29M, married with no kids living in Texas.
Income:
•$97k W2 salary (~$6.5k/mo take-home)
Household Expenses:
•Wife doesn’t contribute financially
•Rent: $2,000 (1BR)
•Total monthly expenses: ~$4000
Investing/Saving:
•$585/mo to Roth IRA (maxing)
•3% to 401(k) + employer match
•No HSA or HYSA
Current Balances:
•Emergency fund: $50k
•Taxable stocks: $52k
•Roth IRA: $28k (started late 2023)
•401(k): $52k
Question:
Given this setup, what should I focus on improving or optimizing in 2026?
Looking for 2026 Personal Finance Improvements
byu/Federal-Scar-6142 inpersonalfinance
Posted by Federal-Scar-6142
3 Comments
I don’t think anyone can be very helpful without more specific info.
Do you know what your retirement and savings goals are? E.g. when do you want to retire? Do you need to replace a vehicle soon? Do you want to go on vacation?
Are you allocating enough to retirement to get any employer match?
Monthly expenses is something to dig in to, obviously you want to minimize that, but lumping that all together doesn’t give insight in to it.
Spouse contributing financially would obviously help a lot, but I’m sure there are reasons.
Click the pf wiki click flow chart
You should focus on your wife who lives with you, who has a job, to contributing to the household finances
Then come back