Bogleheads.org

thewestsnow wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 9:33 pm Please let me know the flaws in my plan.

One thing was not clear was what your housing plans are now that you have sold your house. If you might need the money in a few years to buy a different property that would need to be build into your plans since money that will be needed soon should be invested less aggressively.

Your costs of $60K a year might be low if that does not include income taxes. If you will be paying rent in a high cost of living area that will also make it harder to stay within your $60K budget.

Sorry to hear about the health issues but even if you did not have those you should also crunch your numbers three ways, as a couple and as if one of you survives the other.

....senior son is accepted to Pitt and Purdue for CS ..... I just googled it and Pit is 44% male and 56% female. (33% more) Purdue is almost the opposite and 42% female and 58% male. (38% more) The effective opposite sex dating pool is even more skewed when couples pair up the remaining pool becomes even more out of balance. For example if 10% of both men and women are in an opposite relationship then for Purdue the remaining available students who are not in a relationship would be 32% female and 48% male, so there would be 50% more available men than women. I would not suggest that the gender ratio should be a high criteria in selecting a college but it would be good for him to not underestimate it especially if he is not very socially o...

You may get better responses if you edit your post to add the mutual fund names and not just have the ticker symbol since most people will not know those. You can edit your post using the icon with the pencil on it. Betterment Target date ~$2000 (I opened this in 2015. Tried to switch to vanguard but it was too complicated with certified letters etc so I have just left it) If this is an IRA or Roth you can just contact Fidelity or Vanguard and let them handle the transfer it into one of your other account with them. There will be some paperwork but it should be straight forward. The last couple years have seen minimal savings into retirement due to a baby and aggressively paying off student loans (these are paid off now). Our goal is to sav...

youngsters wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:15 pm What's happening?

It is just speculating but outside the US long fixed rate mortgages are not as common or non-existent. This means that raising interest rates not only impact potential buyers but also that current owners may be forced to sell when their monthly mortgage payments increase.

You also need to be cautious about considering "European real estate" since there will be differences for each country and even regions within a country.

ExtraLegRoom wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 10:43 am If I'm being completely honest, it's a huge yawn (that is also very practical & financial reasonable)

Most likely with whatever car you get after you have owned it you will mostly get used to it and barely notice it 95% of the time.

Right now you are used to driving a $3K car and you are pretty used to it so you barely notice it unless it starts making a new noise or it breaks down.

It will be somewhat the same six months after you buy a $90K car. When you are doing something like driving to the grocery store you will barely notice the car.

Psychologists call this "hedonic adaptation", google this.

Right now I (P1) drive a 2009 car worth <3k ....Yukon.... We both love spending time outside, hiking, camping, getting away from city etc. This would end up being our main family, dog, travel, adventure car. .... Ignoring the price, what do you use the vehicle for? +1000 The Yukon is a borderline monster truck and if you have a kid you might need a ladder to get the kid in and out of a Yukon, especially if one of you is short. Parking a Yukon will also be difficult so when you take a test drive be sure to try parallel parking it and also try parking it in a busy grocery store parking lot. Also measure any large car you are looking at to see if it will actually fit in your garage without it being a tight fit. More than one person has gotten...

2 kids under 5 (might have a third) Income DW:140k DH: 60k I didn't crunch the numbers but if you buy the more expensive house it will be very hard to get by with just one income if you need to. One potential problem is that if you have another kid and it has even moderate and temporary health issues then using daycare might not be a good choice or even possible choice for a kid with health problems. You may also have expensive fertility treatments or adoption costs in order to have a third kid. You cannot expect the day care costs to really go down when the kids start school either since you will need to pay for after school care, care when they are home sick, care over school holidays and the summer. There will also be costs when the kid...

According to US News CS undergraduate ranking, ASU and SB both 46 while UMN 37 so sort of similar. With undergraduate STEM degrees once you get past the top 5 or 10 the colleges ranking are not as important as other majors as long as a college has an average or above average rating. The difference between 46 and 37 is likely with the margin of error so those rankings are likely not useful at all and they all seem to have credible CS programs. You may be overthinking this. It isn't like your kid is looking at MIT or some marginal college. It seems to really come down to which one would be the best fit for your kid and your budget. Don't underestimate the importance of the distance either. Traveling during Christmas and Thanksgiving is expen...

I’m looking for a lawn tractor that can also handle pulling a trailer wheelbarrow type attachment for hauling fire wood and mulch,..... In your planning be sure to figure out where you will store the lawn mower and trailer before you buy it since they can take up a lot of space. You may not be able to fit them and your cars in your garage at the same time. If you need to put up a shed for it that will add to the cost and there may be things like HOA or county building restrictions. In my area humidity is a big issue that impacts how you can store things like that and an inexpensive metal shed might not work well here because of the humidity. If you do put up a shed then make sure that there is plenty of clearance so that you you will not h...

One thing that has not been mentioned is that for vacations one way to save on airfare is that instead of looking for an inexpensive flight to a destination you can look the other way around and search for inexpensive flights because of sales then look at the destinations to decide if you would want to go there because you can get a cheap flight there. For example in Google flights instead of entering a destination you can enter your home airport then "europe" or "western europe" and it will show you a map of what the lowest airfare is. I just looked and there were not dramatic difference for the dates I looked at but I have seen situations where most cities cost 50% more than a city that had a sale going on. Kayack has ...

One more thought. If you are looking for an alternative destination and would be flying you might check to see if you can find good airfares from where you are at to Calgary Canada. I found a really good sale from where I am at so I am planning a trip there in August to see Banff and the Canadian Rockies. I had not really planned on going there but I saw a great deal for direct flights, around $300, which caused me to look into it. That will also be VERY busy then and the prices are high so I will be staying outside the more desirable Banff and Lake Louise area so my VRBO location will not be ideal but it should be workable for us. It will be far from hot though and likely be on the cool side especially at night so we will need to take warm...

White Coat Investor wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 9:25 am You're less likely to die of heatstroke on a short hike.

FYI, in case you did not know he is an emergency room doctor in Utah who is an active outdoors person.

What has been your experience(s)? Even before the pandemic the national parks have been very busy especially in June, July and August. With the pandemic a lot of people have not been planning international trips and doing domestic trips instead which has made them even more crowded. Some of the national parks even require reservations to enter the park or hike specific popular trails. Hotels and campsites get fully booked early so your choices of where to stay may be limited. Parking can also be a big problem and in August it can be common to get to an attraction or trailhead only to find there is no place to park your car. Most of the national parks though are big and most people stay near the big attractions and within a couple of hundre...

And even if you had account statements, it’s your word against theirs. Who’s to say you didn’t manipulate the document to give yourself 10x as many stock by adding a zero. What would happen in this case? Most likely the first thing you should do would be to file a complaint with FINRA which is the government authorized agency that regulates brokerages. They can do an audit of your account. https://www.finra.org/#/ From what people have posted brokerages take FINRA complaints very seriously and when there has been a glitch filing a FINRA complaint would relatively quickly get it resolved. They not only handle complaints but they also oversee brokerages and review their systems to approve their procedures before there is a problem. I would a...

A. L. Breguet wrote: ↑Sat Mar 18, 2023 6:01 pm I guess the MastersOfTheUniverse at MasterCard do not talk to mere mortals...

My understanding is that credit card companies and other financial institutions will say say next to nothing about the details of their security.

The reason is that if they did that would give the "bad guys" more information to try to figure out how to compromise their systems.

In terms of questions above, current NW is above $5 mm., generally adding to savings a few hundred thousand per year, and life expectancy plus inheritances / trusts etc x Rule of 72 suggests we may exceed inheritance tax threshold when the grim reaper comes for me and DW. Be sure to consider that several decades of inflation might also make a $1.5 million dollar who life insurance policy not be worth a lot by the time your estate is large enough for to estate taxes to be an issue. If you like playing with numbers take a look at a joint life expectancy calculator like this one to get an idea of the odds that one of you will live long enough for estate taxes to be an issue. https://www.kitces.com/joint-life-expectancy-and-mortality-calculato...

How do I find out which college would likely to have the best interships? I would try calling up the Computer Science departments and asking if they have any department level statistics on internships, percent of graduating students with job offers, and things like graduation rates for just the CS department. They likely have a sheet with lots of statistics if it is not on their web site. I have an ancient CS degree and at the college I was at back then a lot of CS freshman decided it was not right for them and changed majors. If it is still that way then something like a low CS retention rate(percent of returning students) with a grain of salt since some if the CS majors may have changed majors voluntarily and could be doing well now in s...

- I generate more than a hundred thousand dollars per year in free cash flow while covering costs comfortably; ..... I have reasons to desire some level of life insurance. I figure my estate will exceed the estate tax limitations when that time comes .... Many employers provide some life insurance for their employees so be sure to factor that into your decision. If you die that also keep in mind that any heirs will get your retirement nest egg which might cover a lot. For example if you die an your spouse survives you then their expenses might be a lot less so they might be financially OK. I didn't follow all your numbers but I would suspect that you do not have any need for any life insurance now. It would be good to hire a fee only finan...

runner3081 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 19, 2023 5:41 pm ASU for weather and umm, well, parties.

Be sure to Google "ASU graduation rate" when considering the parties.

Buying a RV is really a lifestyle choice and not an economic one since it will likely cost a lot more than just using hotel rooms or rental condos when you travel. The cost to buy one is just the beginning. Rent one for a month, or even an entire season before you buy one since that will help you decide it if is right for you and also help you figure out what features are important to you. It is really common for people to buy an RV to then decide they really want something else and buy a different RV in a year or two. ...so that he could go travel around the world with it. With a possible exception of a van size camper they get such bad gas mileage that most people only use them in their local region. I really doubt that you would ever tak...

When I was helping my son through the college selection process one quote really stuck with me.

"Selecting a college is not about selecting the best college. It is about selecting the college that is the best fit for your kid."

I am not familiar with those colleges but assuming that they all have good programs then whichever is the best fit for your kids personality is likely the best choice.

With a CS degree it would also be good to also consider which college would likely have the best internships. With many large tech companies having layoffs and hiring freezes I would suspect that getting good internships will also be a lot more difficult.

roamingzebra wrote: ↑Sun Mar 19, 2023 3:30 pm Any ideas, suggestions?

I would assume that you have tried putting new batteries in the remote, if not try that.

In the menu system there might be an option to restore it to factory defaults which would be worth trying if you can get to that.

It would also be worthwhile unplugging it and waiting ten minutes to restart it.

Look into the manual, you can find it online. There may be some sort of child protection lockout mode that it got into.

How old is the TV?

You can likely get a larger better replacement for around $100 so replacing it might be better than spending more time trying to fix it. Things like that have become more or less disposable now so trying to do something like replacing the buttons is not practical.

sagan23 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 18, 2023 9:01 pm I did run my SS numbers recently and it came to around 22k/yr at age 67, assuming no more W2s. I realize this may change for the worse.

Be sure to double check to make sure that number is correct. That sounds possible but pretty high when you consider that the maximum possible benefit at your full retirement age is about $43K a year and you will not have the full 35 years of earnings history needed to get the maximum benefit to get that.

You also need to include income taxes in your expenses so be sure to consider that. Depending on your relationship with your partner you may want to also plan on helping them pay for their retirement since even with their pension they may not have enough retirement money. Your situation with your age, low expenses, a paid off house, significant savings, and a pension is really an edge case that is likely outside what the traditional studies and "rules of thumb" so I would be cautious about giving them too much weight in your analysis. With your situation you are sort of in unknown waters so a more moderate choice than fully retiring might make sense. Maybe cut back to part time or seasonal work for a few years and then decide if y...

My son just went on a cruise with a 4 and 6 year old and they were able to drop their kids off in the ships kid center and that seemed to work well for them but they were older. That would vary with the ship so check the cruise critic forum. We cannot discus Covid here because of the board rules but do your own research on how much of an issue that still is on Cruise ships and don't just assume that it is not a problem now. Ask your pediatrician about the advisability of taking a young kid on a cruise or traveling in general. If you must fly then only go someplace you can get a direct flight to. When traveling with a young kid a missed connection or a canceled connecting flight can have a major impact since by the time the alternate flight ...

Moved four accounts in September, Two IRAs, Roth, and small taxable account. It was so painless that I don't even remember much about the process I think that I did it all online without even calling. They may have also been a form that I needed to have notorized and mailed in but I am not 100% sure about that. The only glitch was that I had incorrectly assumed that in the retirement accounts that my target date mutual funds would be liquidated and it would be transferred as cash that could be reinvested once the money arrived at Fidelity . That was my mistake to assume that. What happened was that the Vanguard mutual funds were transferred so when it was done I had Vanguard mutual funds(not ETFs) in Fidelity accounts. I didn't even know th...

I am also looking at that area for a trip this summer because I saw some really good airfares to Calgary. I have read this thread and some of the other Boglehead threads but I have some specific questions. Some background: we are a retired couple in our mid-60s and early 70s and while we are doing fine doing day hikes of around 5 miles would be our maximum and with hiking day after day shorter hikes would be better. We will likely be doing things more like the gondola rides and lake boat rides than long hikes. We are looking at going about 14 to 16 days(+/-) so we are going to try to find several places to stay for longer stays and do day trips taking time to see things without feeling rushed. We will have a rental car for our entire stay. ...

Since you have a bathtub in the other bathroom then get a shower. Even if you are not in the house when you are elderly having the shower would work a lot better if you or a kid has something like knee surgery and needs to use a shower stool for a while. As someone else said get grab bars, they are not just for elderly people. As I recall showers/bathtubs are the number two place for home injuries, after stairs. For no mildew a fiberglass shower surround would be hard to beat but it might not be appropriate for a higher end house. Consider getting an electric outlet with a timer on it so that something like a curling iron does not get left on. Plan a place for a nightlight and get plenty of electric outlets. Between things like toothbrush c...

What are retirees who "over saved" doing with funds? I did not over save but I did have the good fortune to have very good market returns, for at least the first five year of retirement, so at least so far I seem to have won the "sequence of returns" lottery at least in a small way. Getting better than planned for investing returns is likely a bigger factor for people who have more than expected in retirement than people who actually saved too much. If I had retired going into a five year bear market instead(which was possible) then I would still be OK but money would be a lot tighter. Since you need to be prepared to retire going into a bear market even if you get average investing returns during your early retirement ...

The most high-frequency home price index I follow finally hit 0% YoY as of their report at the end of last week, which was lagged about two weeks: You also need to keep in mind that over the last year inflation has been about 5.5% so in real dollars that index is 5.5% lower. One way for a housing bubble to unwind it for home prices to just lag inflation for a number of years or even decades. In non-bubble areas home price increases may not be nearly as good as they sound. My parents bought a house in the midwest for about $32K when I was in grade school and it was eventually sold from their estate about 40 years later for around $270k. That sounds great but I figured it out once but in real inflation adjusted dollars it only went up by abo...

Two more things.

7) Talk with him about the need to eat well and get exercise. Often college dining halls will have unlimited food that is often high in calories and carbs. There is a lot of truth in the saying "freshman 15" about students putting on 15 or more pounds during their freshman year.

The opposite can also be true and some students may be picky eaters and not like dorm food and not eat well.

8) Also walk through how they should get medical care if they need it and how important it can be to use in-network doctors or urgent care facility and find out how the billing for any campus health center will work with your insurance.

TomatoTomahto wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 4:22 pm

mjg wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 3:35 pm At the risk of being out of line (delete if it is), the best advice might be to advise him to "keep it zipped".

This site is not a gambling site, but if it were, I'd give you pretty long odds on that happening.

Maybe if he was a boy scout a reminder about the boy motto "Be prepared" might be a more pragmatic approach.

It would be good to also remind him that cell phone cameras are everywhere now so to be cautious about thing that might come back to haunt him in later life. All things considered I was pretty tame but I am sure glad that cell phone cameras were not around when I was his age.

The college selection process has come to the end and my son has made his selection (fortunately at an instate school that even offered him a scholarship). His school is about 6 hours away from us in a pretty rural setting. I would appreciate any practical advice from those who have made this transition. A couple of things; 1) Look up that college's graduation and retention rate and talk it over with your son. Even a good college may only have a 90% graduation rate. Some state universities may not even have a 50% graduation rate. :shock: My son choose to go to a state university that did not have good graduation and retention rates. I talked it over with my son to make sure that he knew that he could not use the other students actions to j...

Some more information/clarifications would be helpful. 1) Is the pension adjusted for inflation and are your pension numbers correct assuming that you retire today? The inflation part can be tricky since I have seen pensions that are adjusted for inflation after they start but not in the gap between when you stop working and when you start the pension. For example if you retire now and start the pension at 65 then there could be five years without an inflation adjustment. 2) Are your Social Security estimates for as if you stop working today. They default to assume that you keep working longer. What is your spouse's SS situation? Have you used the Open Social Security web site to see when it says you should start SS. https://opensocialsecur...

If I was retiring today, I would comfortably withdraw 5% (mid-30s dad using ERN SWR Toolbox) I did not spend any time looking at the details of the numbers but if that toolbox says that a 5% SWR is OK for a 35 year old then I would be curious to know what it says would work for a people that are 45,55, or 65 years old. One problem with most retirement calculators is that they do not work very well for very long retirements because the data available for very long retirements is very limited. If it is looking at a retirement that lasts until the age of 95 then for a 35 year old that is a 60 year retirement. This is a problem since the last full dataset would have started 60 years ago in 1963. When you use that you are literally asking, &quo...

It’s one thing to live on 40k. It’s another to HAVE to live on 40k. To me, both scenarios sound terrible (though maybe less so in a LCOL) but the latter is ripe for disaster. One medical issue or sudden home repair and you’re out 25% of your annual spend. *unless we’re talking MMM 40k, which is 40k except for…. FYI MMM stands for Mr. Money Mustache which is a popular website based on retiring very early with a frugal lifestyle. If I recall correctly his "except for" was that his spouse was still working and he had significant income from his web site. :oops: It also sounds like the OP would also have $800K in investments which is a lot different than most people his age who are living on $40K a year and are living from paycheck t...

Rom wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 8:46 pm I think I see what you're getting at, just as a way to visualize how large a 1% expense ratio is. But, if you're still making a 5% return even after the expense ratio, you can still live on 4%. It's not like you actually subtract the ER from your withdrawal; you subtract it from your return on investment, which hopefully still covers your 4% withdrawals.

It is subtracted from your account each year and if you are paying a 1% asset under management fee you will actually see it on your statement.

If it worked that way then we would talk about a 5% SWR not a 4% SWR.

I know I have had trouble in finding something because I could not think of the right words to search on.

The magic words to search for this are "cell phone holder for walking"

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=cell+phone+h ... doa-p_1_22

You can also search on "water bottle holder for walking" and many water bottle holders also have a pouch for things like a cell phone.

When I was deciding if I could retire or not I ran my numbers through at least a half a dozen retirement calculators looking for a consensus that I would be generally OK and not so much at the details. Even if you like the way it works I would not depend on just one retirement calculator. I was also Ok with a 5 to 10 percent "failure" rate since to me "failure" did not mean that I would spend mindlessly until I was broke and homeless, it meant that at some point I might need to reduce my spending by 10 or 20 percent if my portfolio was dropping faster than expected. I was OK with that since I had an ample retirement budget even if I had to reduce my spending some. For example if instead of an international trip I had to ...

The appraiser was non-local, listed 10 comps, 4 were the sites we researched, while the other 6 were recently built (2020-2022) with varied sale dates (2 on sale, 3 before last August, 1 this year). "2 on sale" That does not sound like any appraisal that I have seen. It sounds like something funny is going on. Was this the appraisal that a lender was using for a loan? The buyer would like to add $6k, to bring a new contract price of $330k. That is 97.6% of your listing price. If there was nothing else that came up in the inspections and it would otherwise be pretty much a "done deal" if you signed off on it then I would take it. If relist it and another buyer has it inspected again then they might find something that th...

I have 2.5 days allocated to get from the Tacoma, WA area to Yosemite NP. I just looked that up and that is almost 900 miles. For most people that is pretty much two full days of driving even if you take the most direct route. I did not add up the mileage but one option might be to take the other half a day and take a side trip up the Columbia Gorge. If you do that then before you go be sure to read up on how it was formed and the Missoula floods since understanding how it was formed will help you appreciate it more. Even with your limited time be sure to get out of the car and take some short hikes. You might also be able to take a side trip to Crater Lake. There is an old joke. A tourist stops at the entry gate to Yosemite(or Yellowstone...

Not selling for a lower price after the house has been listed for a long time can make sense.

I have heard of situations where there was a divorce and one spouse got to live in the house for very little cost until it sold so they no incentive to accept a lower offer. They were required to list it for sale and sell it at the agreed upon price but the they really did not want to move.

One thing that may not have been mentioned is that you could set up a three way meeting or conference call with you for your accountant to talk to your financial planner to decide what should be done. Something to keep in mind is that under the new rules if the disabled child inherits an IRA then they may be required to withdraw it all in 10 years which could put them into a very high tax bracket then. If you are dealing with a large amount of money in the 401k then this could be be a very important factor especially if the child does not inherit it for 20 years and it grows a lot by then. If this is a likely problem then that could make choosing the Roth an easier choice. I don't have a clue if there is some sort of trust or estate planni...

How to calculate the effect of expense ratio on retirement savings? I don't know it it was mentioned year but there is another way to look at the importance of expense ratios AFTER you retire. There are all sorts of important assumptions and qualifications but academic studies have shown that in the past a 65 year old would be relatively safe starting out with about a 4% "safe withdrawal rate"(SWR). There is a wiki on that. https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Safe_withdrawal_rates#top-page The problem with that and the expense ratio is that when you are retired the expense ratio needs to come out of that 4% SWR. For example if you had a mutual fund with an expense ratio of 0.6% then you could only spend 3.4% as your SWR instead of 4%...

The off-putting aspect of this is that my on-line investigation of Fidelity indicates that I have to do this via an appointment with a Fidelity financial advisor. That is not at all true. Between my wife and I we moved four accounts(taxable, IRA, and Roth) from Vanguard to Fidelity last September. It was so simple that I don't even remember the details but I am pretty sure that I did it all online without talking to anyone at all. If I talked to anyone it when setting it up it was just a customer service person on their 800 number for a brief call. I did need to send them copies of my Vanguard account statements but you can download those as PDFs from the Vanguard site then upload the PDFs to Fidelity electronically. There may have been a ...

I think the traditional option is frankly nonsense. Spend $30k to see each of 100 friends for 5 minutes in a fancy venue? Part of that is that the perception of the "traditional option" has morphed into a Disneyesque event. The real "traditional option" was to get married at the church or synagogue that you went to so that you did not need an expensive wedding venue. Often the bride and groom went to two different churches so they would even have the choice of two locations instead of using a wedding venue Especially for younger people now the percentage of them that belong to an organized religion is low so a church wedding is not an option for them so they get sucked into the wedding venue scenario which usually also ...

Valuethinker wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 9:27 am .....
The Panic of 1907 was like this. No deposit insurance. However JP Morgan was personally able to organise a bailout. We cannot rely on their being some single person who has the power to stop the trickle before it becomes an avalanche.

I just looked and Berkshire Hathaway has $35 billion in cash and I would assume that they also have huge credit lines available. I would not be surprised if Warren Buffett has been in talks about all sorts of deals this weekend.

Do you regret spending money on your wedding? The complicated part is that it is often the parents money and not your money that is being spent. I never heard the exact details but when my son got married the bride's parents, who could easily afford a big wedding, gave them a set amount of money to do whatever they wanted with it and keep whatever was leftover. We do not have a fancy house but we have a huge lot in a suburban subdivision that is almost an acre and much to my surprise my son asked if they could get married in our backyard. They said that there would be about 50 people. The major expenses were rented tables and chairs and catered BBQ food from a very good restaurant that was served buffet style. The food was much less expens...

A big question is what your alternatives are and what they would cost. If nothing else 700-800€ a month would pay for a lot of taxis or Uber rides or whatever you have available where you live. You could also rent a car for the weekend or vacation when you might really want a car. As someone mentioned a used car would be another option to price out. The way I look at the cost of car ownership is to try to figure out the yearly or monthly cost of ownership over ten years. That would be a combination of depreciation, maintenance, tires, insurance, gas, parking, and any other costs of owning the car. You would also need to consider that if you do not buy the car then you would have 30k€ that could be invested if you paid cash for it. I don't k...

rrouse wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 10:38 am This gives about $305K inflation-adjusted income until age 70, and $265K thereafter.
......
Any constructive criticisms or ideas for optimization are appreciated!

With apparently having a paid off house you may be greatly overestimating your ability to effectively spend money in retirement.

A good chunk of the money will go to pay taxes each year but it would be good to take another look at what you will actually be able to spend when you are retired. This is especially true when you get to be a bit older and may not want to things like travel as much.