Meet, Bryan.
Bryan’s Maine concern, in his own words: “In the past 3-4 months, I’ve become a little obsessive about getting us back in the groove of goals towards finances. I think a lot has been spurred by us having our first child (born in August). We have been really good at being focused on debt since graduating college, but we had gotten lazy since 2016 when we paid off the last of the student loans. I’m interested in figuring out the best options of where to start tossing money for the long term to help our goals.
My wife and I currently both work at startups in Indy and are looking forward to potentially retiring early (55-60), but I think that really means just pulling back from the 8-5 and maybe starting our own business/ consulting gig.
However I’m promarily focused on what’s next on the list after adding in daycare, we have about $1,700 per month that I plan to throw at the vehicle loan until its paid off. My question is what to do then? My initial thought is to split that up and put $700 towards the mortgage and $1,000 into a brokerage account for long term, pre 59.5 income. That would pay off the mortgage in about 15 years and obviously save a lot of interest. I just don’t know if that’s the best use of the money.
Also, as day care costs go down as my daughter gets older, I want to increase her 529 account contributions dollar for dollar, but what is the top end? I don’t know when to stop/ cap the contributions and focus the remainder on long term.
Eventually (5-7 yrs) we plan to do some renovations on our home (approximately ~100K total) and I’m also thinking that the brokerage account could be a holding place for paying cash or at least a large down payment on this kind of a project. Is this the right approach?”
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Nicole is the Digital Marketing Assistant at Pete the Planner®. She produces the radio show, podcast, and TV show. Additionally, she runs all email campaigns, webinars, and client programming. Nicole can be found drinking a Kombucha wherever there is an outdoor music festival.