Hey all,
So my wife and I are expecting our first in August. My wife is planning to take maternity through the state and use up her PTO and sick time through the year. And likely give notice in January 2016. She has been extremely frustrated and stressed out with work as of late though (increasing demands and workload with no additional support) and it may either lead her just not being able to handle it and quitting or just getting let go. In fact, she just told me about a coworker who they essentially coerced into quitting - they told him he wasn't performing up to par (even though there was little evidence to even support this because he thinks managers were intentionally holding him back on things), and then told him that he has 30 days to improve on a certain set of areas in which he's lacking. They even listed these areas out and told him "sign here to acknowledge" and commit to this probationary plan. It sounded more like a ruse to have him admit to under performing despite him not actually under performing... seems pretty discriminatory and sneaky to me, and nobody knows why they were targeting him, but he ended up resigning anyway so as to maintain his dignity. He was hating working there anyway. That said, my wife has been feeling similarly but has not been approached in this manner. We think she's OK but this company is a terrible company to work for IMHO and treats their employees very poorly, which is why I wouldn't be surprised if something similar were to happen to her.
In the meantime, I'm trying to plan ahead and prepare myself for the big change in income. We're essentially transitioning from DINKs to SIOKs within a half a year time frame. I think this may be a bigger change than I realize and just want to get ready for it. In this case, I have a few goals in mind with re-balancing our portfolio. There are a couple high-fee mutual funds I'd like to sell as well as a bunch of stocks I'd like to sell, and use the proceeds to invest in index funds instead. These funds and stocks were gifted to me from my dad a while ago and have also grown quite a bit, so I'm anticipating hefty taxes on them. Based on salary and AGI, I don't think I'll be able to get us into the 15% bracket (for 0% on capital gains) in 2016. So I'm wondering if I should just suck it up and start selling now while we're 'ahead' rather than to wait and try to save on capital gains taxes. On top of that, my company recently introduced after-tax contributions, and while this would be great, I'm not sure if I'll be able to swing it on my current salary (unless that increases enough to where it's comfortable doing it).
Any advice or ideas on what we outta do or consider?
