Hi everyone,
This is a relatively open-ended post regarding where we should invest our current monthly stash for investments and/or mortgage payoff. I'm sure I'll leave out some relevant information, but here goes. Our current situation is this: my wife and I live in Seattle with our four kids (9-year-old twins, 4 year old, 2.5 year old). We bought our house in NE Seattle just a few years ago, did a ton of renovations, and are here for the long haul (there are factors that keep us here and prevent us from moving to a lower cost area.) A year ago, we refinanced our house and consolidated our home equity line into one loan. We spent a lot in the past few years and now we're ready to buckle down and focus on savings and investing. As of today, we have roughly:
TIAA: $320k retirement (almost all invested in Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Funds)
Vanguard:$90k inherited IRAs (intended to fund kids' college from grandma)
$80k (529s for the 4 kids)
$30k Roths
Mortgage: $407k with 29 years (!) to go. Home appraised at ~ $650k and would probably sell for much more in Seattle's crazy real estate market, but not really relevant because we plan on being in this home at least until all of the kids are outside of the house. Again, not leaving the neighborhood or Seattle so that's not a way to boost savings for investments.
My employer contributes 12% of my salary into TIAA without matching and I've recently upped my contribution every paycheck to max out to the $18k/yr limit. We plan on maxing out both of our Roths this year.
If we have any "extra" after this, where would folks recommend putting it? Toward the mortgage or other investments? I should say that I'm 42 and my wife will turn 40 next month. We hate the idea of having such a large balance on the mortgage and so far to go with it, but are extra mortgage principal payments the wisest place to allocate our surplus? We are later to this game than many other who follow MMM and other FIRE blogs and we're doing our best to catch up!
Thanks,
Megan