Planning for Retirement Aggressively

Investing
#1

Hey Jeremy,

Just want to say your page has been eye opening :exploding_head::exploding_head::exploding_head: and my current motivation to get on track with my personal finances for the future. I have been contributing to my 401k with company but have realized that’s not enough. With the times we are in currently I have put an extreme amount of focus on this on making sure I have enough for retirement. I am 41 and I have a Fidelity brokerage acct with a trading account and a Roth IRA. I know you preach 2-3 solid ETFs for long term growth. What approach would you suggest for someone like myself who is looking to cut expenses and dump every available dollar into the market? My goal is to retire by 55 just unsure the best course of action to make that happen.

Thanks in advance,
Marvin NYC

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#2

Hey Marvin!

First, I’d probably type your numbers into a retirement calculator to see if you’re on track, or what kind of monthly investment you will need to hit your goal.

After that, like in this post, there’s really only a few things to do. Invest more, invest over a longer time period, and minimize expenses. If you have a 2-3 fund portfolio of ETFs, you likely have minimized expenses as much as possible. So then you only have the other two levers to adjust. There is no secret.

Here’s my investing checklist:

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#3

Hey Marvin,

My favorite book on personal finance is “The Automatic Millionaire” by: David Bach. He preaches that if you can do as much as possible to make your investing and saving automatic, the time will fly by and you won’t believe how much you have in your accounts!

Making this Practical
I use the below strategies to get myself out of the way and have the money I make automatically be invested on the 1st and 15th of every month.

  • 15% of my income automatically goes to my Roth 401K via my work
  • 15% of my income automatically invests in Mutual Funds with Vanguard
  • Every time I get a bonus or work overtime, I try to pull out like $20-$50 for myself and then everything else goes into the stock market.
  • My wife recently got a raise and we are putting the entire increase into the stock market automatically every month
  • When I get a raise I try to put the entire increase into the stock market automatically every month
  • $200 goes to High Yield Savings Account every two weeks (Rainy Day Fund)

Hope this helps and that you can retire even earlier than 55!

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