Life Situation:
- Single F36, mostly a failure at dating so not worrying about marrying, no desire for children
- NYC resident, renting, one roommate
- Software Engineer, >10yrs experience, currently at a startup that's starting to miss goals and probably has another round of layoffs due. Yes, I am job hunting.
- Physical health is mostly good, except for one chronic injury that I'm getting surgery for in a month. The surgery has a year long recovery period. Mental health is very bad-- afraid about the surgery, afraid about the unstable job, afraid due to living in Interesting Times. (I have a geology degree, so more climate/agriculture/flooding fears than the current round of stupid politics, but also that. Really don't understand how folks can be confident the market will keep going up when we're going to be seeing some truly wild refugee numbers in my lifetime and the current insurance model is going to go sideways...)
- Having trouble wrapping my head around FIRE beyond just saving a lot of money.
FIRE Progress / Assets:
401k: ~$286,000
Taxable Investments: ~$120,000
- Money Market - $37,000 (Getting auto-deposited into VT $1k at a time)
- VIPSX - $6,000
- VTSAX - $10,000
- VT - $60,000
- Other - $7,000
High Interest Savings Account: ~$320,000 (at ~4-4.5% depending on how many more people I can get to take me up on the betterment referral deal)
HSA: $4,900
Emergency Savings + Checking Balance: $20,000
No debt. Pay off the credit card every month, like you do.
I have stock options in my current job, but I'm going to treat them as worth nothing for now. Best case is a ~200-400k windfall in a few years. The gigantic high interest savings account is in part in case I need to pay taxes on that, in part because I was thinking about buying an apartment for a while, and in part because I've had really bad periods of mental health before and I live in fear of another five year period of not being able to support myself. It's probably still higher than it needs to be. Now that I've given up on buying an apartment, I'm slowly going to move $100k of that into my Vanguard account.
Total: ~$750,000 Net Worth
Gross Salary/Wages:
- $223,000 cash + options, but see above note about the current unstable state of my employer. I'm pretty bad at job hunting and expecting a salary drop, possibly after a period of unemployment.
- No other income, though I'd love to have a side business. Not really sure how to go about that though, and certainly not in a good state of mind for taking new risks.
Yearly Savings Amounts: 401k, HSA, FSA, IRA, insurance, etc. - whatever you have
I expect to max my 401k this year and all future years. 401k is with Fidelity, currently 52% domestic stock, 36% international, 10% bonds, all in low fee funds/indexes.
Current Monthly Deferrals:
- 12% of Paycheck into 401k (~$2,235 a month) + 6% Employer Match
- $200.00 into Roth
- No HSA/FSA this year since I was expecting the surgery and went on a PPO instead of a HDHP.
- $100 into the commuter benefit
Current expenses: Provide breakdown and relevant details.
- $2350 rent
- $700 food
- $200 travel, mostly paying this out of my commuter benefit
- ~$100 my share of the bills (less actually, but I don't have a good range for the new apartment)
- $90 phone plan
- ~$600 misc -- healthcare, hobbies, necessities of life, monthly charity donation
About a 50% saving rate.
Specific Question(s):
My anxiety pretty much turns my brain off if I try to think about investment distributions, figuring out what a roth backdoor is, calculating FIRE numbers, and anything else like that. I've tried the calculators and most of them do not have an option for "I keep a giant amount of money in a savings account because I expect my brain to try to kill me on a regular basis," so they either overestimate (assume that savings account is in the market) or underestimate (assume I'm missing several hundred thousand dollars). Given that, can someone whose brain is not under a giant anxiety burden help me figure out where I on the path to FIRE and if there's anything else I should be doing?
Also, does anyone have a recommendation for a NY-area therapist who won't literally fucking laugh at me when I bring them my anxiety + my current situation? Had that happen a few times and it's put me off the whole deal. Taking insurance and not making me do the paperwork for it would be a plus, since I can't justify taking the sliding scale and I don't want to pay $300/per for advice I can look up a variety of self-help books anyway. Honestly, we all seem like such a pile of anxiety here, I'm surprised 'recommended therapists who know about FIRE' isn't a sidebar item...
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