Finance and Planning - You dream of subsistence farming. But how?

[Cirrhosis_of_Liver]

I haven’t been able to run livestock yet, we’ve been focused on our day jobs.

It's not an easy transition, especially with how much shit costs.

I wonder if a lifestyle planning / budgeting thread would be useful? I'm sure everyone gets the idea "spend less, earn more." However, there's things like FSA loans (zero down payment for farm acquisition, or operating expenses loans at low interest rates) and private cooperative ag lenders who offer effectively shockingly low interest rates once you consider the royalties they kick back your way. NRCS offers grants for building tanks*, crossfences, animal pens, and other improvements. There are good guys in the gummit and in banking who can actually help you. Please do not interpret this as an endorsement of the government aka the banks in general.

It's also worthwhile planning not just *how* you'll get the dough together to leave the world behind, but also what would be a good way to acquire said monies. Consider not just the paycheck, but whether it's worth it in terms of work / life balance-- building a compound takes a lot of time. Worth considering also is whether you'll be learning worthwhile skills for getting off the grid.

Here's a very incomplete list of jobs you can do from most anywhere that either pay well or offer useful knowledge:

OTR CDL driver: 6 figures easy, very little home time, but if you plan for it, you can park your truck at your place on weekends. Owner Operators make fat stacks, but their whole life is the truck, so you might not have any time for building tank traps.

Electrician: Very valuable if you want to build stuff like greenhouses, irrigation, a HOUSE. . . And they *can* make very good money. You have to actually do good work at this kind of job to make good money. They are needed literally anywhere you find modern man.

Plumber: Mario version of above.

Veterinarian: Large animal vets are always in high demand, because I swear vet students are the biggest pussies on the planet. They all want to do puppy kitty medicine in an urban area and gouge the shit out of their clients. In fairness, that's where the money is. Country vets can make a very nice living once they set themselves up, but you're talking 8 years of very hard schooling, followed by finding work at someone else's practice to get your shit together, during which time you'll make maybe a little more than a daycab trucker, and truckers didn't have to work nearly that hard. Still, if you want to run livestock, there is no better place to make contacts and learn what the hoi polloi do than in a large animal vet's office. But if you don't want that to be your whole life, consider

Veterinary Technician / Veterinary Assistant. First one needs an associate's degree (unless you were grandfathered in) second is all OTJ training, the best kind of training. Starting out, techs make peanuts, and assistants make bird seed. But as far as meeting lots of producers, learning how they do their thing, what problems they face in your area, marketing, regulations, and so on, it's nearly as good as being Mr Big Pants with way less commitment.

Feed / seed store entry level worker: a good place to meet other producers and learn, probably not the best to stack Benjamins

Construction-- roofer, concrete, framing, sheetrock, what have you. In the US, you'll be wanting to speak Spanish, but that in itself is also valuable in the livestock and crop realms, too. These gigs don't pay great, but they ARE better than sweeping up at a CEFCO, and if you're smart, you can learn everything you need to start your own business. Hard work is well to get used to, if you want to be self-sufficient. Doing this kind of work in a rural area is an easy way to meet farmers. Farmers will talk your ear off about what they've got going on. (Source: trust me bro.)

Agricultural worker-- harvester, planter, cowboy, gardener, et. al. Another "learn Spanish" segment, and a lot of these jobs pay very poorly indeed, because the feds have been importing self-sufficient agricultural workers for decades. But hey, if you want to learn how to make food, this is the place where the steel meets the soil. And yes, cowboys are still real, and, depending on how big a ranch they work for, they may rope and ride.

G man: I don't know anything about the path to being an extension agent, working for Parks and Wildlife, the FSA, the NRCS, the USDA, or any of that, but gummit jobs are not to be despised, and these are all worth looking into.

Please, add more, correct my errors, and never talk to cops.

*the fish kind, not the kind that are worthless without infantry support

 

[CoolGuy1990]

I would like to add welder:
Shop boys make decent pay and you'll learn valuable skills functionally the metal version of carpentry with less tolerances, for the real dosh pipeline is your game you'll work like hell for 6 months out of the year and be away from home but you'll make an ez 100k a year

evolution for independent living space depending on your situation should be:
Apartment (unless your parents are alright with you freeloading it up if so skip this step)
Trailer: better than an apartment since you can get repo'd one cheap (50k or less sometimes) and ownership will always trump cancerous tenancy agreements that do almost nothing for you
Land: The Trailer plays into this with the purchase of land Lot rent will no longer be a problem
Home: building a home is ideal as it will be cheaper and after selling (if you wish) you will easily make your money back

 

[Potato Cat]

Does anyone have experience with USDA rural home loans?

There are USDA guaranteed loans which are $0 down, fixed rate mortgages for rural properties in the US. You have to qualify through a normal lender, but the USDA backs the loan which means less risk for your lender.

The requirements include:

• Be a US citizen or permanent resident
• Your income can't exceed 115% of the area's median income
• The home must be your primary residence
• The home must be in a designated rural area (https://eligibility.sc.egov.usda.gov/eligibility/welcomeAction.do)
• The home must be in generally good condition (no foundation issues, a roof that will last at least 2 years, functioning electrical, heating, cooling, plumbing, water and waste systems)
• The property cannot be income producing

Benefits:

• No PMI
• $0 down payment
• fixed interest rates

Are there other programs like this?

 

[Cirrhosis_of_Liver]

Does anyone have experience with USDA rural home loans?

There are USDA guaranteed loans which are $0 down, fixed rate mortgages for rural properties in the US. You have to qualify through a normal lender, but the USDA backs the loan which means less risk for your lender.

The requirements include:

• Be a US citizen or permanent resident
• Your income can't exceed 115% of the area's median income
• The home must be your primary residence
• The home must be in a designated rural area (https://eligibility.sc.egov.usda.gov/eligibility/welcomeAction.do)
• The home must be in generally good condition (no foundation issues, a roof that will last at least 2 years, functioning electrical, heating, cooling, plumbing, water and waste systems)
• The property cannot be income producing

Benefits:

• No PMI
• $0 down payment
• fixed interest rates

Are there other programs like this?

The FSA offers loans for income-producing land. When I was talking to them, it was up to 300k, but I'm sure that number has moved upwards. There were no rules about your income, but you did have to produce a business plan to justify how your ag business could pay for the land with its profits.

No qualifying through a normal lender step, but you did have to give them the right to inspect your land, and you needed approval for changes like fencing, digging, construction, and the like.

EDIT: It never occurred to me before, but you may be able to use both types of loans-- USDA for the house, and FSA for the farmland. Current FSA deal according to google is 3.75% on a 30 year. That makes your yearly payments only 5.6% of principle. If you can't do better than that kind of return with agriculture, this may not be for you.

The FSA requires either farm experience OR NCO or Commissioned Officer experience in the armed forces. Good news for veteran assholes!

 

[Cirrhosis_of_Liver]

If you can manage the down payment, private finance can be really good. The creepy "inspection and approval" clauses are what made me back out of the FSA loan, point paranoia.

Since I borrowed from an agricultural coop thing, I get a kickback or profit sharing or something yearly. It's thousands of dollars. If you put it against my monthly payments, year by year on my 20 year loan, and multiply by 20, I'll only end up paying about 20% above the sticker price, over 20 years. That's what scientists call "super fucking cheap."

How does this benefit anyone but me? Fuck if I know! Whether you favor a sombrero or a stetson, your hat is too big for this shit. If you're going balls deep in commercial ag as your pathway to food security, you should absolutely get professional help.

If you get an accountant and not a shrink, he can teach you cool, somehow not fraud schemes like leasing your land to yourself and writing that off as a business expense.

 

[I Digivolved Into A Loli?]

From my experience, the life of a full-time farmer is not all it's cracked up to be. Believe me, I would love to put some cattle on some acreage tomorrow if I could but it's not all sunshine and roses.

I have professional exposure to a fair amount of farmers and one of the things I see that is the same across all of them is that they are constantly juggling debt. OP mentioned really low finance rates but that may just be a necessity when selling equipment to farmers.
Just the other day I saw a farmer get what essentially amounted to a 1% interest loan agreement. About 10% due in a few months, then 30% due at the end of every year thereafter. Don't get me started on the fact that the ag finance company could literally make 4x by just putting the same money into a high-yield savings account or Treasury bonds.

The catch is that the farmer had to buy a new million dollar combine harvester (or adjacent machinery I honestly don't know too much about the different types of heavy machinery on a farm).

Speaking for my own homesteader dreams, with land prices the way they are I can't see owning even a small amount of acreage in the next 5 years. Even if you could somehow get financed for the million+ that the land would cost you, you would also need to get any tractor, fencing, and supply financed as well.

 

[Cirrhosis_of_Liver]

Anyone who goes into farming expecting "sunshine and roses" gets what they deserve.

I do think that the course my life took, quite by accident and whimsy, is, in fact a decent blueprint for someone who'd like to wear a straw hat and chew on grass stalks.

Expressed with a minimum of powerleveling, a potential character build is as follows:

Spoiler: Plan of Action

Start by getting some rootless job where you can save up a decent wad of cash in a few years just by living simply.

Buy a few acres somewhere not too far from a college that offers an ag program. Much easier done than said; Dax Herrera's "Barbie Mansion" is an outlier, not the rule. Learn all you can while again living simply and, if you can, start saving up again. Find a niche you can make money with and start experimenting on your small place.

Look at land in areas you could succeed with your chosen niche specialization, and do a shitload of figuring on what you could reasonably make a decent living with. After college, find a job where you can make good positive cashflow and keep learning your niche.

When you're ready to make the jump, much easier if you've learned about finance, buy a place you're sure you can make a living with your specialization. Selling or leasing your old place can help fund your farming habit.

Once you're succeeding with that, THEN you can start thinking about doing more generalist homesteader "for my own benefit" stuff.

TLDR-- learn a specialty, build a specialized farm, and then when you're "living off the land" in a commercial sense, you can start thinking about living off the land in a homesteader sense.

Not at all the only route, and very much the opposite of how most homesteader types on youtube did it, but it's worked for me and I did it on accident.

You can afford to farm if you really want to, but be aware that you'll spend many years just trying to get into the black, and it will be physically, mentally, and emotionally hard. Don't talk yourself out of it over dollar signs. Dollars are just fun coupons. Depends if you're the kind of sick fuck who finds commercial ag fun.

 

[GodsWorstTrucker]

I worked on a wildfire handcrew for the US Forest Service for a few years. hourly pays shit, hours are long, work is physically hard. But in 6mo I would make around 50-75k depending on the season the only real requirement is being physically fit and being prepared to be in the woods almost the entire summer. This job would be great for anyone that lives where you can scoot by on 50k a year and be a baller. I sadly am a Californian so I had to leave for a better full time job but I do still miss it

 

[GodsWorstTrucker]

I worked on a wildfire handcrew for the US Forest Service for a few years. hourly pays shit, hours are long, work is physically hard. But in 6mo I would make around 50-75k depending on the season the only real requirement is being physically fit and being prepared to be in the woods almost the entire summer. This job would be great for anyone that lives where you can scoot by on 50k a year and be a baller. I sadly am a Californian so I had to leave for a better full time job but I do still miss it

another thing I will second is getting your CDL I got my class A and will always have a job, the amount of employers that need even class B drivers cant be understated, the world runs on trucking. fires need commercial vehicles, winter drivers for snow removal, construction companies for delivery, utility work etc. this was by far the most important certification I got

 

[Troonos]

What high-yield savings account do you guys use? I've been on T-Mobile Money at 2.5% for a few years, but I'm considering moving all of it to SoFi. Anyone have experience with them?

 

[TerminalTryHard]

What high-yield savings account do you guys use? I've been on T-Mobile Money at 2.5% for a few years, but I'm considering moving all of it to SoFi. Anyone have experience with them?

I've heard a lot of good things about them, but I went with AMEX at 4.35% just because it's a more established bank.

 

[Troonos]

I've heard a lot of good things about them, but I went with AMEX at 4.35% just because it's a more established bank.

I looked more into SoFi. Apparently, you have to enable direct deposit (which I don't want to do because I'm only using this for savings and need paychecks in my credit union) to get the high interest rate, so I gave up on that one.

Instead, I opened a CIT Bank Platinum Savings account, which has a 4.85% rate with a balance >$5,000, so I dumped $121k in there. They insure up to $250k, and if you reach that cap, you can have them extend it to $2m on and individual basis. The website and app aren't great, but this is a set-and-forget for me, so I don't really need to use them except in an emergency.

 

[SCV]

What high-yield savings account do you guys use? I've been on T-Mobile Money at 2.5% for a few years, but I'm considering moving all of it to SoFi. Anyone have experience with them?

Savings account, which has a 4.85% rate with a balance >$5,000, so I dumped $121k

I don't want to be rude but what the fuck are you doing? T-Mobile? 2.5%? One hundred twenty one thousand dollars in a savings account?

 

[Troonos]

I don't want to be rude but what the fuck are you doing? T-Mobile? 2.5%? One hundred twenty one thousand dollars in a savings account?

My Roth IRA is maxed.

 

[Sperg_rancher]

What high-yield savings account do you guys use?

Fidelity money market account. No insurance, but so far a 6% yield in 11 months.

Anyone who goes into farming expecting "sunshine and roses" gets what they deserve.

Asterisk this with full-time farming. I've seen plenty of wealthy folks sink 30k/yr into an unprofitable small farm and love it. They still had jobs however.

TLDR-- learn a specialty, build a specialized farm, and then when you're "living off the land" in a commercial sense, you can start thinking about living off the land in a homesteader sense.

100%. I wish I realized I should do this when I started my.. I'll call it a micro-farm (<10 acres of land). You really don't get anywhere growing corn and soy, and when you're set up for corn and soy, It's hard to shift to other things.

As far as financial planning, here's my plan:
Goal: to be able to effectively 100% recluse from society for 3 months out of every year if so needed.
Needed: I will need a minimum of 450,000$ to be able to do this effectively.
Plan: With my current savings of 30K, I'll deposit 1000$ each month into a 4.5% HYSA account, after 20 years, I'll have the needed amount to execute on this. I'll, however, be rather old by this time.

With that said, there will likely be a lot of shortcuts taken, so who knows. Half the stuff I 'plan' for doesn't happen, but what do you do? you simply try yer best.

 

[SCV]

Plan: With my current savings of 30K, I'll deposit 1000$ each month into a 4.5% HYSA account, after 20 years, I'll have the needed amount to execute on this. I'll, however, be rather old by this time.

This is a bad plan because 4.5% is a negative return after inflation. That 4.5% will also go down as the fed lowers rates.

My Roth IRA is maxed.

I do not know if you are trolling or not. If you aren't you should know that 121k that you don't need imminently in a savings account is gross financial mismanagement. If it was someone with a fiduciary duty managing that money I would consider it criminal.

 

[Troonos]

This is a bad plan because 4.5% is a negative return after inflation. That 4.5% will also go down as the fed lowers rates.


I do not know if you are trolling or not. If you aren't you should know that 121k that you don't need imminently in a savings account is gross financial mismanagement. If it was someone with a fiduciary duty managing that money I would consider it criminal.

I see you criticizing, but I don't see you advising.

 

[SCV]

I see you criticizing, but I don't see you advising.

I am legitimately unsure if you were trolling with your IRA comment because contribution amount to an IRA is basically unrelated to what money is invested in. If you really are looking for advice the first question would be when do you expect to need or want to use your after-tax 121k? Additionally if you were comfortable giving your approximate age or how long until you plan to retire that is important.

Also I'm sorry if this is an insulting question but I've had family members do this: Are your IRA contributions actually invested? If so, in what?

 

[Troonos]

I am legitimately unsure if you were trolling with your IRA comment because contribution amount to an IRA is basically unrelated to what money is invested in. If you really are looking for advice the first question would be when do you expect to need or want to use your after-tax 121k? Additionally if you were comfortable giving your approximate age or how long until you plan to retire that is important.

Also I'm sorry if this is an insulting question but I've had family members do this: Are your IRA contributions actually invested? If so, in what?

Roth IRA is all in funds: 40% domestic stock index, 40% international stock index, 10% domestic bonds index, 10% international bonds index. Contributions maxed quickly every year and immediately used to buy into those same funds.

403b with maxed contribution, and employer matching sucks here.

Everything beyond that goes in high-yield savings, and I just moved it from 2.5% to 4.85%. Checked CDs, but they're only about 0.4% higher than my new savings account and require more maintenance due to their short maturity.

My savings account was originally my emergency fund with six months of expenses saved, but then I just kept dumping more into it after I reached that.

Mid-30s, hoping to retire in mid-60s, but given the political climate, maybe I should shoot for mid-90s.

 

[SCV]

Roth IRA is all in funds: 40% domestic stock index, 40% international stock index, 10% domestic bonds index, 10% international bonds index. Contributions maxed quickly every year and immediately used to buy into those same funds.

403b with maxed contribution, and employer matching sucks here.

Everything beyond that goes in high-yield savings, and I just moved it from 2.5% to 4.85%. Checked CDs, but they're only about 0.4% higher than my new savings account and require more maintenance due to their short maturity.

My savings account was originally my emergency fund with six months of expenses saved, but then I just kept dumping more into it after I reached that.

Mid-30s, hoping to retire in mid-60s, but given the political climate, maybe I should shoot for mid-90s.

Alright, this is going to be a long (and hopefully) well structured post but I want to put this up front because it is easily the overriding concern here and must not be missed:

>>Your 121k should be in a normal brokerage account and invested in a market index.<<​

There are a few caveats** to that that I'll get into but it needed to be short and to the point. Also you're to be commended for saving what you have even with sub-optimal investments. You're already way ahead of the average person. That said...

I. Investment returns and inflation
There is a critical thing I think people don't grasp well is that while money if fungible investment returns are also fungible. Interest you are paying is just an investment with a negative return. Inflation can also be though of as a return on investment but inverted in that it reduces positive returns and "increases" negative returns. For example a mortgage at 2% right now is "making" 7%* so you're essentially getting 5% returns and should not pay your hypothetical mortgage any faster than you have to.

One of the consequences of this is that money just sitting in a checking account (or in your mattress, or wallet) essentially has a negative return. Similarly because the interest you get in a savings account will always be below the prime interest rate set by the fed and that is basically never more than even the government's inflation numbers money in a savings account essentially always has a negative return. The fed just lowered rates so you will see savings interest come down. For instance popular direct just reduced their CD rates in the past couple days. The takeaway here is the you have six figures making a negative return.

*if you believe the government numbers, which are fake and gay. Shadow Stats is probably closer to the truth.


II. Investment options and time horizons
It is well known that stocks aka equities return more than bonds do. So then, grug want most money, why grug ever buy bonds? The answer is volatility or in other words while the overall trend for stocks is higher the day to day (or in some cases, year to year) swings are bigger. If you bought stocks in 2007 and waited until 2017 you did pretty well. If you bought stocks in 2007 with the intent to buy a house using that money in 2008 you got hosed. Compare to bonds which would've worked in the short term from 2007 to 2008 but have done much worse between 2007 and 2017. Savings (I am using a money market fund here as a proxy you're just going to have to trust me bro on this) would have lost significant money.


This is $10k in VTSAX (stocks) vs. VBTLX (bonds) vs. VMFXX (savings) from 2007 to 2017, inflation adjusted using government numbers, from testfol.io.

So what does this mean? Well I can't predict the future but IMO that means if you have money that you're going to need in the next couple months (or unexpectedly) you should keep it in savings, if you're going to need in in the next few years it should probably be in bonds, and if you're not planning on needing it in the next 5-7+ years you should be in stocks. Again to hammer this home. When looking at this your 121k is in the yellow line going down. From 2007 to 2017 your $121,000 would've turned into just over $100,000 *IF* you believe the government inflation numbers and *IF* you were in a money market fund. Your savings account is realistically going to earn less than a money market fund and as established the inflation numbers are under reported, so you would've managed to turn six figures into five figures.

**Most people will recommend you keep some months of expenses on hand. I'm on the fence about that since you can sell stocks in a couple days and have a month+ buffer with a credit card but if you want to then not all of your 121k would be invested. I am also assuming this money is for retirement or at least has no near term purpose as you didn't mention any.


III. Asset allocations or why bonds are gay and smelly third worlders + europoors don't work hard enough
You say your IRA is 40% US market, 40% int'l market, 10% US bond market, and 10% int'l bond market. That almost looks like a target date fund (but the int'l percent is too high). Regardless they're a good lead in so if you'll allow me to sperg a bit: Target date funds are the CYA funds that retirement plans default to and as a result invest in bonds way too early. If you remember from earlier bonds for anything over 5 years are probably a bad idea but as an example the vanguard 2035 target date fund (VTTHX) has fucking 30% bonds right now despite it being 11 years away. If you're in your mid-30s' and aiming to retire at 60 (or indeed any age and planned retirement is over a decade away) I would not have any money in bonds.

Regarding the US stock market vs. the international stock market this one is a bit more up to taste however there are some considerations. The main argument for the US market is over the last several decades US returns have been higher than international returns. Additionally if shit hits the fan in the US then things are probably grim everywhere else too. There is a saying "when the US sneezes everyone gets a cold". On the other hand owning both is obviously diversifying and there's not guarantees the US returns continue to beat international returns. Although if you think Pierre, Abdul, and Zhang are going to be more honest and hardworking than John I would probably disagree.

For comparison Warren Buffet recommends all US market and most target date funds are 60% US and 40% int'l. I think anything within that range is reasonable and personally go for 66/34 just because the math is easy to do. It also doesn't need to be exact. Accordingly I think your 50/50 split is too high.


IV. Expense Ratios aka wtf I hate investment bankers now
Throughout this I've continually referred to US market indexs and Int'l market indexes. Any reputable broker will have their own versions of these with a low (less than 0.1%) expense ratio. I presume you are smart enough to use these and not invest into any retarded meme funs with 1% or higher expense ratios. However I feel like I must mention this because I have personally seen people who lost multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars by being invested in funds with 1.25% expense ratio for decades vs. a bog standard S&P 500 fund. I don't want to belabor the point but briefly an expense ratio is essentially compound interest against you and while 1% might not sound like a lot, it is. Anything more than 0.15% should not be considered.


V. Dollar Cost Averaging and don't fucking fuck with it or you'll fucking fuck it up fucker
Much like expense ratios I expect this to be common sense but feel the need to mention it lest you rekt yourself. If you were looking at things in 2008 like in the chart above things would look pretty grim but if you just ignored it you would be fine. However if you sold on the way down and didn't buy back in you would be completely fucked. You might also be tempted looking at the chart to think "well, just sell before it goes down and buy in at the bottom". This would be a retarded idea that seems possible only in hindsight. The truth is you cannot predict the market (no one can) which is the entire point of using an index fund. Moreover even if you could there are people out there with insider information such as Nancy Pelosi who will eat your lunch.

You should invest regularly without regard for how the market is doing. If it's down you're getting a discount, if it's up your getting in while it's hot. The idea is to buy equities and then only sell them when you're actually going to use the money for something else (ie. retirement). Also you should be re-investing your dividends.


VI. All of this shit applies everywhere
Everything said so far applies to money in any of your accounts (brokerage, savings, 403b, roth IRA) because money is fungible. This obviously means you shouldn't be holding a ton of cash or bonds anywhere and should not be in any high expense ratio funds anywhere.

Where this falls apart are things like a 401k or 403b that only give you limited options. Many times you won't even get a full US market or int'l market fund. For that you'll want to do your best to approximate it. At worst you'll probably have access to an S&P 500 fund and can simply dump everything in that. I do remember one client with a particularly shit 401k that the lowest expense ratio fund was an S&P 500 at .75% which was just awful but I doubt you're so unlucky.


VII. Actually Retiring
So you took the advice from some raging anti-semite on the evil doxing fourm and now you're big dick swinging with a couple mil (2024 dollars) in the bank. Even better the US didn't collapse and you now want to retire and enjoy your gains. But what if 2008 happens again right after you retire? Well if you're planning to retire soon that means your time horizon is under 5 years. If you remember from the beginning of this screed that means bonds will now be useful. But how many? Should you transfer everything into bonds and pay capital gains on your entire stack? Well, no, that's obviously retarded.

The short version is for a few years before retirement you should switch to acquiring bonds and then immediately after retirement live off those same bonds. This will help reduce your sequence risk (ie. how bad it is if shit hits the fan immediately once your retire). I won't get into it since this is already too long but I will recommend the entirety of truly excellent early retirement now blog and specifically their article on it. Also FYI you can draw about 3% per year (inflation adjusted) from a portfolio and not deplete it (See the ERN safe withdrawl rate series).

VIII. What I would do in your shoes.
So I've written this screed but what does that mean for you specifically? If I were you I would:
- Invest all (or all except a small emergency fund) of your after-tax-121k into 66% US market and 34% int'l market low expense funds with a normal brokerage account at ex. fidelity. Continue to add to this as you have extra money. Do not try to time the market.
- Continue to max out your roth IRA and 403b. Tax advantaged accounts will basically always beat regular investing. Doubly so if you're getting any kind of match. (Re-)Allocate those funds like your brokerage. If your IRA isn't someplace you can do that roll it over to some place that you can. Do your best with your options in your 403b. Seriously, check your 403b options. You don't want to be in some 1% fund.
- Once your 55 start buying bonds. Then retire at 60. If you've saved enough that 3% is enough to live on you can really set your heirs up, donate to a charity, or whatever.
- Read through the ERN blog.
- I hope you found this useful.