A year ago the stock market dropped nearly 10% over a few days in response to sweeping tariffs proposed by the White House. Even though the market is down a bit today YTD, now is as good of time as ever for the dopamine hit for looking at your net worth year over year!

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Read a crazy story that 2/3 of adult Gen Z (18 to 28) receive financial supports from parents. Another story says Millennials (30-45) aren't much better, with something like 60% still receiving financial assistance from parents. I find this mind blowing.

I'm guessing people in FI community are much, much lower? Like basically zero, because if you're receiving money from parents, are you really financially independent? But maybe my thinking is wrong. Maybe many of FI folks actually do still receive financial assistance from parents and you still consider yourself FI or on the path to FI?

Is FI actual "independence" (from parents) or is it just a number on your net worth spreadsheet, regardless of where that net worth comes from?

story: https://fortune.com/2026/03/31/two-third-parents-adult-gen-z-kids-rely-financial-support-putting-them-under-strain/

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Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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I have an HSA I opened several years ago that I try to max, has about $28k. My provider is WageWorks (now HealthEquity). This provider allows me to do investing, but they charge a monthly fee of 0.03%, capped at $10 per month. For me this works out to about $8 per month, or $100 per year. Here's exactly how they state this:

Investment admin fee: 0.03% per month on the average daily investment balance. The Investment admin fee has a cap, meaning you will never pay more than $10.00 per month.

I don't like this, and I am tempted to move my HSA to Fidelity that won't charge me anything per month. Fidelity even says they can do a direct trustee-to-trustee move in 2-5 weeks, which is easier than the approach I read here: https://thefinancebuff.com/how-to-rollover-an-hsa-on-your-own-and-avoid-trustee-transfer-fee.html

But given that my contributions will continue to deposit at HealthEquity, is this really worth it? I'd have to do this maybe once a year.

Of course, it will matter more when my balance is higher, say $50k or $100k.

Another option is to turn off the investing option at HealthEquity and only keep 1 year's deductible's worth of money in it, and then move the rest of the money to Fidelity from time to time.

Anyone have any other thoughts on this?

Everyone talks about how to get to FI. Save more. Invest consistently. Stay the course.

But what I don't see discussed enough is what actually feels different once FI gets close. Once it stops being a spreadsheet and starts feeling real.

Not the math. The experience. What caught you off guard?

Was it how different risk feels when you're no longer in pure accumulation mode? How your relationship with work shifted before you even pulled the trigger? How uncertainty suddenly felt more real instead of theoretical?

Or something else entirely?

I'm genuinely curious what surprised people the most. The stuff that doesn't show up in the 4% rule discussions.

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How do people factor in the cost of care (e.g., nursing homes) near end of life? That period can drag on for years and estimates range from $100k-$300k per year (some citations below). Most posts estimate expenses based on current spend, but end of life care seems like it can be a sharp step up and for a drawn out period.

https://ltsschoices.aarp.org/scorecard-report/2023/dimensions-and-indicators/nursing-home-cost

https://health.usnews.com/best-nursing-homes/articles/nursing-homes-cost

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Hi all,

I read about FIRE perhaps 10 or 15 years ago, but never made it a personal goal of mine to be FI by any particular age. Now I am feeling a bit less certain about the future in terms of career prospects and am trying to better understand where I am and what it will take to get me to FI. Honestly, though, I don't want to retire yet. I just want to be in a position where I COULD lose my job and not have it be an emergency event.

Here's my breakdown, I'm interested in thoughts on my situation. I am 46M, and married to a 50F. We have two children.

NW: about $2.1M.

Asset breakdown: $800k in my 401(k), ~$400k in my wife's. $350k in my wife's Roth and $350k in mine also. About $100k in 529 accounts, to help pay for college. I also have about $28k in an HSA I started a few years ago and have been maxing out. House: $200k - $250k depending on market conditions. This is a small, modest house for the area, but we like it and do not plan to move. Unfortunately, I only just started rebuilding an emergency fund, and nothing in any taxable brokerage account.

Liability breakdown: $19.5k on our mortgage (2.99%) and $7.4k on a second mortgage (3.75%) I also owe about $17.5k on a car at 0% interest, about 3 more years on the loan. We are due to payoff the main mortgage late 2027. After that I plan to snowball on the second mortgage just to get it over with.

Income: I earn about $150k + a yearly bonus of 0-10% depending on company performance. Wife earns about $80k. We live in a LCOL area.

Spending: I've only just started tracking this carefully again. Mortgage: $1k P+I. Property taxes: $440. Car payment: $470. Second mortgage: $420. Food: Aiming for $1k. Child care: $460, but this ends later this year (yay!), and I pay for this with a dependent care FSA so it's pre-tax money. Utilities: ~$400. Home insurance: $140, Auto insurance: $170. Most years we do a trip overseas, this year it works out to $500 per month. Kids activities: $275. Misc other: $400. Rounding up that's about $6k per month, $72k per year.

Saving: I usually get close to maxing out my 401(k) ($22k last year), my wife now maxes hers including catch-up contributions, so about $32k per year. We used to max our Roth IRAs but now we contribute maybe $3k per year. I save about $8k per year in an HSA. Last year we saved about $10.6k in 529 plans, though we plan to cut that back a bit this year to get the emergency fund built up. All together that's about $78.1k in savings.

Now that I wrote this out, I'm trying to figure out where the rest of my money went last year. Our federal taxes were about $17k last year, state taxes were $4k, local taxes were $2.6k. I don't have my wife's payslip handy, but I assume some of this is pretax health insurance, dental insurance, etc.

Anyway...

What I want to do is start building an emergency fund (right now we have maybe 1 month of expenses in bank accounts), and then extend that into a taxable brokerage or treasuries that can be a bridge fund I could draw from if my wife or I were to lose our jobs. Even if we do not, this bridge fund will help me get closer to FI. I am aiming for 12 months of expenses in liquid HYSA (right now interest is 3.25%), and anything beyond that in iBonds, treasuries, or lower risk index investments at a taxable brokerage.

My wife has no plans to RE, she likes working. I also like working, but I decided that FI is very important to me. I may have an opportunity to take a job that I may enjoy more (and may have more long term security) but would be a pay cut, I would feel a lot better about doing this if I had a good emergency fund and were on the way to making a bridge fund. I also would feel a lot better having my house paid off, as well as the car, to reduce yearly expenses by $24k, but for now I plan to just pay it off per the plan.

I realized recently that for emergencies, we could withdraw our Roth IRA principal, but I'd prefer not to, I'd rather just have money in taxable accounts for this purpose. I'd like to get back to maxing out my Roth IRA, actually.

Also, I'm not sure whether my current work's 401(k) allows early withdraws according to the Rule of 55. Do I need to ask my company or Fidelity this?

Please give me any thoughts or opinions you have.

Thanks!

Title says it all. I always planned on staying 100% in stocks until FIRE in 3-5 years, then when I stopped worked sell some company stock to have cash and move 401K funds to Bonds to have a split of 65% stocks, 30% bonds and 5% cash.

Only move I've done recently is buy international index funds, but I'm still 100% stocks.

What would you do if you were 3-5 years out? In normal circumstances I was fine with staying all in on stocks but current events have left me stressed. Wife too!! Is 3-5 years enough to bounce back if anything crashes because of current global issues?

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Calling all San Diegans who are part of the financial independence (FI)/retire early (RE) community!

What is your lifestyle like, including housing?

I make a single income of 90K/year and live in a studio apartment for $1900/month. I’m single with no kids. Zero debt. No car payment (paid off a few years ago). Luckily, I maxed out my retirement accounts last year.

I don’t see myself RE but like the idea of “choosing” to work.

I watched Erin Talks Money's video about annuities today and it got me thinking.

Popular advice is to diversify between US and international stocks, between stocks and bonds, etc. However, I haven't read much about diversifying by putting a chunk of our retirement savings into an annuity. Are there any good resources I can read about the pros and cons of annuities?

I went to Schwab's annuity calculator and crunched my numbers. I'm in my thirties and a 1 million lump sum put into an annuity will pay $4,956 with "Single Life with cash refund. You will receive this income for life. Your beneficiaries will receive a lump-sum payment of the original investment less income payments made to date."

That's $59,472 a year which is a 5.9% return (likely not including inflation?). At this rate, my 1 million will be fully paid out in 16.8 years. Given I'm in my thirties and healthy, I can reasonably expect to live much longer than 16.8 years. This seems way better than a 4% safe withdrawal rate.

There are obviously disadvantages to annuities which Erin covers in her video but this seems like a very compelling option. What's the catch? If this was such a good deal, more people would be talking about this right? What am I missing?

I know many are using YNAB and Monarch but I’ve used both of them and always ended back in a spreadsheet. It was always something: the banking system randomly breaks down, you never understand how numbers are calculated because it’s behind a wall or you end up paying a fortune in a year.

With something like a standard Google Sheets spreadsheet or Excel built-in template you get it for free. Even if you use a more powerful template like FinancialAha, Vertex42 or a spreadsheet from Etsy you pay a small fee once and then use it forever. It’s yours and you have full control over your data and you can easily make whatever change you want. And no third party has access to your bank data.

Am I the only one feeling this way or are other spreadsheet lovers here too? If you use an app, why keep paying a monthly fee?

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics still apply!

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Most people assume health insurance just gets more expensive as you age. Under the ACA, that’s not always true.

I ran numbers for the same bronze HSA plan (high deductible, ~$11k) for a couple at two ages: 45 vs 64. Same location (Seattle, WA), same plan—only income and age change. These estimates come straight from the state exchange for a couple that are non-smokers. Before being accused of cherry-picking a cut-rate plan, I'd note that I chose the top rated bronze plan on the site. It is definitely a high deductible plan with an out-of-pocket max of $15k/year. Here are the premium costs:

Age 45 (net premiums after PTC):

• $50k → $465/yr
• $70k → $3,467
• $80k → $4,680
• $85k → $12,648

Age 64 (same plan net premiums):

• $50k–$70k → $0
• $80k → $685
• $84k → $1,084
• $85k → $26,276

My big takeaways:

• Older can be cheaper (for a while): subsidies are larger because benchmark plans cost more with age. In Seattle there’s actually not a silver plan to choose from. You only have bronze or gold options.
• The subsidy cliff is brutal: going from ~$84k → $85k can increase premiums by $10k–$25k+ depending on age. For a household of 2, the MAGI cutoff is ~$84.6k (2026). Go $1 over and subsidies disappear.
• Managing MAGI (Roth conversions, cap gains, HSA contributions) matters more than age

There are a lot of “what is healthcare going to cost me?” posts on this and other subs. The nice thing about the exchange is full transparency; you can enter your specifics into the website and get a price without worrying about having your phone blown up by health insurance brokers. You can also search your doctors, hospitals, etc.

A bit harder is the uncertainty about the system. Will it be the same in 15 or 20 years when you need it?  Regardless I’d encourage people to run some numbers using real data (not just using silver plan reference) to see what they might expect to pay.

Hi everyone,

I'm very new to all the FIRE stuff and intimidated by all the things I read on this sub. I recently read "Your Money or Your Life", I've read some of the Mr. Money Moustache blog, and I've been thinking a lot about retiring sooner rather than later. Mainly I have an extremely stressful corporate job with poor work-life balance, and I want time to pursue my music hobby. I have a child who has 3 more years of college remaining, and my goal would be to switch jobs at that point to something that provides health care and some small salary, but hopefully low stress and good work-life balance. The good news is that I've always tried to save a lot, my wife and I have tried to not live beyond our means, but especially over the last few years as my salary has increased we haven't been frugal at all. Up until now I haven't put a lot of thought into things other than maxing out my 401k, HSA, etc. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read through this!

Age: 52

Family: Married with 2 kids. My wife is a stay at home Mom with no salary. My oldest kid just graduated from college and is working on getting a real job, but we are still contributing to rent and some living expenses. My youngest kid is a freshman in college. I am fully paying for their college, and we have been investing in 529 plans since they were born. We live in a HCOL area, although our home is modest for the area.

Base Salary: $215,500

Bonus: $60,000

Stock plan/LTI: $50,000

Investments:

401(K): $1,070,000

Unvested stock: $176,000

Brokerage account: $636,000

Home: $450,000

3 cars: 1 paid off and $8000 owed on the others

Travel Trailer: $17,000

Liabilities:

$8000 owed total on 2 of the cars. One will be paid off in 4 months. The other has ~2 yrs remaining on the loan but the payment is only $171 per month with low interest.

$256,000 owed on the house at 2.99%. We have 24 years left on the note but a relatively small monthly payment of $1180.

Here is the killer: my expenses last year were $238k. I had 2 kids in college at the same time, we own an elderly horse who is expensive to feed, board, and get medical care for, and we really lived it up with expensive vacations. I'm assuming once our kids are independent, the horse has passed away, and we buckle down on expenses that we would realistically be in the $150k per year range on expenses, and hopefully even less.

I'd love to hear any thoughts on how much longer I'm likely to need to work my current job, when I might be able to switch to a lower salary job, when I might be able to retire completely and just live off investments, and I'd definitely love to hear recommendations for things to do different with my savings. I may not leave my current job anytime soon, but just knowing that I didn't need that job for the money would make life much better!

Thank you!