My wife has never earned a dime since college and will almost certainly need some sort of financial advisor to keep the wheels turning. But I’ll steer the ship as long as I can.
Suppose that you were going to leave $1M to two kids who didn’t care about money, and didn’t pay any attention to it - and don’t need a lot either. What would make sense for them? I’d ideally like to give them some sort of inflation indexed annuity - you’re going to get $1,000 per month for life in today’s dollars dropped into your checking account, something like that. Any suggestions?
Trust so they get monthly payments unless there are specified big expenses for specific types of needs (health, new home, education within reasonable limit)
Partner is welcome to look at all of our finances anytime, and about once a year I sit us down and have a look over where our balances sit. They aren’t a numbers/math/finance person and they look at it and say “Oh nice, thank you.”
If I die, there’s a piece of paper in our safe with all of our financial accounts. If they log into my LastPass or Google accounts, all the passwords will auto-fill.
I’ve kept our retirement savings increasing as our salaries increase, so although our expenditures have increased quite a lot, retirement is paid first. Through general communication over time, Partner has gotten a feel for where our money sits and what we can spend. We’re in the middle of a spendy year, but I’ve prepped Partner that we need to cool it on large expenditures for a while after everything is settled.
I think the biggest financial secret I kept from them was a $220 loan to a friend for a few months, and that’s mostly because I forgot to mention it and then it was weird to mention a month later.
Set up a joint banking account when we got married. Paychecks direct deposit to joint account. Bills are paid from same account. There is basically no idea of her money vs my money.
We have IRAs and 401ks in our own names. We also have a joint brokerage account. 529 account for the kids.
I added her as an authorized user on my credit cards.
I do the majority of the personal finance tracking and planning. But I make sure she understands the strategy and is on board.
I have been working the heck out of the spreadsheet.
the good news? things look great with the caveats that I keep my job and it keeps paying me like it has of late and the expenses I have in the future are a reasonable guess (when i am not paying for college and all the phones and everything else associated with people beyond me and spouse - a lot of gray area). Loving the projected retirement date it seems to allow.
the bad news? even with the good news, for some reason I keep coming back to it and overthinking stuff. the caveats are the hard part.
Thank god i know myself enough to not be a day trader type or the kind of person who picks stocks individually. i would never sleep. Knowing that in advance has some value. (not knocking those who do - i know I can’t.)
I am riding it out until Trump declares victory and removes tariffs. And my investment horizon is shorter than yours. I went a bit lighter in US equities though in late 2024.
I think it’s reasonable to lighten up on your equity weighting if it’s in keeping with your long-term plan. If you do that, however, don’t sell stocks now with the idea that you’re going to buy back in later. Almost invariably the buy back in comes after the best days of the rally are over. That’s exactly the kind of whipsaw that sours people on stock investing.
Am curious, how does that work in the US tax-wise?
Am debating setting up a revocable trust over here in the UK and funding it with a pool of dividend paying shares. That way you could have some capital growth, income to distribute to the beneficiary (our little one) annually, plus a minimised tax position.
completed the “2024 tax year” non-deductible deposits yesterday ahead of filing the 2024 taxes. already moved my account from trad ira to roth. will do spouses when I get home.
I’ve simplified my investment planning, which means doing no research, as I admit to myself that I cannot find the inefficiencies. So, all my investing is via my 401K. Put it all into the savings option. My contributions will still be put into stocks.
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This has been… fun. No doubt there are/will be some benefits come tax time but a few drawbacks that I’m less than enthused about. We’re meeting with a CPA in a couple weeks to hopefully get a better handle on our tax situation and if we need to make any estimated payments.
$16k total so far. Upped monthly automatic transfer to $2.5k
Four trips so far, one was unexpected due to a relative passing away - U.S. Southwest, U.S. Southeast/East Coast, Mexico, and U.S. West Coast.
Been better from a time/effort perspective so far
Per #4, a little ahead of schedule from adding some leftover around bonus time.
Main goal the remainder of the year is to get a better handle on my wife’s S Corp stuff and how that impacts our tax situation.
