Hello, I am a 37F living in NV with one young child. How am I tracking with retirement? Any feedback? Providing my general expenses below but really wanting to know about retirement on track feedback primarily. I am maximizing my employer match % and have weekly contributions in a brokerage and a roth. Confirming no revolving credit debt. Two cars are fully paid off most recently.
401k w/ current employer: 36k with 6% contribution and 3.5% employer match = 9.5% total and in a target retirement year fund
401k with previous employer: 190k and in a target retirement year fund
Roth: 26,850 with weekly contributions $75/week auto invested in S&P500
Traditional IRA: 3,459 previous random roll over no ongoing contributions
Brokerage: 27,804 weekly contributions $70/week auto invested in S&P500
Salary: $125k
Bonus: $12,500 eligible
Savings: $7k [big focus of 2026 is building emergency fund]
Mortgage: $1800 monthly at 2.75% P&I only and 368k left on mortgage.
Property Taxes: $4,500/annual
Home Insurance: $1k/annual
Utilities (Gas, Electricity, and Water): $406 monthly average
Car Insurance: $4000 annual between 2 fully paid off cars
37 Nevadan – how's my retirement tracking?
byu/qwerty0444 inpersonalfinance
Posted by qwerty0444
2 Comments
How much do you have left on your home?
Do you live in a HCOL area? Assuming no because it’s Nevada. But still asking. And do you plan to retire in a HCOL or LCOL area?
I would stop the brokerage investing until you get your emergency fund up to 6 months of expenses.
Is there a spouse in the picture? If not, do you really need two cars? I would consider selling one and putting that money towards the emergency fund. You’d also free up some auto insurance money.
Consider rolling over your traditional IRA into your 401k — it may not be too long before you need to do a backdoor Roth IRA contribution, assuming you are single. Having the traditional IRA out of the picture sooner rather than later may be helpful. I might also consider rolling over the old 401k into the current 401k, just for ease of management and keeping an eye on things.
Once you get your emergency fund sorted out, I would seriously reconsider the money you were putting into a brokerage. IMO there is no reason at this point to be funding a taxable brokerage instead of either your Roth IRA (appears underfunded based on 70/week) or a tax-sheltered 401k.
Overall your goal for saving and investing for retirement should be a minimum of $18,750 per year, and it looks like you are hitting that goal (some people wouldn’t count the employer match in that amount, personally I don’t have a problem with it).
So I would say, great job, but really make every effort to get your emergency funds up, and make use of your tax-sheltered accounts before taxable accounts, unless the taxable is for a specific purpose other than retirement.