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Thanks for the replies! Zebrafish, I guess that was kind of part of my question. My understanding is that the IRA fund(s) could be used to pay for med school. Since we don't know for sure that she will get in to med school, we don't want to miss out on the opportunity to invest in tax advantaged fun...

Hello, I got started investing last year with this thread http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=87394 and am looking at how things have gone so far. I got some great info from that thread and on this site and I tried to implement it, so hopefully I am still on the right track. Rele...

Clear as mud now. That is very confusing, but I think I get it. Is it kind of like adding another level above the 25% $69k level? At $102k? So it would be in our best interest to get below the $102k AGI by contributing to 401k or TIRA right? Is that what you meant by argue strongly for doing enough ...

So am I understanding this correctly? With the LLC, we can get a credit of 20% of educational expenses up to $2,000. That means that the total tax we owe this year is lessened by $2,000. If our AGI is over $102,000 (the beginning of the phaseout) our credit is reduced and our marginal tax rate incre...

which would make your tax bracket 35%, not 25%, and argue strongly for doing enough 401k or TIRA to get the whole credit, if she's eligible for it That's right, but welcome to AGI-based phaseouts. They can add 5%, 10%, or even 100% or more to your marginal rate. The LLC phaseout adds 10% to your ma...

Bob's not my name wrote:That may put you in the phaseout for the Lifetime Learning Credit, which would make your tax bracket 35%, not 25%

I'm trying very hard to understand this tax stuff, but I thought the 25% tax bracket for married filing jointly was $69-139K. Is that wrong?

I think Testing means that he makes about $95k now between his engineering job and wifes's PT nursing income...if she goes to med school she'll stop working and their income will go down some...at least until 2016 or so when she enters residency (where they're probably making $30-$40k these days). ...

Testing, if you're willing to share your approximate annual gross income now and when your wife's in med school I'll explain the eligibility limits in numbers that are useful to you. I guess that would have been helpful from the beginning, but you guys were pretty close. Right now gross is around $...

Yeah, where is Testing123 anyway???? Still here. I thought I pretty much knew what I was going to do, but there is a lot of info here I am going to read over again. Could I do a roth IRA for me and a TIRA for my wife to try to hedge our bets on our future tax rate? And: It's likely from the info we...

Great info. Thanks again everyone for your responses. I feel better about going through with this stuff after hearing from you.

Happy Boxing Day.

Thanks. I never thought about using an IRA for short term savings. If we were planning to withdraw from one or both of our IRA's in a couple years for school or a house, would that mean we would need to adjust the asset allocation of the accounts? 80/20 would be too high for that time frame wouldn't...

Thanks everyone. I'm going to call Vanguard soon. Wife's age: 23 Your wife doesn't appear to have any investments. What's up with that? My wife recently started PRN as a nurse, so she's not full time and doesn't have benefits or 401k options. It does mean that she gets paid more hourly though, which...

Current Portfolio: ~$13k in my fidelity 401k at work, plus a little over $5k over emergency fund in savings account. Your emergency fund is part of your wealth, but we ordinarily do not add it into the calculations for your retirement portfolio. So your retirement portfolio is about $8k. Good for y...

Thanks everyone. I updated the original post with some 401k options based on Boffin's comments. Using the simple TRF's: The Fidelity Freedom 2035 is 80/20, with 60% domestic and 20% int'l stock. The Vanguard TRF 2030 is 80/20 with 57% domestic and 23% int'l stock. These seem pretty close to the 56/2...

Thanks for the reply. I tried to follow the Asking Porfolio Questions rules, but I guess I misunderstood. In my Fidelity account, I found a list of like 70 "investment options" broken up into large-cap, small-cap, etc groups. Do I need to list all of them here? Or am I looking at the right...

Hello. I have read The Boglehead's Guide to Investing and quite a bit on this site, and am going to try to actually do something now. Here's where I am: Emergency Fund: Check Debt: $0 Tax Filing Status: Married filing jointly Tax Rate: 25% federal, 0% state, TN Age: 24 Wife's age: 23 Desired Asset A...

I am about half way through getting an MBA right now, with my employer reimbursing most of the cost after each semester. The terms of the program state that if I voluntarily leave the company within 2 years after graduation, I have to pay the company back. I have about 2 years left til graduation, s...