Benben
Working on a new degree, Masters in BS Detecting!
I personally Love the REIT! I have been watching it closely for the past 4 years and it is a gem. It has out performed every other choice and thats including during the '08 meltdown! Even with the .10% expense ratio it shines.
My Background:
I am a little older than you at 42, married for 17 years with 2 kids (15 and 11). I have been with ups 7 years now, driving the past 6. I have been in the union from the get go in a right to work state but only been in the 401K for the past 5 years, but have been enrolled in the DESPP since the first month I made senority driving and buy at least 1 share per check. I have been reading a few investment books, not the heavey hitters yet, just the primers (Kelly, London, Cooper and a few by Frey et al.)
Planning for retirement has most my focus outside work for the past 9+ months. I am trying to get this aspect of my life in line and on auto-pilot so I can set it and forget it, Comming back to it only twice a year to check allocations.
My question to you, why the Roth? My current allocation is 11% into the standard 401K and 2% into the Roth. My rational is this; the standard 401 being pretax gets the most dollars into play the fastest. Being 20+ years away from retirement, I feel what I lose in taxes paid later (read when I plan to be drawing less than the 70K-80K'ish mark per year, will have to see what the tax brackets are at that time, in retirement more than makes up for the loss in Compounding by putting in less monies that have already been taxed at the 100K income bracket now. (with the current brackets, this is 15% vs. 25% BUT this is with the Bush tax breaks in place and who the hell knows what will be in play in 2035.) My wife and I take a big vacation every 2 years (just got back from Mo. Bay, Jamica last week) She really, really wants to go to Italy (being Catholic and all) when we retire so this year I started the Roth 401K and intend to use the Roth to finance this trip.
I have posted questions/comments in the retirement forum looking for discusions but that forum is on life support as nobody seems to ever post.
I
Current plan: 3K monthly from the pension, 2.5K monthly from SSI and 10-20K from the 401. This all assumes I hit all of my benchmarks: 1. House paid off and all renovations/fixes compleated 2. Kid's college paid 3. And wife and I both have brand new cars without loan payments (at the start of retirement we can use them as trade-ins for future cars)
My Background:
I am a little older than you at 42, married for 17 years with 2 kids (15 and 11). I have been with ups 7 years now, driving the past 6. I have been in the union from the get go in a right to work state but only been in the 401K for the past 5 years, but have been enrolled in the DESPP since the first month I made senority driving and buy at least 1 share per check. I have been reading a few investment books, not the heavey hitters yet, just the primers (Kelly, London, Cooper and a few by Frey et al.)
Planning for retirement has most my focus outside work for the past 9+ months. I am trying to get this aspect of my life in line and on auto-pilot so I can set it and forget it, Comming back to it only twice a year to check allocations.
My question to you, why the Roth? My current allocation is 11% into the standard 401K and 2% into the Roth. My rational is this; the standard 401 being pretax gets the most dollars into play the fastest. Being 20+ years away from retirement, I feel what I lose in taxes paid later (read when I plan to be drawing less than the 70K-80K'ish mark per year, will have to see what the tax brackets are at that time, in retirement more than makes up for the loss in Compounding by putting in less monies that have already been taxed at the 100K income bracket now. (with the current brackets, this is 15% vs. 25% BUT this is with the Bush tax breaks in place and who the hell knows what will be in play in 2035.) My wife and I take a big vacation every 2 years (just got back from Mo. Bay, Jamica last week) She really, really wants to go to Italy (being Catholic and all) when we retire so this year I started the Roth 401K and intend to use the Roth to finance this trip.
I have posted questions/comments in the retirement forum looking for discusions but that forum is on life support as nobody seems to ever post.
I
Current plan: 3K monthly from the pension, 2.5K monthly from SSI and 10-20K from the 401. This all assumes I hit all of my benchmarks: 1. House paid off and all renovations/fixes compleated 2. Kid's college paid 3. And wife and I both have brand new cars without loan payments (at the start of retirement we can use them as trade-ins for future cars)