Disabled Veteran and spouse - How can we improve our situation?

[SilvioDante]

Hello to all,

I'd appreciate any help that you can provide to me. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to allocate our monthly finances to properly invest. We also have some personal enjoyment buckets we'd like to contribute to below such as travel and home repair. A little info about us below:

My wife and I (Dual income, no kids, no desire to have any) have recently eliminated all of our student loan and credit card debt. We live in Florida and are 34 and 31 years old. No state tax and low cost of living. Months ago we also increased our salaries and have been awarded VA Disability for service injuries received. With that being noted, we are looking to re-calibrate our finances to meet our goals as a couple.

Annual Income:
Wife Income $60,000
My Income $75,000
VA Disability $15,000

Investments
Savings $0 (We have about 3k leftover monthly from our bills and about 80k in available credit cards)
401k Me $45,000 6% Contribution/Employer Match
401k Wife $34,000 6% Contribution/Employer Match
My Pension Fund $16,000 Company adds 5% salary into 4% APY savings fund

Mortgage $360,000 4.38% Interest @ 29 Years

Most of our savings were wiped when buying our home last year. We underestimated the true cost of the move such as furnishings and upgrades. Now that we are settled, we have an opportunity to save/invest our remaining monthly money (about 3k) to work for our various goals.

Here are our goals:
Increase our savings rate - We'd like to save 1k extra/month. Should maxing IRA be our priority? Our current AA for our 401ks is 66/34. Funds available are very low ER. Right now we are only investing up to the employer match

Lower yearly taxes owed - assuming the above would be our best bet

Pay down mortgage/eliminate interest/accumulate equity. The rate we have haunts me. If I would have bought a year prior, I'd be at 3.25.

Travel Fund (we always keep around 200k Delta miles in reserve for travel and churn quite often to keep out of pocket spend down)

House upkeep fund (new flooring, additional landscaping, repairs)

[WoodSpinner]

OP,

Thank you for your service, it’s much appreciated.

My small suggestion is to focus your savings on building a 6 month Emergency Fund as a key priority.

WoodSpinner

[BarbBrooklyn]

OP,

Thank you for your service, it’s much appreciated.

My small suggestion is to focus your savings on building a 6 month Emergency Fund as a key priority.

WoodSpinner

+1
Thank you for your service!!

And yes, the emergency fund is the first priority.

[delamer]

Did you mean maxing out your 401(k) rather than maxing out your IRAs?

Increasing your 401(k) contributions should be your 1st priority. That’s more important than paying down your mortgage.

The other two goals you talked about are spending related. So only you can decide how important they are to you and how much you want to spend on them.

[RickBoglehead]

You may find this Wiki post to be helpful: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Priorit ... nvestments

[goaties]

The state of Florida offers various property tax exemptions for disabled vets. You probably already know that, but in case you didn't:
http://dma.myflorida.com/state-florida-fact-sheet/