Your FI Community

What book has influenced you the most in either FI money management, life style design or mental philosophy? Bonus points: share one idea that stuck with you.

31 replies 47 minutes ago Read more →

Retirement Withdrawal Strategies A by Anonymous

Does anyone else thinks we should adopt the 30x rules instead of 25x?

Given newer research on retirement sustainability—especially work incorporating sequence-of-returns risk (SORR), longerFI horizons, and updated return assumptions such as those discussed in recent analyses of Karsten (ERN) and others —the traditional 25× rule (4% rule) should be rounded up to the \*\*30× rule\*\*. It effectively lowers the withdrawal rate to about 3.333%, which meaningfully improves resilience against early negative market sequences and extends portfolio durability for early ret...

29 replies 48 minutes ago Read more →

General Discussion D by DjentlemanJohnny

HSA Receipt Tracking

Not exactly sure which forum is the best for this but: For anyone utilizing an HSA: I am in the fortunate position of being rather healthy and able to cover all low level medical costs up front. I have been maxing out my HSA the last three years and one day way down the road would like to recover the costs of those medical expenses. My problem is that I have yet to figure out a consistent system to retain and track HSA eligble receipts. Have anyone of you built a system that feels relatively aut...

19 replies 2 weeks ago Read more →

Earning More J by Josh M.

Self Publishing Input?

I’m working on self-publishing a short nonfiction book and would appreciate input from anyone here who has gone through the process. The premise: I graduated U.S. Army Ranger School a few years ago and kept detailed notes every single day during the course. I tracked food, sleep, weight loss, and wrote a daily journal about what was happening and how I was processing it. Over 62 days I averaged about 2.5 meals and 3.9 hours of sleep per day and lost over 30 pounds. Most Ranger School books are w...

15 replies 48 minutes ago Read more →

Real Estate A by AnotherControlsEngineer

Put minimum down on primary residence if you have a 20% down payment?

I recently ran across this idea, and wanted to get some input if people have tried this. We have 20% cash for a down payment, don't currently own a house and are looking to purchase. This idea is to make the minimum down payment of 3.5% or 5% (which theoretically gets you a better interest rate), close, then after some time period pay the rest of the 15% cash towards the loan, and then recast the loan and keep the lower interest rate. This strategy seems to assume a few things (interest rate is...

11 replies 48 minutes ago Read more →

Investing d by dm741

Financial Tracking Tool

I've used Personal Capitol (now Empower) for the last 10 years and am wondering what everyone else is using to track their net worth. I'm not so interested in budgeting as I've got a handle on that already, really just tracking overall net worth and investing. PC has helped me analyze my portfolio across all accounts (personal and work retirement) and make sure my allocation overall is where I want it. I'm currently testing a new tool call Origin since the first year is only $1. Recently PC has...

26 replies 48 minutes ago Read more →

Lifestyle Design Y by YamZ93

Bucket Lists / Time Buckets Discussion

I am a big fan of lists. And since learning about FI I've started to really prioritize thinking about what I want my life to look like, building a bucket list but also making sure to not wait until retirement until I do some of the things on that list. Now I know it's also referred to as Time Buckets, and doing certain things when you're a certain age. These are some items from my list that I completed in the last few years: Going to Disney World Taking a stained glass workshop Learning to whist...

30 replies 1 week ago Read more →

Retirement Withdrawal Strategies A by Arcenis Rojas

To Roth or not to Roth

I recently wondered whether I should convert my traditional IRA and 401K accounts (including my current 401K contributions) to Roth. I spoke with a friend who advocated strongly for switching everything to Roth. While I recognize that Roth has great advantages (I have a Roth IRA presently) like no taxes on distributions and no required minimum distributions, I wonder if it'd be right for me. Below is a little bit about my situation. - I'm more interested in retiring with zero than passing anythi...

24 replies 48 minutes ago Read more →

General Discussion W by Westie

Happy New Year! So my car just got totaled...

The other driver was at fault. My car was almost 10 years old with 170k miles on it, so it was nearing the end anyway. Here's the thing: the new car I REALLY want is the Slate truck: [www.slate.auto](https://www.slate.auto/en) However, it won't come out until Q4 2026 at the earliest. My problem is, any new car I get (used, almost certainly, but new to me) will probably last 10+ years, especially since I plan on getting an EV and those things never break. I'm looking at options like a Leaf, Chevy...

18 replies 2 weeks ago Read more →

Earning More S by SamSalvino

Low pay less stress, higher pay, higher stress

I am stuck. Mid- 30s. I have a chance to work for a corporate company making the same salary I’ve been at for the last 3 years, with the chance to earn commissions and increase exponentially (in theory). OR I can take on a job paying $15k/ year less with no commission at all, but with (I highly suspect) less stress. Same job, but one is in the for profit sector, and one is nonprofit. I cannot stay where I’m at as the company has closed. This is the difference between $52k and $65k, so we’re not...

13 replies 48 minutes ago Read more →

Real Estate S by Sunset123

Home equity for second property

We have about $425K equity on a $625K home that we plan to stay in for decades (with a sub 3% interest rate). Is there a downside to taking out a bunch of that equity to buy a second property for 300-350K? We could also contribute cash. If we rented the second home out, rent may be equal to the mortgage/taxes/insurance. But right now this equity is sitting in our primary residence doing nothing. Eventually one of our kids could move into it as we'll likely be providing financial or housing assis...

7 replies 2 weeks ago Read more →

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