Currently my wife and I both max out our 401ks. She has a great plan, I have a mediocre one(~.5 ER). Regardless of my plan I think we need to max out the 401ks, as we live in HCOL area and need to knock down our taxable income. We hit AMT for the first time last year.
My question is what to do with extra money. It's not a lot right now, but should slowly increase over time. My best two options seem to be my Roth or my wife's ESPP(employee stock plan).
Roth - I have one opened through Vanguard, with a small balance that pretty much just holds rolled over Roth 401ks from when I was younger. I haven't been putting much into as most money goes to the 401k but have wanted to start backdooring
ESPP - wife works for a massive international consulting company, so the stock is able as steady as a stock can be. The real draw is she gets a 15% discount. One strategy I think we could employe down the road is once our house is paid off and we retire we can use the stock for the first year or two instead of drawing from IRAs. If the cap gains is our only income and we're careful we can potentially keep ourselves in the 0% cap gains tax bracket and pay no tax on it. Obviously this is dependent on tax laws in the future.
I think the ESPP is the play but tell me if I'm missing something.