Author Topic: Case Study: Just for the sake of writing it down  (Read 4368 times)

skifast

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Case Study: Just for the sake of writing it down
« on: November 19, 2017, 06:36:32 PM »
I've really enjoyed reading others' case studies, across the entire spectrum of financial backgrounds, so I thought I'd share ours as well. Thanks for your honesty, everyone.

Life Situation: Married (both age 30) with two young, pre-elementary school kids living in a much higher cost of living area than we'd like (but close proximity to family).

Gross Salary: ~$350k from primary business, ~$50k from secondary business, wife makes ~$35k from part-time job.

Taxes (YTD paid estimated):
  • Federal: $73k (say $100k for year)
  • State: $21k (say $30k for year)

Annual Pretax Deductions:
  • SEP-IRA: $54k
  • HSA: $6700
  • FSA (wife): $5000
  • 401k (wife): 20% + 6% match

Monthly Household Expenses (based on 12 month average from Mint):
  • Auto & Transport - Auto Insurance (2 cars, Geico): $125
  • Auto & Transport - Gas & Fuel: $115
  • Bills & Utilities - Electricity Bill: $95
  • Bills & Utilities - Garbage/Recycling: $33
  • Bills & Utilities - Gas Bill: $67
  • Bills & Utilities - Internet: $65
  • Bills & Utilities - Mobile Phone (2 lines, 6GB shared data): $98
  • Bills & Utilities - Water & Sewer: $87
  • Entertainment (mostly Spotify and iTunes): $36
  • Food & Dining - Fast Food: $19
  • Food & Dining - Groceries: $1080
  • Food & Dining - Restaurants: $157
  • Healthcare Insurance: $664
  • Home: Mortgage & Rent (including escrow): $2298
  • Kids: Babysitter & Daycare (2 kids, 1.5 days/week): $485
  • Shopping (random, mostly necessary stuff): $535

Monthly Average Expense Total: $5,959 ($71,508/year)

Large One-Off Expenses This Year:
  • Balance on auto loan: $14k
  • Gifts & Donations: $3470
  • Doctor: $359
  • Misc. Home Furnishings (new dining room table, entry chandelier, etc.): $5681
  • New Roof: $17450
  • New A/C (after failure right before heat wave): $5670
  • New Furnace (after failure during cold spell): $2690
  • New Backyard Sprinkler System: $2781
  • Travel - Air Travel: $1,277
  • Travel - Hotel: $4582
  • Travel - Misc: $773

Large One-Off Expense Total: $41,283

Assets:
  • Checking: $19,826
  • Primary Residence: $517,611
  • Car 1 (great family car): $20,471
  • Car 2 (largely unused regretmobile): $25,272
  • General Savings (40% bonds, 60% stocks): $11,890
  • Travel Savings (40% bonds, 60% stocks): $3,295
  • SEP-IRA (90% stocks, 10% bonds): $247,891
  • Roth IRA (90% stocks, 10% bonds): $12,089
  • Traditional IRA (90% stocks, 10% bonds): $8,158
  • Early Retirement (83% stocks, 17% bonds): $43,711
  • Safety Net (30% stocks, 70% bonds): $25,305
  • Wife 401k: $11,978
  • Wife Roth IRA: $1,094

Total Assets: $948,591

Debts:
  • Mortgage (@3.99%): $323,482
  • Credit Card 1: $700
  • Credit Card 2: $7181
  • Credit Card 3: $1114

Total Debts: $332,477

Net Worth: Priceless



Accomplishments Over The Last Year:
  • Kicked expensive gym membership habit: $220/month.
  • Cut ~$600/month from child care by putting our kids in daycare instead of having a private nanny.
  • Saving towards specific spending goals (travel, large purchases) instead of simply putting them on the credit card.
  • Created separate checking accounts for my wife and I. We auto-deposit $200/month into each, and that's our discretionary spending (clothing, entertainment, etc.)

Room For Improvement:
  • We wish we didn't have as large of a mortgage (or as expensive of a home) as we do. Our ideal home price would be ~$250-300k for ~1800 square feet. However, we've prioritized close proximity to our families over LCOL so we're stuck with what we have. Current plan is to pay off the mortgage as quickly as we can so we can stop thinking about it.
  • Related to the mortgage expense, I wish we could live off my wife's full-time expected income with no draw-down. Part of this is because of the high amount of volatility in my industry (and lack of security thereof). The other part is that I'd like to jump off the cash cow I'm on right now and start a different business. We aren't quite there with our minimum monthly expenses though.
  • For the purposes of diversification, I'd like to eventually invest in real estate. The local market is too hot for anything other than appreciation speculation, so I'd need access to another market (or buy into a REIT).

What would you do differently?

MDM

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Re: Case Study: Just for the sake of writing it down
« Reply #1 on: November 19, 2017, 10:26:04 PM »
Annual Pretax Deductions:
  • HSA: $6700
  • FSA (wife): $5000
  • 401k (wife): 20% + 6% match

What would you do differently?
That's a lot for a limited purpose FSA.  It is limited purpose, correct?  Otherwise you have an HSA eligibility problem.

Why not $18K instead of only 20% to the 401k?

marty998

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Re: Case Study: Just for the sake of writing it down
« Reply #2 on: November 20, 2017, 01:22:30 AM »
Assets:
  • Checking: $19,826
  • Primary Residence: $517,611
  • Car 1 (great family car): $20,471
  • Car 2 (largely unused regretmobile): $25,272
  • General Savings (40% bonds, 60% stocks): $11,890
  • Travel Savings (40% bonds, 60% stocks): $3,295
  • SEP-IRA (90% stocks, 10% bonds): $247,891
  • Roth IRA (90% stocks, 10% bonds): $12,089
  • Traditional IRA (90% stocks, 10% bonds): $8,158
  • Early Retirement (83% stocks, 17% bonds): $43,711
  • Safety Net (30% stocks, 70% bonds): $25,305
[/b]
  • Wife 401k: $11,978
  • Wife Roth IRA: $1,094

Total Assets: $948,591

What would you do differently?

I am confused by all of this. You have a number of different types of investment structures and within each of them you have a combination of bonds and equities.

I do not know the intricacies of your tax system, but I would presume their is a tax benefit to holding bonds in certain vehicles and equities in others.

Why have the complexity of multiple asset classes in each vehicle? Why not just go 100% stocks in X, Y and Z, and 100% bonds in A, B and C?

skifast

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Re: Case Study: Just for the sake of writing it down
« Reply #3 on: November 20, 2017, 07:39:34 AM »
That's a lot for a limited purpose FSA.  It is limited purpose, correct?  Otherwise you have an HSA eligibility problem.

Why not $18K instead of only 20% to the 401k?

Yes, the FSA is solely for childcare.

As far as 20% 401k contributions, good question. I think our decision-making was largely psychological: it's more comfortable for my wife to bring home a more substantive monthly amount than it is for us to max out our tax-advantaged savings. This decision might be worth re-thinking though.

Related to retirement contributions, I've been wondering how much is too much to put into my SEP-IRA. We've been focusing on reducing / stabilizing our spending, so there might be a point in the future where I'd rather take the tax hit and have the money available in a shorter-term investment vehicle.


I am confused by all of this. You have a number of different types of investment structures and within each of them you have a combination of bonds and equities.

I do not know the intricacies of your tax system, but I would presume their is a tax benefit to holding bonds in certain vehicles and equities in others.

Why have the complexity of multiple asset classes in each vehicle? Why not just go 100% stocks in X, Y and Z, and 100% bonds in A, B and C?


I'm not aware of any tax benefits to holding stocks and bonds in specific ways. I'll ask my accountant the next time I email her.

Re: complexity, no specific reason. It's all one Betterment account, so I've mostly done simply what was easy to do.

For me (and I think my wife too), it's helpful to be able to save towards specific goals (e.g. travel) so our savings are more explicitly allocated. Betterment makes it simple to create a new savings goal, choose a stock/bond allocation based on investment time horizon, and auto-deposit into it. I believe Betterment treats it all as one pool of money though.

MDM

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Re: Case Study: Just for the sake of writing it down
« Reply #4 on: November 20, 2017, 10:29:55 AM »
I'm not aware of any tax benefits to holding stocks and bonds in specific ways. I'll ask my accountant the next time I email her.
See https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Tax-efficient_fund_placement and compare with your accountant's reply.

Ben Kurtz

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Re: Case Study: Just for the sake of writing it down
« Reply #5 on: November 20, 2017, 11:31:44 AM »
I'm going to face punch you a bit even though you have things largely under control:

Pay off the credit cards. Even if they are on low/no interest deals making you technically better off carrying the balances, they're just stupid.

Sell the $45,000 fleet of automobiles and replace them with, at most, $10,000 of used car -- a 7-9 year old Accord, Prius or Ford Fusion, or an antique Volvo station wagon, are all good choices. Is your side-hustle driving for Uber? If not, you shouldn't be allowed to post on this forum while owning so much automobile.

Your grocery spending is absurd. The blog has a post from back in 2012 all about $1,000 monthly grocery bills and why they are silly. Come back when you've got this down to $600 month, including toiletries and cleaning supplies.

Random shopping of $535 per month? So important and necessary that you cannot remember what it's all for? The rules of the forum call for a miscellaneous category of 2.5% of monthly spending. Break up that line item until you're left with a truly miscellaneous grab bag worth $150, tops.

$664 on health insurance is a lot, but I'm guessing that's to do with your running your own business as opposed to taking advantage of a heavily subsidized employer plan. When budgeting for your next career move, look into whether an employer plan is in your future with a lower out of pocket cost. Maybe through your wife's job?

$485 for child care is kind of a drag, but it's only a for a few more years. Once the youngest is in kindergarten that should go down a bit (but you'll still need something for weekends, and then add back after school activities or summer camps when the kids get older -- still, if you are thoughtful, you can cut this in half or more when they start school).

Have you wife max out her 401k and get over the psychological issues. At your earnings level, the tax hit is substantial.

Start 529s for each of your kids and contribute heavily. Depending on where you live you might get a state income tax deduction for a few grand of contributions every year, which is nice.

Don't stint in your SEP IRA. Even if, 10 or 20 years from now your find yourself needing to tap that savings, you can explore SEPP withdrawals as a way of avoiding the 10% penalty. At worst, you can just eat the penalty -- chances are, you will be in a lower tax bracket when the time comes, given how high your bracket is now, so you'll still probably come out ahead. The tax hit at your current earning level is big.

You have small children, and live in a nice house near extended family. You're in it for the long haul. You spend a lot but save just as much, so fundamentally things are pointed in the right direction. Still, given the rate at which you burn cash, you'd need a pretty big nest egg in order to safely hang up your spurs.

Given your circumstances, the rough outline of the plan is this: Keep slaving away at the cash cow job until your house is paid off, you have $1 million in liquid investments (spread among taxable and retirement accounts), and each kid has $50,000 in a 529 educational account. That's probably another three or four years, or probably when the youngest goes to kindergarten (unless more are on the way?).

Then pull the trigger, making sure either you or your wife have access to a good, reasonably priced health plan through her job or your next business. Try to keep total salary income at least above $60,000 per year for a few more years after you make the jump. Will you be keeping unidentified side business #2? If so, everything is already lined up. If that goes away when you pull the trigger, I wouldn't worry too much: the hole you're trying to plug will be pretty small, and even though you won't want to rely at that point on your retirement savings to fill the gap left by your wife's salary, you can safely do so while waiting for the new venture to pan out.

skifast

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Re: Case Study: Just for the sake of writing it down
« Reply #6 on: November 20, 2017, 12:03:54 PM »
I'm going to face punch you a bit even though you have things largely under control:

Such a good face punch it was :) Thanks for taking the time.

Pay off the credit cards. Even if they are on low/no interest deals making you technically better off carrying the balances, they're just stupid.

Sorry, I should've clarified: we pay these off in full.

Even so, I only recently did the mental arithmetic that cutting our spending even by 3% is a better yield than the 2% cash back equivalent we get from the travel cards. We've started transitioning to cash purchases, so maybe it's time to pick that up more aggressively.

Sell the $45,000 fleet of automobiles and replace them with, at most, $10,000 of used car -- a 7-9 year old Accord, Prius or Ford Fusion, or an antique Volvo station wagon, are all good choices. Is your side-hustle driving for Uber? If not, you shouldn't be allowed to post on this forum while owning so much automobile.

Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Maybe this needs to be my Q1-Q2 2018 goal (as I can't imagine trying to sell during the winter months is that great).

Your grocery spending is absurd. The blog has a post from back in 2012 all about $1,000 monthly grocery bills and why they are silly. Come back when you've got this down to $600 month, including toiletries and cleaning supplies.

Random shopping of $535 per month? So important and necessary that you cannot remember what it's all for? The rules of the forum call for a miscellaneous category of 2.5% of monthly spending. Break up that line item until you're left with a truly miscellaneous grab bag worth $150, tops.

This might be an interesting sub-case study.

The grocery and shopping budgets typically cover all people-related household expenses (diapers, toilet paper, kids clothing, etc.). We shop at Costco and Fred Meyers (value grocery in the PNW) but we do buy a good amount of meat, organic brown eggs, canned coconut milk, etc. We also host meals often.

I've always been curious as to what our exact grocery spending is though.

$664 on health insurance is a lot, but I'm guessing that's to do with your running your own business as opposed to taking advantage of a heavily subsidized employer plan. When budgeting for your next career move, look into whether an employer plan is in your future with a lower out of pocket cost. Maybe through your wife's job?

We did the price comparison at the beginning of the year but mine was the better deal.

Have you wife max out her 401k and get over the psychological issues. At your earnings level, the tax hit is substantial.

Good point, you may have convinced me. We funnel money through the FSA for this reason ($2k or whatever benefit).

Start 529s for each of your kids and contribute heavily. Depending on where you live you might get a state income tax deduction for a few grand of contributions every year, which is nice.

Because of my opinions about the education system (I'm a 3x college dropout), I've started saving for both kids in taxable accounts. The tax credit (something like 10% up to $4400 I think) isn't worth it.

Don't stint in your SEP IRA. Even if, 10 or 20 years from now your find yourself needing to tap that savings, you can explore SEPP withdrawals as a way of avoiding the 10% penalty. At worst, you can just eat the penalty -- chances are, you will be in a lower tax bracket when the time comes, given how high your bracket is now, so you'll still probably come out ahead. The tax hit at your current earning level is big.

Good points.

You have small children, and live in a nice house near extended family. You're in it for the long haul. You spend a lot but save just as much, so fundamentally things are pointed in the right direction. Still, given the rate at which you burn cash, you'd need a pretty big nest egg in order to safely hang up your spurs.

Given your circumstances, the rough outline of the plan is this: Keep slaving away at the cash cow job until your house is paid off, you have $1 million in liquid investments (spread among taxable and retirement accounts), and each kid has $50,000 in a 529 educational account. That's probably another three or four years, or probably when the youngest goes to kindergarten (unless more are on the way?).

Then pull the trigger, making sure either you or your wife have access to a good, reasonably priced health plan through her job or your next business. Try to keep total salary income at least above $60,000 per year for a few more years after you make the jump. Will you be keeping unidentified side business #2? If so, everything is already lined up. If that goes away when you pull the trigger, I wouldn't worry too much: the hole you're trying to plug will be pretty small, and even though you won't want to rely at that point on your retirement savings to fill the gap left by your wife's salary, you can safely do so while waiting for the new venture to pan out.

I like this goal and the specifics sound reasonable. My wife and I have been talking about staying the course until both kids are in elementary school, and then we'll each have the freedom to pursue what we want. It sounds like this vision is reasonable.

Thanks again!

Travis

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Re: Case Study: Just for the sake of writing it down
« Reply #7 on: November 20, 2017, 12:40:24 PM »
At what age are you looking to retire?  This is all good advice and we can't probably provide more, but it's difficult to figure out effectiveness without knowing your end state.

skifast

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Re: Case Study: Just for the sake of writing it down
« Reply #8 on: November 20, 2017, 01:04:11 PM »
At what age are you looking to retire?  This is all good advice and we can't probably provide more, but it's difficult to figure out effectiveness without knowing your end state.

I'm probably more in the FI camp than RE. I think I'd go crazy if I actually stopped working.

More so, my goal is to get to a point of stability where I don't have to think much about opportunity cost. There are a lot of hard problems to solve (e.g. affordable housing, job skills training) that don't necessarily have associated personal financial gain.

Travis

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Re: Case Study: Just for the sake of writing it down
« Reply #9 on: November 20, 2017, 02:37:33 PM »
At what age are you looking to retire?  This is all good advice and we can't probably provide more, but it's difficult to figure out effectiveness without knowing your end state.

I'm probably more in the FI camp than RE. I think I'd go crazy if I actually stopped working.

More so, my goal is to get to a point of stability where I don't have to think much about opportunity cost. There are a lot of hard problems to solve (e.g. affordable housing, job skills training) that don't necessarily have associated personal financial gain.

Just remember that you'll have to retire eventually and do the math on what you'll need saved up to reach that goal.  You have a significant household income, but as has been discussed to death on this forum you can still make a ton and be in financial trouble.  If I'm looking at the math correctly you're investing about 20% of your income?  With no change to your spending that should put you at a comfortable retirement in 30-some years at a 4% withdrawal rate.  You haven't said what your business/profession is, but if it's something that could lead to an early burn-out or you might find yourself quitting sooner than you expect ensure your lifestyle is safely adjustable to those circumstances.  You mentioned some volatility there and wanting to rely on your wife's income when she goes full time.  Run the numbers on what that means for your standard of living.  Could you do it? If not, what is the numerical difference? Where will that money come from? If you think your current good circumstances won't last (cash cow as you called it), then you should be in prime saving mode right now and looking to cut expenses everywhere to save as much as you can.  To that end, take a good long look at your grocery receipts and what you're spending in your random shopping category.  Be flexible and open-minded and be prepared to make some decisions.

mustachepungoeshere

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Re: Case Study: Just for the sake of writing it down
« Reply #10 on: November 20, 2017, 03:01:33 PM »
Betterment makes it simple to create a new savings goal, choose a stock/bond allocation based on investment time horizon...

I definitely read that in the tone of the guy who voices ads for Planet Money.

Ben Kurtz

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Re: Case Study: Just for the sake of writing it down
« Reply #11 on: November 22, 2017, 06:01:09 AM »
By your responses, it looks like you have $1,615 in not-well-categorized spending ($1,080 grocery and $535 random shopping), which is a bit over 25% of your monthly recurring total.

It's probably a fair bit more work, given that you can't just scan your charge card bill and categorize things strictly by vendor, but I'm guessing it would be pretty enlightening to re-cut that spending into more logical buckets by going through your receipts line-by-line. Pick two or three random months from the past year (if your records permit), or start with the next two or three months, in order to get a normalized view.

I'd suggest using categories like:

1. Regular food and related (vegetables, meat, bread, milk, ziplock bags, tin foil, paper plates, etc.).
2. Baby food and related (formula, tiny jars of mush, bottles and nipples, etc.).
3. Regular toiletries and cleaning supplies (soap, Lysol, hair conditioner, laundry detergent, etc.).
4. Baby toiletries and cleaning supplies (diapers, wipes, baby shampoo, etc.).
5. Adult clothing.
6. Child clothing.
7. Toys, games and knick-knacks.
8. Household and kitchen (new toaster, new towels, new wineglasses, etc.).
9. Miscellaneous.

Once organized in this format, it ought to be easier to detect small bits of excess spending here and there. Are you spending $0.33 an ounce on Gerber mushy peas in 2.5 ounce jars, when you could buy a sack of frozen peas at the supermarket for $0.07 an ounce and mash them up yourself? If you figured out you were spending exactly $100 per month on new-bought kiddie clothing and toys, would that motivate you or your wife to spend more time asking family, friends and fellow church- (or synagogue-)goers to trade in hand-me-downs to get that number down to $50?

These are things you could probably do without a careful spending analysis. But you're a busy, high-income professional. I understand the feeling -- believe me, I do. So in the abstract, you might not be motivated to ask your wife to spend a few extra minutes in the kitchen at the beginning of the month mashing up ten pounds of peas and carrots and sticking them in little baggies in the freezer while you phone your cousin and ask about spare 12-18 month sized sleep-sacks and onesies. But when you have numbers that relate the cost of these things to your overall spending, and the implications for your timeline to financial freedom, it might change your behavior a bit. So I suggest giving it a try.