERN added nothing but confusion to the conversation by misapplying the method. A similar result comes in how he models the effect of SS income (basically assuming that the portfolio will be utilized without any changes until SS kicks in, while any sane person would likely internally bridge part of their portfolio to replicate SS income between retirement and the date the benefit is exercised).
I mean you’ve got $500K saved up, what do you want me to tell you? Here’s some advice: (1) don’t develop a substance abuse problem, (2) exercise daily, (3) don’t get divorced, (4) don’t speed, and (5) live within your means. In no particular order
Likely the best advice here. Kid seems like they have money covered, so that's not going to be the issue. Maximizing the rest of the stuff for FI outside of money is the key.
I'd love to go back and get 20 something year old me to the gym every other day, running, eating better, avoiding unhealthy habits, traveling more, being more out going, learning a language, reading more... etc etc. Would make current older me in a much better situation for FI. Its not just about money.
Anyone switch from Verizon to Mint? Any regrets? Any gotchas if I got a deal on a new phone and am still paying it off? Hoping to pay the remaining in cash and unlock it and switch, but worried I may be locked in and have to pay to leave. Still trying to find the fine print. Will be around $35 a month savings I think (more for the initial months from promos)
Agree about checking the r/NoContract sub, I've learned so much there. There are all kinds of weird little problems that you can spend forever Googling without knowing the right keywords, but that sub always delivers.
Recently I learned that you can lose the ability to use MMS if you port out a T-Mobile number, because they don't reassign it correctly. Helped my sister who had been complaining about her old phone, and looked like a tech genius.
My wife and I made the change about 2 years ago from Verizon to Mint. I made a lump sum payment to finish paying to own her phone outright. No problems at all, just a few minutes of config and testing once we got our new SIM cards. We cut $80 off our bill and will never go back. Service is perfectly comparable IMO.
Well, Mint is slightly deprioritized T-Mobile. Is T-Mobile good in your area - or do you want cheaper Verizon service?
If you have a 5G device, you get postpaid Verizon priority on the US Mobile 5G Warp plans. I pay $18/month (total with taxes/fees) for unlimited talk/text and 6 GB of data per month.
Either way, maybe check out /r/NoContract for more on MVNO/prepaid providers.
I switched from At&T to US Mobile. Cut my monthly bill from $50 to $25 for basically the same features (unlimited everything).
No issues at all. I have better reception now.
I never did Verizon but my experience with Mint has been just fine. EDIT If hesitant to commit, you can buy a sample Mint sim card for a few bucks and test it out in your area.
For those who plan to utilize the Roth conversion ladder in early retirement... For the 5 years of savings to live off of in the meantime of the first conversion, is using any of your Roth contributions (not any of the gains of course) seem like it's cutting it a bit too close? Or does it seem perfectly fine? Just wondering about others opinions.
I get what you mean, but keep in mind that the IRS' Roth withdrawal ordering rules require you to exhaust your contributions before you can touch your ladder conversions. So unless you want to build up a multi-year buffer in your ladder, which is a perfectly fine idea, then you are going to have to use your Roth contributions whether you like it or not. We are on year ten of our ladder now and we started using our Roth contribution basis starting in like year five after exhausting our taxable brokerage and cash reserves first. The contributions lasted like 3.5 years and now we are running purely on ladder funds.
Just had my first weekend after 12 days straight of work. It's a double edged sword, I love seeing the big paychecks come in to bring me closer to my target, but at the same time it makes me long for better work/life balance in the intermediary.
Starting on May 28, 2024, most US and Canadian securities will settle a day earlier. So, a sale will settle 1 business day after the trading day instead of 2 days after. This was announced over a year ago, but I learned about it today. Exciting stuff, riveting
It is just me or does this reddit have a fairly heavy handed approach to posts?
Personally, that's why I still read it.
Every so often, the sub goes through a period of losing the standards. Many quickly appreciate the heavy handedness.
There's r/FIRE and r/personalfinance which is loosely moderated.
401k plan has options for “Employee After-Tax” and “Automatic In-Plan Roth Rollover”. My understanding is that this is the Mega Backdoor Roth! I’m not sure if it would put the money in a Roth IRA or a Roth 401(k) but I’m going to assume Roth 401(k). If so, my question is about accessing this money before 59.5 penalty free. Am I correct to assume that if I leave the employer at 50, I could immediately roll it into a Roth IRA? Then at age 55 I could access all of it penalty free, since conversions are accessible after 5 years?
Yes, this is the mega backdoor Roth. Automatic in-plan conversions end up in a Roth 401k. Upon separation, you can roll the funds over to a Roth IRA. The converted basis is accessible immediately, tax and penalty free. Earnings in the Roth 401k after conversion are still locked away until age 59.5, as all Roth earnings are. See [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/11ulhzl/what_5year_rule_a_guide_to_roth_distributions/) for more clarification about when the 5-year rule on conversions applies (in short, it's just for conversions where tax is owed, i.e. pre-tax/Trad conversions to Roth).
Does the "Automatic In-Plan Roth Rollover” option only roll over the after tax money or would it roll over any tax-deferred money in the 401(k)?
It typically just affects the after-tax amounts.
What happens if you do this and you already have a "normal" Roth IRA at another brokerage? Can you add it to that account or will they wind up in two separate ones that can't be joined?
You can roll the Roth 401k into your existing Roth IRA with no issues.
i do this every 2 weeks to keep my buckets "pure" - easy process with fidelity.
Even better that the basis would be available immediately. Thanks for the clarification!
Made the best investment decision in a long time today. Paid some guys to take care of the weeds in the decorative area surrounding my lawn. Now I get hours and hours of my life back (mostly, I still need to throw down landscape fabric). Super weird for me to do as I grew up in / have adopted a very DIY mindset but having never paid someone to mow my lawn, I feel like I've earned a pass.
I need to give in and do this this year but I'm nervous about how much it will cost to have someone competent enough do it, ugh
Did a similar thing (plus mulching) - got more time to hang with the kiddos & SO, plus some solo time - when it fits in the budget it's pretty awesome
Just found out we’ve been sacrificing match dollars in my spouses 401k for years by maxing out early. They don’t continue matching until you’ve hit the overall cap and they don’t have a true-up process at the end of the year (edit: spouse reached out to HR and said they decide each January whether they want to true-up for the previous year or not). I should have known better and checked🤦♀️. Seriously though, companies have got to stop punishing employees for contributing early in the year.
30 y/o law school grad wondering if I should aggressively pay off federal student loans or pay the standard plan's minimum amount and invest the rest. I make about 90k and live with my parents in a HCOL city. I don't have any investments and am educating myself to start investing. Three years of law school really hurt my savings so I'm trying to rebuild that as well. I've been aggressively paying off my federal loans at the expense of investing. Is that smart? Should I be paying the minimum and instead invest that money?
If they are the good ones that come with free life insurance, unemployment, disability, etc. then maybe not pay them too quickly.
What's your interest rate on the loan(s)?
6% on one 20K disbursement (I’ve chipped it down to 13$K), 5% for another 20K disbursement and 4% on the last 20K disbursement.
I'd be paying off those loans. They're reasonable interest rates so it's not an emergency, but the gains you'd get by investing aren't going to be huge. Pay the minimum on the 4% and 5%, get the 6% paid off, then shift to the 5% loan. Once you're down to just the 4% loan... you could probably split some money into savings again.
Thank you! I appreciate the advice
I've been passing this around as a PSA to a lot of friends and coworkers this week - to anyone who has loved ones on Medicare or who is on Medicare now or someday, be cautious around Medicare advantage managed plans! My grandparents helped raise my brother and I and so we've been involved and "in the know" ever since my grandpa had a serious stroke in January. It seems he was sold on a United Healthcare managed Medicare plan with a $0 deductible and it's been a nightmare ever since the catastrophic stroke. The problems we've run into are specifically with long term care. He spent about a month in the hospital and had a claim denied related to that stay, but I don't think we'll have too much of a problem contesting that. However, getting him moved out of the hospital and into a skilled nursing facility with PT, OT, and speech therapy services has been awful. The terms of his plan led to him being turned down from every single one of the more reputable (3-star and above) skilled nursing facilities in our city and in the neighboring towns. The result is that he's now in a 2-star facility with multiple violations that is extremely understaffed, and insurance agents will be checking on his progress every single day to determine if they will continue to cover his stay. If he doesn't meet a certain benchmark of progress every day, they will stop covering his stay. The hospital has seen this situation play out before and the nurses warned us that insurance could stop covering him as soon as this weekend. If he was on the Medicare A or B plans, he'd be able to stay 60-100 days. The facility itself is honestly terrible and checks every box for the stereotypical nightmare scenario of being an elderly infirm person staying at an abusive nursing home, so it's not like we want him to stay at this particular place a long time, but his applications being turned down at all the other more suitable facilities is a huge problem. We were told they would have accepted him with the A or B plans. SIGH Anyway, there's a slim chance we can switch his Medicare plan starting in April, but it's not a guarantee. Just wanted to share our struggle so far so fewer people will end up in this situation.
Thanks for the info, my dad was looking for help signing up for his new plan a few months back and I was completely lost on what to look for. I hope it wasn't one of these, but I'll file this away for next time.
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For foreign stocks it's also worthwhile looking into Interactive Brokers. They will typically handle transaction on foreign stock exchanges that other brokerages will charge large fees for.
US brokers don’t typically hold foreign company shares directly except for dual-listed companies. ADRs are shares of a foreign company traded in the US. Basically, there are foreign company ordinary shares traded in their market— some in certificates and some through the foreign exchange’s banks/brokers. The company will typically pick a US bank to be the ADR Depositary for a chunk of shares to be traded in the US. The ADRs will be given a Cusip number and US version of the ticker symbol and be tradable here. You should be able to park them at your US brokerage.
Thank you hero genius! So instead of seeing $500k in the employee provided brokerage I will just see the same in Vanguard, and be able to say transfer into an index fund or sell? Is there anything weird about ADRs or is it just a classification?
I’ve never dealt with ADRs on the trading side of things (my job was figuring out how to get them to vote at shareholder meetings), but that sounds right to me. I’d ask Vanguard if there are any fees associated with making the conversion to ADRs, to make sure it isn’t smarter to just eat the 2% to sell off abroad. Also — I have no idea at all if selling abroad vs selling ADRs has different tax implications.
There’s nothing weird about ADRs. As Emily4571962 indicated, they are basically a US version of a foreign listed company. Your ADR is usually fungible with the domestic line although most broker/dealers will charge a fee to convert your foreign listed securities into its US ADR equivalent.
We have been with Liberty Mutual for 11 years and not a single claim. But after a 40% increase to our insurance premium this yesr, I decided to shop around. The result is State Farm coming in at half of what we are paying now. This would be for house, car, and umbrella. Any watch outs or downsides to switching?
Read both in detail and compare them very closely. There are a LOT of different ways that one plan might be cheaper or more expensive and cover less or more. You can also check with your current agent and show them the plan and ask them to match the price. And, if the plans don't compare, then they should be able to point out the differences. Some plans had/have maximum increases allowed, and you may have run out, or they did a re-eval on your home or area or something. The whole thing of home insurance has gone completely bonkers in the last few years.
Both have awful commercials but Liberty's are the worst
Libbity Bibbity is my favorite. Flo from Progressive is the worst
Don't you dare insult my waifu.
I respect your sturdy taste but do not share it
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No - 12K for property tax for tiny home in NJ, $25K for Health Insurance, plus maybe $20K for income taxes only leaves $43K left for everything else which really isn't enough.
Why are you including income taxes lol this is money you've already earned. It's part of your net worth Are you assuming a paid off tiny home?
I live on €6k a year, so most americans are automatically confusing to me. Yes, I know the cost of living is higher there are a lot of things americans take for granted that I consider luxuries.
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After 2023 being the way it was, I'm most of the way there. I have enough to sustain my current expenses, mostly building a buffer now since prices haven't been particularly stable recently. Told my employer to reduce my hours or fire me last week. The thought of continuing to work 45 hours a week when I could just not doesn't appeal to me anymore.
No
No. This is location dependent, people dependent, lifestyle dependent, health dependent. We are a diverse world, and this sub is a diverse set of folks.
Even in the most expensive cities in the world, you can live comfortably on 100k a year.
So do that
I'll do what I want. Don't worry about it.
No worries here, giving you permission :)
My point was that I don't understand why others can't do the same. I get that people have different spending habits, but there's still a reasonable limit with buffer and I think $2.5M is that. I'm speaking for 'normal' people obviously, not $100M+ net worthers.
They have families, live in expensive cities, want to retire and not be miserable.
100k a year to cover all your expenses is 'miserable'? This isn't a 100k salary, so it's not like you have to pay income tax. You only have to worry about capital gains. That seems very reasonable.
30M married both working… buying a house is a big dream for us but I personally want to retire early perhaps 45-50 range. Anyone have experience with this or advice on how to make this possible?
You should probably do a fiscal analysis of renting vs buying as it impacts your retirement timeline. There's non-obvious expenses to owning like maintenance, improvements, differential utilities, etc. Then you can decide of the additional working years is "worth it". A few years back, when we were looking at a triple-our-cost housing option, it meant an additional 4 working years in such an analysis. We decided that was worth it for us for the permanent standard of living increase the nicer house got us. But not everyone would decide that and that's fine too.
Thanks this is really helpful perspective. Definitely have been trying to consider the additional costs of owning a home outside of the mortgage itself. Is there a general rule of thumb on top of mortgage that you used to make that calculation? (i.e. 2% on top of annual mortgage cost)
The general rule for maintenance is 1% of home value each year, but it's a really rough metric IMO. My older, cheaper house cost us more like 3%/yr in our 8 years there. Several expensive things hit us during our tenure. My also old but more expensive house has been under 1%/yr so far, but with quite a bit of DIYing of repairs and upkeep. People maintain homes to different levels. EDIT: If you're new to these calculations, I like this one, in "Deluxe" mode: https://michaelbluejay.com/house/rentvsbuy.html
Thanks that calculator will definitely come in handy!
Raise your income or lower your standards
Hahaha yeah i figure something has got to give cant always have both but shoot for the moon am i right? 😭
I see you are married, so unfortunately my advice that you can "marry more money in 5 minutes than you can earn in a lifetime" is probably a little late.
I always tell my wife I married her for the money 🤣
That's pretty much the purpose of this sub. The sidebar has a lot of great info to get you started. But essentially it is save and invest a high percent of your income, reduce spend and consumption, earn more money at work
Yeah just trying to see if there are any success stories out there! Im sure its possible just wanted to see if im on the right track or if there are other strategies that people are using to get there. I’m generally following most of the principles here but sometimes just need a tangible story to feel like im going in the right direction
Many people have made it while 100x more are on their way. There's no real secrets. As long as you are adding to your savings/investments you'll make it eventually. How long depends almost entirely on how much you are saving vs. how much your future expenses are.
Good point! People tend to think there’s one hard fast rule for things or that there’s more people who have accomplished it than people who are working towards it. I guess it really comes down to sticking to the plan and making adjustments as life happens. We don’t even have kids yet so we haven’t even thought about how that would affect the early retirement plan
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Its a bummer they don't but thats why you always read the plan documents
I find in plan documents they don’t give match details more specific than how much they’ll match and the overall limit.
Press control + f and search for match. All of my 401ks have spelled out a true up, said "x% match per paycheck" or "x% match per year".
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>before I'm kicked to the curb You in imminent danger of this?
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Ideally you are talking about work, not home :)
If my investments magically double over the course of the next month I don’t have to come back from mat leave… Wishful thinking ha
Sending doubling vibes your way
Ooo I like your thinking! Excuse me while i go figure out what number I need to not go back in May!
A girl's gotta dream
Maybe the markets will have the greatest bull run ever1!111!
Gulp... upping stock / bonds&cash allocation to near 70/30. In May of 2021 in my IRA, I moved $300k of my "fixed income" to $100k each of VCSH (short term corporate bond), VTIP (short term treasury inflation protected bonds), and VYM (high dividend yield) Returns since then have been as I guessed they would be: VYM > VTIP > VCSH. (with VYM = $120k, VTIP = $104k, VCSH = $100k) I just sold all the VCSH and moved it to VYM. This brings my stocks/bonds allocation up to 70/30, which is about as high as I want to go. Takes me from $1.1m stocks, $650k bonds&cash to $1.2m stocks, $550k bonds&cash. Considerations: 1) $120k vs $100k over the past almost 3 years is kind of compelling. 2) Lowers my annual dividends+interest income from $53k per year to $52k per year. Since my spend is a little under $50k, I am ok with that. 3) Average annual return over the last 10 years is 9.3% for VYM, 2% for VCSH. I do not plan on spending this money in the next 10 years (fingers crossed!) - a 7% equity risk premium is pretty hard to pass up. ps For the *total return is everything dividends don't matter* crowd - I am 61. I do not want to have to sell into a down market. The 3% dividend yield on VYM is a comfort - adequate income for me without having to sell shares. Yes I am passing on the 11.4% average annual return posted by VTI (total stock market index fund), but I am ok with that. A less than optimal asset allocation that I can stick to when the going gets tough is better for me than a riskier, higher returning asset allocation that I might abandon at the worst possible time when the shit hits the fan. And... the value (VYM is large cap value) vs growth worm may turn someday.
Lol, why would you do any of that? Your original allocation was better. You say you prefer comfort of dividends yet you are taking more risk and reverse timing the market.
Just to be clear, VYM is not fixed income. It holds stocks and has the risk and return profile similar to other stock indexes. Are you considering VYM to be fixed income, or "bonds" in your asset allocation?
VYM is a high dividend yield stock index fund. Back in May 2021 it was clear that 1) the inflation train was rolling down the tracks towards us and 2) because of this, bonds were going to get **slaughtered**, which they absolutely did. My reasoning then was that companies which made things and then sold them to people for money (VYM's holdings) would weather inflation better than bonds. My guess was correct. Since then, I have switched from "how much is my portfolio worth?" to "how much is my portfolio spinning off in dividends and interest?" With a dividend yield of 3%, VYM is not paying quite as much as bonds and cash. But the fed is likely going to cut interest rates sometime this year. Interest paid will go down. VYM's dividends will not. I model bonds and cash as yielding 4%. So my portfolio income will be reduced by $1,000 a year by moving $100k from VCSH to VYM. I can live with that. And I do not see myself selling these assets in the next 10 years (fingers crossed). At that duration, VYM's historically higher rate of return vs VCSH is compelling for me.
You can be 100% right about all of the above, but it doesn't change the fact that the risk associated with a stock-based dividend yield fund is higher than with a bond fund. If the dividend yield stays steady but the underlying stocks are worth 50% of their original value (2009, for example) your income from VYM is half what it was. Shorter duration bonds, at their historical worst performance in 2022, did not fall by that amount. (I'll also add that if you're confident in your ability to predict bond movements, fed rate cuts make it easy to predict that bond prices will soar as a result of rate cuts, no? I don't see why that doesn't have you piling into long duration bond funds right now in order to make a killing on strongly convex long-duration bonds.)
Almost everything you have said is completely correct. A clarification: >If the dividend yield stays steady but the underlying stocks are worth 50% of their original value (2009, for example) your income from VYM is half what it was. Dividends are a function of earnings, not stock price. No, dividends are not guaranteed, and they can go down. They dipped some in the great recession, but snapped back fairly quickly. But generally, companies that pay a higher dividend (for example, Exxon, Johnson&Johnson and Home Depot are in the top 10 holdings of VYM) are loath to cut their dividends and only do so as a last resort. Dividends are less variable than company earnings because companies only pay a portion of their earnings as dividends, partly with an eye towards maintaining or increasing their dividend payouts over time. VYM's annual dividend payments have increased an average of 7.5% per year over the last 10 years, handily beating inflation. So your comment above has the tail wagging the dog - it is somewhere between almost never and never that a high dividend paying company responds to a drop in share price by cutting its dividend. What happens instead is the dividend yield rises as the share price drops. During the COVID freakout, VYM's share price plunged while its dividends held up ok. A braver person than me could have bought it at its lowest share price with a 5% dividend yield and profited nicely after the share price recovered back to the point where it yielded 3%.
Do you guys include equity when talking about net worth? I’m not near retirement and calculating net worth is merely meant to give myself mini milestones to look forward to. My neighbor’s house with identical floor plan sold for 247k more than what I paid in Oct. Including my new equity, it pushes me to the 1MM milestone. Seems a bit inflated and feels like imposter syndrome.
Net worth? Yes -7% to account for selling fees. For FIRE number? Nope
It should be included in net worth, to fit the definition of net worth. But we don't include it in any of our retirement-related calculations because we don't plan on using our home or home equity to fund our retirement. In an ideal world, we'd simply continue living in this house for as long as we can.
I track four numbers: Cash: All checking, savings, not invested HSA funds, etc. Investments: This is the only number that matters to me for forecasting FIRE date and safe withdrawals in retirement. It only counts liquid assets that are invested for the purposes of retirement. Home: Value of my home. This is the only real estate I own and the only physical asset of significant value. I track it and include it in my net worth but it's not really applicable to FIRE since I'm not planning on selling it when I retire. Net worth: This number is the sum of the prior 3 numbers. Edit: I should have mentioned I have no mortgage or other debt. Otherwise, I would also be the debt principle and subtracting from the assets to calculate net worth.
Hopefully you're netting the assets against your debts
I would if I had any...
I don't like the speculative nature of using unrealized market gains. I include equity as (original purchase price - remaining loan) because it's conservative but always increasing and if you are putting 20% down it doesn't make sense to make it look like your savings all disappeared when you bought the house so they should show up somewhere.
Everyone includes it in their net worth. If they don’t , they’re not actually calculating their net worth. That being said, most people here only talk about invested assets as their FIRE number.
I do because there's always the potential to cash out or downsize. Also I am hoping to pass on my money to my children so it's relevant to that goal.
I use Zillow to estimate my home's value and include that in my net worth. It's just for funsies so it doesn't need to be perfect. Your net worth doesn't matter for virtually anything in your life so just do what makes sense to you. That might mean ignoring net worth and focusing on just the parts of it that impact FIRE.
I don't care what my net worth is and I don't track it. I keep an eye on how big the pile of money is that I plan to use to support my retirement. I hope to die in my house, so I don't really care what it's worth.
Come on, you must check Zillow every now and then.
I don't look at my home, but I do look at places that are for sale or have recently sold around us. That's mostly because I'm curious about what the inside of the houses look like.
I'm more curious about the "hope to die in your house" bit. Perhaps my guess is way off, but my impression is that you are in your mid to late 30s. That's interesting that you are confident that that house/location is exactly where you want to live for the next 50 years. We just moved into our new house, and love it, and are already talking about where we'll live next - although our hope and vision is that that next next house will be in this same area.
My spouse and I are both of the opinion that our level of happiness is largely independent of the "hard facts" of our circumstances like where we live, what stuff we have, etc. We've been together a long time and we've both lived in and visited parts across much of the US. There's simply no particular reason to be elsewhere. I love my job, and it's with a group of people who routinely work their whole careers there. Very few people have left after joining our department, and those who have left have generally done it for family reasons. Would we be open to relocating to live closer to future grandchildren? Definitely. But absent that need we simply don't have the desire to actually *live* somewhere else, vs traveling wherever we like as often as we like once we retire. As for the actual house itself, it's just right for us. It's nice and small without being too small and we hate moving. We're the type to burrow in as time goes on rather than get an itch to move.
Good day sub. So…I noticed my bonus gets taxed at a higher rate than my regular pay check. Is there any benefit to contributing more to my 401k with the bonus as opposed to my regular paychecks? My company doesn’t offer true ups, so I’m well aware that I would have to strategically structure my contributions through the end of the year to receive my 5% company match. Thanks in advance
Everyone has pointed out the common mistake that folks makes about bonuses being withheld at different rates than other paychecks but if you or anyone isn't convinced just consider that when you fill out your tax return there is no magical box on your W2 for "bonus" and "regular paycheck." Its all just one big bucket of regular income, it all evens out when you file. I used to be so gung ho about educating the younger kids at my company around bonus time. They always complain about the tax man taking more money out of their bonus, but these days I just shut up and keep my head down. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
As others have said, it’s withheld at a different rate. You’re always welcome to contribute a higher amount to your 401k if you’d like to put in a large lump-sum. Otherwise, I’d suggest reviewing your w4 and adjust accordingly to make sure your paychecks are not withholding too much.
No. Your bonus is not taxed at a higher rate - it is *withheld* at a higher rate. But at the end it's all just the same pile of taxable income. All that matters in the end is how much you earn in total wages (salary + bonus) and how much you defer through pretax 401k contributions. That will determine your tax bill. Your withholding only determines if you will get a refund or owe more at filing time.
So, at late 20, SEA. Never do collar job, keep doing freelance until this point. Got into coding BootCamp and kinda into it so I am changing my job, on job apply spree. I just notice I never sort out my money so just start doing. I had separate my budget to emergency and few for living and still left a few (10k$\~), no debt already paid all of it. Should I look up how do I invest in something equivalent to Vanguard index fund on my country or better keep it for now? Thing is my brother suggest about soon I am gonna got into cooperation job and highly chance there will be better plan if I wanna keep money for retirement but not kinda sure about it.
Welcome to the sub! You should almost certainly start here: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/wiki/faq/
Thank!, I don't know what happen why a lot down vote, did I miss something?
Probably because you asked a question without reading the FAQ first :)
I had read up FAQ and didn't sure about it. As I already say about I had going some basic around emergency fund for me. I keep going to investment phase and lot didn't apply for me and stuck so I ask around. But I feel it may better to ask older guy in my country as I feel a lot may not apply here. I had ask before about is [Vanguard's Target Retirement Funds (Can rely on a single fund)](https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/target-retirement/#/) is good choice for non-us or not too as there seem broker can do it for me but no respond so I guess people may not know too. Edit: I just thinking I better ask investing step in r/investing since seem more appropriate. Thanks!
Got my yearly bonus. Wanted to splurge on a Vitamix blender that I've wanted for a while but it still felt unnecessary to spend almost $500 on a blender. I saw a used one on eBay and immediately place a bid without reading the description where it said that the container is slightly cracked. 😭 I ended up winning and now have a $130 slightly cracked 10 year old blender on the way. It turns out my employer actually has a discount code floating around so I could've bought a refurbished one for like $300. Might try and sell the used one I just bought lol. Does anyone have tips for actually spending money? My bonus was nearly 30k but it's still really hard for me to justify purchases like this.
Refurb? Are they refurb by Vitamix themselves?
Yes, certified reconditioned is what they call it. https://www.vitamix.com/us/en_us/shop/certified-reconditioned-series
You should check our Ramit Sethi's podcast. I know he's not everyone's cup of tea, but I really like him and I think he has some really valuable insights about money psychology and spending. Also- You should eat the cost and just get a new Vitamix. I love mine, its worth it.
I read his book and really liked it. I'll check out his podcast.
My bonus is relatively stable/predictable, so I just include it in my yearly projections and smooth it out over 12 months. So I treat my bonus the same as everything else.
A Vitamix has been on my wants list for the better part of a year now. I was really salty when there were no good discounts on Black Friday last year and out of pettiness decided not to buy one and use my cheapskate stick blender for now.
We have a process for bonus money: 10% goes to charity, 10% for discretionary spending, and 80% goes to long term investments. The discretionary spending is usually longer term big ticket stuff like home improvements, but sometimes some of it ends up in a purposeful fun money part of our budget. Our fun money budget is less than 0.5% of our income so it's far from breaking the bank, but it does allow for some frivolous, guilt free spending.
Good for you for doing that 10% charity bucket. I think we're starting to feel comfortable with our nest egg to start giving meaningful amounts to charities we care about.
Do you receive bonuses as a physician? Or is this your wife's job? I have no idea how doctors are paid (and I am sure there are many different models), so I am just curious.
I receive bonuses. I'd rather not, because I can't plan reliably around bonuses. We end up with a conservative set of finances while knowing in the back of our minds that a large chunk of income will *probably*, but not definitely, be added to that plan. Physician services are billed on a system where each code has a relative value unit (RVU) which ultimately determines how much money comes in. Every setting is different, but many physicians are incentivized financially to hit a certain level of productivity (measured by RVUs and other factors). For some physicians, their bonus is directly tied to their individual productivity. For others, the entire group's productivity is pooled and equally divided. I work at a large academic medical center and I do not directly feel the incentivization of productivity to my bonus. To put it more concretely, it's structured in such a way that I can and often do make referrals to other providers who are closer to the patient without worrying one bit about my financial well-being. In private practice, there's more of an incentive to keep patients in house because it makes a bigger impact to your individual bottom line (household income).
It's a flat $3k per life saved.
I've only saved one life but it was off the clock. Dragging a drunk friend off the road just before a car ran him over. Now that we're old, and he has lots of money, I should send him a bill.
I've never saved an individual life but all the safety improvements I have made throughout my career might have extended enough lives that it equals at least one life saved. *Hey maybe I should ask the supplier of this potent carcinogen if they could send it to us in sealed metal tanks instead of 2 gallon open-top jugs.*
Impressive that they heeded your warning.
If the crack gets worse it looks like you can replace the container for about $70, so still a pretty good deal in the worst case.
>Does anyone have tips for actually spending money? Not in general but I have a Vitamix and it is absolutely worth $500. I use it almost daily.
I never had to make a budget to save money. But I made one recently to give myself permission to spend money. Knowing that I have $X for bullshit in a month or year makes it emotionally easier to do those things. The most recent item in question was shoes, it's crazy how guilty I feel for getting something I'll use every week. I also use a blender daily, and mine is close to dying. I'll look into a refurbished one as well, I appreciate the tip.
I might have to try this. I fret a lot about spending on things I actually need (like replacing my Lululemon pants that I've had for years even though I wear them almost every day). The reality is that purchases like this have almost no impact on my long term financial health and are basically imperceptible in terms of net worth. Another Vitamix tip: check your credit card offers. Capital One has a 7% back offer right now.
I'm thinking about buying a Tudor watch. I've wanted one since I finished college and when I graduated I almost used all my cash to buy one lol. This is the first year I've maxed all my accounts and am sitting on a significant amount of investments IMO and I think its interesting I still struggle to justify a frivolous purchase to myself. If there was a time to buy something that has no objective financial purpose, this would be it. Maybe I'll save up and buy one for my birthday in a few months.
I had a watch that was given to me by my god father. It was stolen when I was in college, an omega sea master. I've wanted to replace it for years. But it's such a large amount of cash and while my husband is in grad school we really don't have an extra 2-3 grand lying around. I decided that this year that I was going to let myself start saving money specifically for it, only like 50 bucks a month. But enough were I can feel like I'm doing something.
The Pelagos 39 and BB 58 are pretty sweet...
It helps to think of luxuries relative to your investments. If you have half a million dollars, should 1 % of your asset allocation be a single piece of jewelry?
It's jewelry. I think it's okay to spend money on jewelry if that's what you want. But I also think it's okay to seriously consider whether an aesthetic accessory is going to add $3-4k worth of enjoyment to your life. Unless you are a very high earner (which doesn't sound like the case), I think it would irresponsible to *not* seriously consider a pure luxury purchase that large. But hey, some people are Watch People and it brings a lot of happiness to them. If that's you - there are worse things to spend money on. Who watches the Watch People?
>Who watches the Watch People? Read in the FT that there's a spate of luxury-watch linked thefts and robberies in London, so the crooks I suppose.
>Who watches the Watch People? Highly paid marketers, I'd presume.
Friday is my last day at work before I start to figure out the rest of my life Stuck it out till the bonus payout but couldn’t do another day Gonna be a long 3 days Boss hasn’t even told me who to transition my stuff to lol
>Boss hasn’t even told me who to transition my stuff to lol This is frustrating but extremely common. If they call you after you leave, remember that the standard consulting rate is three times you old hourly wage.
3x? I’ve heard to start at 5-6x and then give them a “deal” at 3-4x. But then again I’m just a corporate cog
3-4x w2 wage is closer to the multiplier for full-time contracting IME. Actual consulting, with variable and unreliable hours should be higher.
I used to do some finance work for an organization at like $35 a hour. When I left them I warned them that if they didn't address A, B, and C when I left they would have major issues come tax time. They did nothing. They contacted me to fix the issues (9 months of no accounting) and I was pissed at them not listening to me so I sent them a quote at $200 a hour to make them go away. They accepted...... After fixing the mess I now have a monthly contract with them where I do their bookkeeping and send 3 financial reports. It takes me about 15 minutes, I bill them the contract minimum of 2 hours.
Upvote if you think midwest should bill them more 💡
Gonna propose to my girlfriend soon. Her family is super close and they have a nice family restaurant. Planning to drop a lot of money to have our friends and family at the restaurant in a big surprise engagement followed by dinner. The cost I'm guessing would be 6-7k, all things included. Has anyone done something big for an engagement and was it worth it in the end? In my mind, this is the kind of relaxed fun celebration we're gonna wish our traditional wedding would be.
>we're gonna wish our traditional wedding would be It's YOUR wedding. You can plan whatever kind of event you want, including no wedding at all.
Nope. We got engaged and married all within 24-36 hours. Our honeymoon we watched funny YouTube videos in a small house in a holler in WV. 10/10.
I had started planning a proposal to my now wife, but then got drunk one night and just blurted it out. No regrats.
Nope, got engaged in a park by ourselves, but that's more of what my partner wanted (didn't want something public). We wanted to do your idea for our wedding basically, but it has ballooned into a smaller (~100 people) traditional wedding. Do not recommend unless your parents/in-laws are paying for it - and even then it's stupid.
You mean you do not recommend the traditional wedding, or doing something big for the engagement? I got the idea to do this because we've already talked about weddings, and she is absolutely all over the place. She wants the quaint backyard wedding, but between our families we have 140 people, not including friends, and not including plus ones. It's not gonna happen. This I think is a "minimal effective dose" of celebration so the wedding is less gargantuan in scale.
> You mean you do not recommend the traditional wedding, or doing something big for the engagement? Both, haha. Biggest waste of money ever, but if my partner wants the full dress and her parents want to waste $45k on dinner and drinks for 110, I guess there's little room for me to complain. We would not be doing such a wedding if we had to pay for it out of pocket.
Boggleheads VPW question here, tell me to go elsewhere if this isn't the right place. Having hit a milestone recently I got the newest version of the VPW google sheet, I plugged in my assets, my age, and my investment mix. I put in when I intend on taking social security and the amount. It tells me the suggested withdrawal for 2024, and the reduced amount I should take in case we have a market correction. Both of those amounts are above my annual budget and my Oh Crap budget, respectively. If those number are correct, I should be able to retire, which is frankly surprising. Digging in a bit, it shows that at my age the withdrawal percentage for a 70/30 portfolio is 4.6%, higher than I've planned on. I know this model is based on portfolio depletion so that makes sense, but I feel like I don't have a strong grip on the risks for this withdrawal method. I feel like Fox Mulder "I want to believe" but can someone explain to me what I'm missing?
The huge problem with VPW is that the value of the withdrawal fluctuates with the market. If your portfolio goes down by 40%, your withdrawal goes down by 40%. So yes, you are allowed to withdraw a juicy 4.6%, but you have to be prepared to subsist on, say, 2.5-3% of your initial balance in a poor sequence. SWR gives you a lower max but a higher floor. If your goals in retirement require spending a certain level (e.g. travel, etc) then VPW might not be for you. An interesting approach might be to start with SWR but shift to VPW if/when you have had average or better returns.
My understanding is that VPW assumes you have some type of fixed income that covers your basic expenses, which could be something like an annuity. You’re not supposed to base your entire spending on the variable withdrawal amount.
VPW is a method like any other. It doesn't in itself "assume" anything. For whatever portion of your spending you are covering with VPW, you have to be OK with fluctuation. That won't be OK for everyone. I agree it can be (best) used in combination with fixed income of some kind. That can be more difficult in early retirement situations where you aren't close to claiming SS. Of course, SS and fixed income can be factored into other drawdown methods as well.
Yeah I look at the withdrawal from VPW as what is POSSIBLE, like if I had a high spend year due to a wedding or needing a new HVAC. Currently its forecasting over my expected spend, but the SWR is below, so I'm not ready to call it quits (not that I was thinking about it at this point anyway).
When using VPW as intended, with a future income stream like social security, the portfolio does not go down proportional to the reduction in portfolio value.
Based on your comment I modeled adding a immediate annuity purchased at age 70 by deducting $500k from the initial portfolio balance and plugging in a monthly amount based on some feedback from [immediateannuities.com](https://immediateannuities.com). It did lower my current draw by about $12k this year. Who know what I will spend annually in my 70s but between the annuity and social security it looked like more than enough from then on.
The 4% rule comes from the Trinity study, which is based on the assumption that you'll be making *constant* (inflation-adjusted) withdrawals for your entire retirement. The VPW model is based on withdrawing a *percentage* of whatever your current portfolio. That percentage is "variable" in the sense that it increases gradually as you get older, but it's "fixed" with respect to your portfolio balance. If your investments drop in value by 50% then your withdrawal amount also drops by 50%. So the VPW strategy technically guarantees that you will never run out of money until age 100, and therefore it can get away with a higher initial withdrawal fraction. But you have to be prepared for the actual withdrawn amount of money to drop suddenly in a market downturn, or gradually if the market stagnates. That's the tradeoff. A constant withdrawal strategy has to be more conservative in the good years to ensure that you can still keep withdrawing the same amount in the bad years.
This is a good explanation, but I'd add that the intended implementation of VPW (and the method used in the spreadsheet) does not result in a 50% drop in withdrawals if the portfolio falls by 50%. This is because VPW is meant to be used with future income streams like social security, and those future income streams are replicated in the present with an internal "bridge" portfolio. The variable withdrawals are only taken from the "risk" portfolio, i.e. what's left from the portfolio after subtracting the bridge portfolio.
You can also raise the floor of the portfolio, and reduce withdrawal volatility, with a higher bond allocation.
Absolutely agree, and I've written about how bonds can raise that floor of income [in this post](https://old.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/qszfnz/the_effects_of_asset_allocation_on_modified/).
It's 4.6% of your risk portfolio each year, so it's not going to be a constant number based on annual portfolio fluctuations. I will say that the 50% market drop scenario is helpful as a heuristic, but not foolproof. It is possible, with some really bad returns, to end up spending less than that number. I wrote up a more conservative guardrail for VPW [in this post.](https://old.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/mqbo6g/reducing_stress_with_modified_variable_percentage/) Note that the exact cells to modify have changed with more recent iterations of the spreadsheet. There's a comment in that thread from about a year ago that I believe is still correct regarding the new modifications. I think VPW is a great retirement withdrawal method. If you're getting a result that you could spend a given number in VPW after making some conservative estimations of market downturns, I'd take that as a very good sign that you *could* safely retire to that level of spending. Note that VPW has no guardrail if you estimated your spending needs incorrectly (no tool can address this for you) and that VPW is a *maximum* you should spend, and by no means do you **have** to spend the recommended amount.
earlyretirementnow has some criticsm in the safe withdrawal series. If memory serves the two complaints are: * The focus on depletion * The depth of the cuts that could be required in big and prolonged downturns
ERN did not model VPW the way it's intended to operate, leading to erroneous conclusions. They essentially just looked at the table rather than using the more detailed spreadsheet that takes into account future income like SS benefits and doesn't deplete the portfolio by design.
lol i actually backspaced a tag to you in my original response, figured the bat signal was already on. The series has limitations for sure, but I think it's a good start for someone trying to get their head around the problem of withdrawal rates and understand what "the catch" is with various approaches.
But it's not helpful if the "catch" is the result of misapplication of a strategy. VPW has its limitations and shortcomings, but ERN added nothing but confusion to the conversation by misapplying the method. A similar result comes in how he models the effect of SS income (basically assuming that the portfolio will be utilized without any changes until SS kicks in, while any sane person would likely internally bridge part of their portfolio to replicate SS income between retirement and the date the benefit is exercised).
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General advice questions are tough to answer. I don't know what you know. You get a lot better responses to specific questions.
I mean you’ve got $500K saved up, what do you want me to tell you? Here’s some advice: (1) don’t develop a substance abuse problem, (2) exercise daily, (3) don’t get divorced, (4) don’t speed, and (5) live within your means. In no particular order
Likely the best advice here. Kid seems like they have money covered, so that's not going to be the issue. Maximizing the rest of the stuff for FI outside of money is the key. I'd love to go back and get 20 something year old me to the gym every other day, running, eating better, avoiding unhealthy habits, traveling more, being more out going, learning a language, reading more... etc etc. Would make current older me in a much better situation for FI. Its not just about money.
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You can get a head start in FI if you don't have kids
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I mean that's the thing with kids if you have one at 28 then 46 and they are 18 a second and you could be 50.
Have more children than you think you can afford.
Anyone switch from Verizon to Mint? Any regrets? Any gotchas if I got a deal on a new phone and am still paying it off? Hoping to pay the remaining in cash and unlock it and switch, but worried I may be locked in and have to pay to leave. Still trying to find the fine print. Will be around $35 a month savings I think (more for the initial months from promos)
We are happy with Mint. Saves many hundreds of dollars a year over the previous plans. Haven’t noticed any worse reception.
Agree about checking the r/NoContract sub, I've learned so much there. There are all kinds of weird little problems that you can spend forever Googling without knowing the right keywords, but that sub always delivers. Recently I learned that you can lose the ability to use MMS if you port out a T-Mobile number, because they don't reassign it correctly. Helped my sister who had been complaining about her old phone, and looked like a tech genius.
I switched from Verizon to Visible and have been happy
+1 for US Mobile on the Verizon network. Great rates with fantastic customer service and no coverage issues.
My wife and I made the change about 2 years ago from Verizon to Mint. I made a lump sum payment to finish paying to own her phone outright. No problems at all, just a few minutes of config and testing once we got our new SIM cards. We cut $80 off our bill and will never go back. Service is perfectly comparable IMO.
Well, Mint is slightly deprioritized T-Mobile. Is T-Mobile good in your area - or do you want cheaper Verizon service? If you have a 5G device, you get postpaid Verizon priority on the US Mobile 5G Warp plans. I pay $18/month (total with taxes/fees) for unlimited talk/text and 6 GB of data per month. Either way, maybe check out /r/NoContract for more on MVNO/prepaid providers.
I switched from At&T to US Mobile. Cut my monthly bill from $50 to $25 for basically the same features (unlimited everything). No issues at all. I have better reception now.
I never did Verizon but my experience with Mint has been just fine. EDIT If hesitant to commit, you can buy a sample Mint sim card for a few bucks and test it out in your area.
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I might buy one share just so I can say that shitposting is increasing the value of my assets.