Hello everyone. I'm brand new to this forum and have some very basic questions. I'll start by laying out my financial position and then ask some questions. Also note that I am most definitely not a mustachian and don't aspire to be. I like comfort (not necessarily luxury), hate diy, will use a car nearly every day until I am dead, and plan to stay in my current job until I retire. However, this is a really active board I would really value the input and advice of the people on this forum.
Age and situation: 41 and my wife is 33. No kids and don't plan to have any, but it could happen. I plan to retire at age 57 which is the earliest I can get a full retirement (I work for a federal agency).
Monthly cash flow-net positive of about $1100 once all expenses are paid including maxing out my 401k at work
Debts-about $18k balance on student loan (interest rate is 2% and payment is $225 per month), own two cars outright with no payments, we rent so no mortgage payment, we use credit cards but always pay them in full every month
Assets-401k balance is about $170k right now, my wife has a Roth IRA that is maxed out every tax year with a current balance of a little over $11k, we also have $110k in a money market account from the sale of our house earlier in the year.
Other-We do not intend to buy another house and plan to be long term renters. We got very lucky with the timing of the house we just sold. We bought at the bottom of the housing crash and sold in a sellers market as things were recovering. We made a lot of money, but this wouldn't happen again and the expense and effort of owning and maintaining a home was not something we enjoyed. We like the freedom and flexibility of renting.
So..plans and some questions: We want to retire when I am 57 (16 years from now) and never have to work again and have a very comfortable life. I will have a pension of about $33k a year plus whatever investments we can accumulate. Calculators say that if I continue to max out my 401k until retirement the balance will be between $850k and $950k depending on market performance. If we keep maxing out my wife's Roth IRA until she is able to retire that should be a little over $100k. I guess the main question is what to do with the money we made from our house and our positive monthly cash flow? How should that be invested? We considered paying off my student loan, but since the rate is so low and the payment doesn't hamper us any it would probably be better off invested. I like to keep things very simple. I was thinking of maxing out a Roth IRA for myself and then opening a Vanguard Index fund and putting $40-50k in that. I like keeping a large balance in savings for unexpected expenses and paying cash for cars and taking trips. Maybe keep $60k in money market and when it climbs much above that either take a trip or put more into the index fund.
Does this sound like a sensible plan? Would my pension plus maybe $1.2M in investments be enough to live on comfortably for 30 plus years?
Sorry for writing a novel. Thanks for reading and thanks for any advice