Putting little employees to work

[chills]

My wife and I have always been pretty frugal, but lately we have been trying to be more mustachian.  We have no consumer debt (with the exception of credit cards paid in full monthly).

We have a mortgage that we would like to pay early, and we would really like to reach FI within the next 10-15 years.  In the meantime, we have recently realized that we have many underperforming little employees(emergency fund and car fund in savings accounts). There is a benefit of liquidity, but with the amount we have saved, it seems like it would be beneficial to put the cash to work. One idea we have is to invest more, and just have less liquidity, and a second idea was to use the cash to pay down the mortgage and open a HELOC to use for short-term liquidity until we sell investments.

What would other mustachian's suggest?

Retirement
401K (Combined): 39K
Roth IRA (Combined): 22K

Cash
Checking: 4K
Savings 0.84% APY: 20K

Other
Investments: 37K
Home, value ~160K

Mortgage (4.125%): 117K

Net Monthly income: averaging 1.4K

[daverobev]

I'd vote mortgage - 4.1% vs "probably" 7% stock market, but the mortgage benefit is immediate, and when you've completely paid it off you've got a lot more options in terms of cashflow.

I'm sure others will also say "can you refinance" and "can you earn more" :)

[Kriegsspiel]

*Came in thinking this would be a humorous child-labor anecdote*

*was dissapointed*

:(

[brewer12345]

Actually, I would probably leave the emergency fund alone.  Add to your investments or pay down debt with your incremental savings, not the ohshit fund.

I would seriously consider refinancing the mortgage as well.

[daverobev]

Actually, I would probably leave the emergency fund alone.  Add to your investments or pay down debt with your incremental savings, not the ohshit fund.

I would seriously consider refinancing the mortgage as well.

Isn't $20k a *lot* for "oh shit"? I mean - they have $4k in their chequing..

[brewer12345]

Actually, I would probably leave the emergency fund alone.  Add to your investments or pay down debt with your incremental savings, not the ohshit fund.

I would seriously consider refinancing the mortgage as well.

Isn't $20k a *lot* for "oh shit"? I mean - they have $4k in their chequing..

What does a new roof cost?  What does it cost to cover medical costs if you hit your max out of pocket for the year?  I think 4k would be extremely skinny.

[chills]

Actually... Forgot to mention, we have a well funded HSA, 8K I think, which fully covers us for 2 years.

And we happen to have a new roof as of last year.

[chills]

*Came in thinking this would be a humorous child-labor anecdote*

*was dissapointed*

:(

Sorry... If it helps, we regularly have our 2 year old feed the dog :)