I'm new to this website, I've been listening to some FI podcasts and trying to learn but I apologize if this is posted in the wrong forum and for my lack of knowledge on these subjects. I will greatly appreciate any and all advice.
We're a family of 3 in the "wealth accumulation phase". Our combined salaries are about $145K, plus about 6k in stock dividends. It's my first year making a decent income after college, being a stay at home mom for a couple years and working part time for a couple more years. I've made some smart investments (about $275k in taxable stocks) and we have no debt other than our $250k mortgage (home valued at 450k), but this will be the first time we'll be able to sock away a good portion of our salary so I'm working on calculating the best ways to do it.
If we max out our traditional IRAs, his 403b, my HSA (not sure if he has an HSA option, looking into it), we would be able to reduce it by $34,500. We also pay about $10k in house interest, have one child with childcare...
It looks like the tax bracket for 2019 is at $78,950. This is about what we spend a year at this point. If we get down to 78,950 the bracket jumps down 10%, so I'd be saving almost $8000 in federal taxes just by getting there, right? Are there other deductions I should be looking into?
I do have an LLC, I was looking to start a side business but decided to focus on just my family and current job for now and am planning on dissolving it to avoid the $800 minimum CA tax. I had about 10k of expenses in 2017 for that business, but no income and no expenses since. Could the LLC help at all or do I need to show financial activity to be able to deduct buisness expenses?
Thank you for any advice or guidance.