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alexp

Those are NOT the right assumptions. The Roth 401k can usually be rolled into a Roth IRA upon separation which would allow tax/penalty free withdrawals of the contributions. Let's say I change employer in 2025 and have 50K in my Roth 401K at that time. Does it mean that I can rollover this 50K to m...

alexp

Olemiss540 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 19, 2021 6:06 pm Are you also contributing 6k to a Roth IRA? That would be first before any after tax contributions to your 401k.

Yes, I do contribute $6K/year to Roth IRA.

alexp

What do you currently invest in for taxable? What is your current tax bracket? How long until you plan to retire? One of the advantages of Roth is the tax free growth during the accumulation phase. How big are your traditional investments? Would Roth conversions make sense after you retire? If so, ...

alexp

My employer has been offering after tax 401K option since last year. I will be contributing pre-tax 401K max ($19,500) and an additional $8000 to the after-tax 401K this year. The Roth in-plan conversion option has been activated on my account which will automatically convert the after-tax contribut...

alexp

Learn to valuate your investment properties using cash on cash as a measure. To do this, take the gross rents and divide it by the amount of cash you invested into the property. For example a $1MM property with $60k/yr in rent would be 60,000 divided by 1,000,000 = 0.06 or 6% return cash on cash. C...

alexp

Where are you getting 3% cash out on a rental? The lenders I’ve checked with are closer to 4%. Look into doing a mortgage in your primary instead - likely can get a much lower rate. Aimloan. I don't like mixing primary and rental mortgages. Additionally, primary mortgage interest wouldn't be tax de...

alexp

Current cash flow from both properties combined is $275/month. The property value is ~$240K each.

Doing separate refinances would result in higher closing costs and the interest rate will slightly go up due to small loan amount.

alexp

When it comes to financial matters, I have lot of inertia and tend to do lot of thinking before making any big changes. Most of the tweaks happen only once a year during the AA rebalance period. I am thinking of doing some shuffling on my rental property mortgages and have done some back-of-the-enve...

alexp

42yrs/Single income/Married with 2 kids/MCOL 1-Jan-09 100K 1-Jan-11 173K (Paid off student loans) 1-Jan-12 200K 1-Jan-13 242K (Bought primary home) 1-Jan-14 358K 1-Jan-15 425K 1-Jan-16 530K 1-Jan-17 700K 1-Jan-18 886K 1-Jan-19 1.005M 1-Jan-20 1.314M 1-Jan-21 1.689M Happy New Year :sharebeer -Alex

alexp

Rentler has been working pretty well for me since last couple of years.

-Alex

alexp

Buying a condo in my 20s at the height of real estate bubble (2006) expecting it to appreciate. Not maxing out 401k during that time due to associated condo expenses. Still have the condo as rental/future second home. Its price has gone back to 2006 levels this year

-Alex

alexp

Thanks for the information. Looks like I was doing it all wrong with adding either me or my wife as authorized users in our last 3 chase applications.

-Alex

alexp

@Chip - glad that the router upgrade worked for you.

@meebers - the cat5e cable should be able to handle 1Gbps speed. Will be interesting to find the results for your cat 7 experiment.

-Alex

alexp

I second recommendations for Michelin defenders. Pay attention to the weight ratings.

My local tire shop did a price match to Costco. They told me to go for higher weight rating for my SUV (similar to highlander) than the one Costco sells which is more suitable for a large sedan.

alexp

I had the same Asus router and was considering similar plans due to poor Wi-Fi coverage in some parts of my ~4000 sqft home. As the first step, I changed my router to “ TP-Link AC2600 Smart WiFi Router (Archer A10)“ which is just over 100$. After this, I saw great coverage all over the house and in ...

alexp

Not sure why I see lot of replies mentioning deductible. From what OP has described, it seems like other party’s fault and their liability portion of auto insurance should take care of it. OP doesn’t need to pay deductible. You would need to talk to their insurance company, describe what happened an...

alexp

OP - pick a number between 0 and 35 that you are comfortable with and stick with it. There are several threads on international vs domestic if you search this forum and they go nowhere. My international allocation hovers between 0 and 25 in my accounts. Sticking with the number will prevent you from...

alexp

$80K each for two daughters. Enough to cover most of the cost for state universities. I can cash flow an equal amount from other sources/income. Regarding numbers like 250-300k quoted in this thread, I would encourage them to take some loan if the cost comes this high. It better be a school which is...

alexp

Cutco knives
Northface and Patagonia outerwear
Good speakers (I favor Definitive Technology)

-Alex

alexp

$1500 (monthly) Value 280K Gross rent per year = $18000 We can keep $5000 for property taxes/insurance/maintenance Net rent of $13000 per year gives a return of 4.6%. Isn't the return better than bonds with favorable tax treatment as bonus? I agree that there is maintenance headache with rentals but...

alexp

Nobody here has claimed those $300k is the median. Where did you read that? The claim was that the median engineer will earn in the $200k range during their career in most of the country. This is provably true. Many, many engineers earn much more. But even in MCOL cities the median engineer will cr...

alexp

Between 10-20%.

alexp

I agree and personally know several engineers making $$ that are north of numbers talked here. But to say that these numbers are norm or median isn’t true. What I have found is getting these type of salaries is highly dependent on location. Bay Area or NYC are there but Seattle/Boston are catching u...

alexp

These international or no international threads are popping up every couple of months now. This means that lot of investors have started questioning their strategy. I was a "60 US/40 International" investor 10 years back when I started but took the decision of lowering my Intl allocation b...

alexp

I use Rentler - free ACH to my account.

alexp

quizzer25 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2020 12:04 am Good catch..the about sign looked like a negative to me.
AlexP - Did you have a zero cost rate option as well?

Yes, it is "about" (not negative). $2K closing costs + prepaid if escrow isn't waived.

There might be a zero cost option as well in exchange of a higher rate. Not sure.

alexp

Local mortgage broker.
Refinancing primary home mortgage.
2.125% 15yr locked with ~$2k closing cost (appraisal waived).

alexp

I’m currently refinancing two of my rentals to 2.75% 30 year. Primary to 2.75% 15 year. All simultaneously with a local broker. Going very smoothly. Definitely consider it. Are you getting 2.75% 30yr for rentals? - it is a tremendous deal. I talked to the mortgage broker about rental refinance. He ...

alexp

Lee_WSP wrote: ↑Wed Aug 26, 2020 4:35 pm Get a twenty year then.

The rate for 20 year loan is very close to 30 year.

alexp

Huge thanks for the replies so far. Please note that I am not maximizing the Mega backdoor roth currently but plan to increase the contribution with raises. So, we are down to these two options now based on recommendations: 1. Refinance primary to 15-yr. Bite the bullet and have ~5K/year less going ...

alexp

gr7070 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 26, 2020 11:27 am Who has each of your rental loans? Curious.

It will likely be incredibly hard to justify a refi for either

aimloan and flagstar.

alexp

I'd go with a modified option 3. Refinance the 30yr primary but keep making the same payment you make today. This will provide you a much lower effective interest and speed up your time to pay off the mortgage. Then if things go bad at megacorp, you have flexibility to pay the lower monthly payment...

alexp

With the mortgage refinance mega thread going on and several people I know running for refinancing their mortgages, I am starting to wonder if I am missing some boat or lifetime opportunity by not refinancing. I would like to take an opinion of this group so that I don't think "Should have done...

alexp

Point wrote: ↑Sat Jul 25, 2020 8:14 am I should be more clear- what portion of tenant’s income should they pay as rent, ie 50%, 30%...

I aim for ~30% when looking at the applications.

alexp

Minivan without any doubt! I don't think that there is Entertainment system in rented minivans - so, you might have to arrange your own for 4 yr old. The 1yr old might not be interested in watching videos so you or spouse will have to entertain :D Would also recommend planning the drive at a time wh...

alexp

<10% of my taxable holdings (everything else are Index funds):
AMZN
FB
CRWD

alexp

Two rentals - both tenants are current with the rent payments.

alexp

TRBCX is available in my 401K as well. I use an allocation of 20% for it in order to give a growth tilt to my stock holdings which mainly comprise of S&P 500. As others said, this fund leans towards FAANG/Tech stocks.

alexp

This is what we got for our 3-season room couple of years back:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Home-Decora ... /300739280

It moves lot of air in a 16 x 20 room and I would buy it again with no second thoughts.

alexp

Conservatively, let’s call it $2k/mo so it would be a 15 month hit. Is the $30K coming from the EF? How about doing both? - you can invest $1K/month to taxable as well as put $1K towards refilling the $30K reserves used for remodeling over a period of 30 months. This way you will be able to enjoy t...

alexp

This adds up to ~$30K in home improvements. How much are you planning to save in taxable in a year? I had to make a similar decision couple of years back regarding addition of a 3-season room vs ~1.5yr of taxable investing. I enjoy the new room 10 months a year and feel good about the decision I mad...

alexp

Fortunately both of my tenants are paying their rents on time. However, I have beefed up my emergency fund to cover ~3 months of rent for both properties if needed.

alexp

Are you taking any actions based on your personal review and highlights? Keeping the 20% international, reducing/increasing? I started taking some steps 5 years back when my international allocation across the portfolio used to be ~35%. Fast forward to this year, it is ~15% across all portfolios (2...

alexp

This thread got me thinking and I reexamined the performance from International vs Domestic portfolio. I have been following the general advice of having 20% international in the asset allocation. But after looking at this thread and reading Warren Buffett's weekend address where he emphasized "...

alexp

MCOL. BSEE/MSCS
Sr Software Eng in MCOL. Fortune 500.
17yr exp
170K base
~20K bonus + ~8K RSU
6K 401K match

Figures in this thread makes me think about moving to Bay area but 5 min commute + 35hr work week are hard to pass on

especially with little kids.

alexp

41yrs/Single income/Married with 2 kids/MCOL 1-Jan-09 100,000.00 1-Jan-11 173,000.00 (Paid off student loans) 1-Jan-12 200,000.00 1-Jan-13 242,000.00 (Bought primary home) 1-Jan-14 358,000.00 1-Jan-15 425,000.00 1-Jan-16 530,000.00 1-Jan-17 700,000.00 1-Jan-18 886,000.00 1-Jan-19 1,005,307.00 1-Jan-...

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