Newliyish married, but the new reality is partner finished law school so going back to the DINK lifestyle. We live in NYC and are lucky to be in a rent regulated apartment. On one hand we realize it's cheaper to stay there forever, but it's not the most well maintained building the the amenities aren't the best... Anyways, we want to aggressively start saving for a downpayment, but have some question.

And before folks say leave NYC, no, that is not the plan and not what we want. We like the lifestyle, car less, near a park, etc. So really want to understand what the planning is for that.

1. Based on all the "how much house can you afford" calculators we can afford like 3-4X monthly housing payments than we currently have. That seems insane, but how should we be thinking about the fixed cost of a mortgage over time that is also equity as opposed to rent? When buying a house, is it kind of expected that it is more "painful" earlier in the lifecycle of a mortage, but naturally gets easier as inflation kicks in and salaries go up?

2. I've been maxing out stock purchasing plans and what not to save while partner was in laws school, but kind of saving less because I was the single income currently have about 1/3rd of downpayment in securities (maybe 50% if my employers stock ever bounces back to 2021 valuations). I'm thinking for the next 2 years we should try to devote what we anticipate our mortgage (and other fees like taxes, co-op, etc). would be to buy. That would allow us to save and see how that change impacts quality of life and other factors. Is that a good strategy? This would be in addition to normal saving practices. Our parents would probably assist too with the downpayment, but haven't broached that until we are closer to doing this for real.

3. When it comes to saving for a down payment, is it better for psychological and newly married folks to use that as a way to get used to joint finances in a dual income (nearly equal salaried) partnership? If so, what type of account should we open. High yield savings? Short term CD's?

4. For NYC specifically, what are the differences to consider between buying buildings, co ops, or condos when it comes to finances? 2/3 family homes in some ways look good on paper, but how do you factor in being a landlord and costs and risks for doing that? Co ops and Condos seems more attractive on paper for being much more simple in terms of ownership and responsibility of the entire property.

Any other advice is welcome. Thanks!

In this post, I'll provide a lot of basic information about investing, with links to additional reading for various concepts. Most of these concepts are not US-centric, though I will be mentioning US-specific details, such as tax-advantaged account types.

What's the difference between a mutual fund, etf, and index fund?

A mutual fund is a financial vehicle where assets from a large number of investors are pooled to be invested as one entity. Mutual funds have strategies, and investors invest based on how well the fund executes that strategy. For example, you may compare two large cap funds, and they have similar returns but one has a much lower expense ratio (the fees for running the fund), so you may choose the cheaper fund. Mutual funds generally can only be purchased after market hours, and only through a brokerage that has an agreement with the fund. If you buy a fund through a brokerage that doesn't sponsor the fund (e.g. if you buy a Vanguard fund from E-trade), you'll pay a fee for each transaction, whereas you'll pay nothing if you buy it from the brokerage the mutual fund is associated with (e.g. a Vanguard fund from Vanguard). With a mutual fund, you generally invest a certain amount of money, and the amount of shares really isn't that important.

An ETF is very similar to a mutual fund, except it is traded like a stock. So if you want to buy a share of an ETF, you'll just pay whatever commission your brokerage charges (often $0), just like you would with any other stock. However, since it trades like a stock, you can generally only trade in whole shares, unless your brokerage allows fractional share trades. So an ETF is essentially a mutual fund that is traded like a stock.

An index fund is a specific kind of mutual fund/etf, where the strategy is based on an index. This means the fund manager has a lot less input on how the strategy is executed, since they're trying to match a specific asset allocation instead of buying winners. For example, one popular index is the S&P 500, which is defined as the top 500 companies in terms of market cap (what the market thinks they're worth), and index funds tracking the S&P 500 will by based on the percentage of market cap a given stock has. For example, let's say Microsoft is 10% of the S&P and Apple is 15%, the fund would buy 10% Microsoft shares and 15% Apple shares, and the rest would go to the rest of the companies in the index in the same fashion. Since there's less analysis of individual companies, index funds can operate on very low expenses.

When comparing funds, focus more on the expenses and strategy instead of past performance, because past performance does not guarantee or even indicate expected future results.

So in short:

• mutual fund - you invest money, and the manager buys stocks/bonds according to a defined strategy
• etf - you buy shares, and the manager buys stocks/bonds according to a defined strategy
• index fund - restricts the manager to a very specific strategy, where purchased stocks/bonds must match a defined index

The vast majority of active fund managers fall behind the S&P 500. So in general, you'll probably be better off with an index fund instead of an actively managed mutual fund.

What is a stock?

A stock represents marketable pieces (shares) of ownership in a company. When a company is incorporated, the owner splits the company into some number of shares, and those shares can be sold individually to raise money to grow the company. The owner of the company is one with more than half of the shares (otherwise called a controlling stake), and if nobody owns a majority of the shares, it becomes a democratic system where each share represents a vote. In practice, only very large shareholders end up voting for board members, and the board hires a CEO that ends up making the rest of the day-to-day decisions.

This is true for both public and private companies, though purchasing shares in a private company cannot typically be done on the market and needs to be done through existing shareholders. When a company "goes public," private shares are converted to public shares and can then be sold on the open market.

If your company offers an employee stock purchase plan, make sure you know how you can liquidate those since shares in a private company can be very difficult to sell.

What is a bond?

At a high level, a bond represents a unit of debt for some organization. Basically, you're lending that org money, in exchange for them paying you back at some rate over some period. Some bonds pay dividends (i.e. you'll get the interest at regular intervals), and others instead are paid off at the end of the bond period in a lump sum.

Bond Ratings

Bond ratings represent the rating issuer's confidence that the organization will repay its debts as agreed. These ratings vary a little by rating org, so I'll be using S&P's rating system here.

Each rating consists of a letter in the range A-D with a + or - sign or number (e.g. A+, A-1, etc), and it works similar to letter grades in schools. The higher the grade, the lower the risk. In general:

• A-1/AAA+ - investment grade; top possible score
• A-2/AA - investment grade, strong score
• A-3/A - investment grade, adequate risk
• B - speculative, currently meeting commitments
• C - speculative, vulnerable to default/non-payment
• D - speculative, in default

Money market funds will stick to investment grade bonds, and "junk" bonds are the bottom two groups (C and D).

The main rating groups are S&P, Fitch, and Moody, and they can use different rating systems, especially for different types of bonds (e.g. a short-term vs long-term bonds can use different systems from the same org, as shown above with A-1 vs AAA).

In general, the higher the rating, the lower the return, but also the higher the probability that you'll actually get the return promised.

Tax implications

There are several types of bonds, like corporate, government, and municipal, and each have different tax implications. What follows is very high-level, there's a lot of nuance in the bond market wrt taxes:

• corporate - taxable at state and federal level
• government - Treasury bonds are taxable at the federal level only
• municipal - not taxed at state or federal level - there are exceptions, and some states require municipal bonds to be from the local state to be exempt from taxation (e.g. NY and CA are particularly strict)

There is a lot of nuance, so look into your local and state tax laws to ensure you understand.

Asset allocation

Your asset allocation refers to how your investments are distributed across different asset classes. The most popular asset classes are stocks and bonds, though there are other asset classes investors may be interested in, such as:

• real estate
• precious metals
• futures - e.g. purchase contracts for commodities (e.g. you could trade barrels of oil)

Asset classes can be broken down further, such as for stocks:

• market sector - tech vs utilities vs manufacturing, etc
• growth vs value - value means companies that are likely undervalued, growth means companies that have shown strong returns vs competitors; there's also dividend strategies (i.e. companies that tend to return profits to shareholders instead of investing in the core business)
• market cap - large cap (massive companies like Microsoft and Apple), mid cap, and small cap (smaller companies, like Jack in the Box, Polaris, etc)

Choosing an asset allocation can be an overwhelming process, and there are a lot of strategies that people claim works. The more important thing is to understand your strategy and stick with it instead of shifting with the trends (if you always buy what recently performed well, you'll be essentially buying high and selling low).

Here are some popular asset allocations (I've listed what I think is interesting below):

• Bogleheads strategy - buy stocks according to market cap, bonds according to age; three fund portfolio, two fund portfolios; the global market cap is ~55-60% US stocks, 40-45% international stocks; bond percent should be 100 - your age (quite conservative)
• 60/40 - 60% stocks, 40% bonds - generally recommended for retirees and those close to retirement, though some do it throughout their investment career
• "Permanent portfolio" - 25% gold, 25% cash (or Treasuries), 25% stocks, 25% bonds - intended for asset preservation and ends up being quite conservative
• dividend portfolio - buy almost entirely stocks with high dividends (one strategy is Dogs of the Dow, and then plan to live off dividends in retirement

There are a ton of exotic ones as well, such as Hedgefundies Excellent Adventure (lots of leverage in a portfolio intended to match risk of non-leveraged portfolios). Don't do anything like that without fully understanding how all of the pieces work, and even then, I recommend one of the above over anything that uses leverage.

Account types

Most countries offer tax-advantages to encourage residents to at least partially fund their own retirement. This will cover US-specific tax-advantaged account types, though similar structures exist in many other countries, and searching for " " will probably yield articles with information for resources for your region.

Here are the main account types, you may have access to some but not all:

• 401k - employer-sponsored retirement plan
• IRA - individual retirement account - available to everyone
• HSA - health savings account, must have a high-deductible health plan; essentially becomes an IRA once you hit 65
• 457 - employer sponsored plan offered at many state and local government agencies, and some non-profits
• 403(b) - similar to 401k, but offered to teachers, private non-profit employees, and some others

There are others, but these are the ones you're likely to run into that are relevant for retirees.

There are two main types of tax advantages these offer, referred to as traditional and Roth, though there are nuances for each account type. In general:

• traditional - get a tax deduction on contributions, no taxes on growth while it's in the account, pay taxes when you withdraw
• Roth - no deduction on contributions, no taxes on growth, no taxes when you withdraw

If your tax bracket is the same when you contribute and when you withdraw, Roth and traditional accounts are equivalent. As a quick demonstration, let's say you have a 10% tax rate, you invest $10k, your investments double, and you withdraw everything all at once:

• Roth (post-tax) - invest $9k ($10k - $1k taxes), grows to $18k, withdraw $18k
• traditional (pre-tax) - invest $10k, grows to $20k, withdraw $18k ($20k - $2k taxes)

There are limits to how much you can invest in tax-advantaged accounts, and traditional accounts sometimes have income limits to receive a deduction. There are strategies to maximize your tax-advantaged, so if you think you don't qualify, please ask since you may have options (e.g. a backdoor Roth IRA if you're over the income limit for Roth IRA contributions).

Long term capital gains vs income tax brackets

Regular brokerage accounts have no tax advantages, but they do have the advantage that gains are taxed as capital gains instead of income, whereas a traditional IRA/401k/etc is taxed upon withdrawal as income. Long-term capital gains brackets are lower across the board for the same income level vs income tax, and there's a 0% long-term capital gains bracket that corresponds to most of the 12% income tax bracket, then 15% up to the middle of the 32%/35% brackets, and then 20% thereafter. Short-term capital gains are taxed as income, so be careful to only sell assets that qualify as long-term capital gains.

There are situations where a regular brokerage account can be advantageous over taking a tax deduction for a traditional account. Here's an article about why you may want to use a traditional account and invest the tax savings in a brokerage vs a Roth account (target audience is early retirees, but it's applicable to traditional retirees as well). It's a fairly niche case, but applicable to surprisingly many people.

Tax-efficient fund placement

Let's assume you have a mix of assets in the following:

• Roth account
• traditional account
• taxable brokerage account

In general, you'll want to do the following:

• Roth account - highest growth since it's 100% tax free
• traditional account - capital gains generating investments with relatively low growth, e.g. bonds and dividend heavy stocks
• taxable brokerage account - international stocks because of the Foreign Tax Credit (e.g. you get a part of the taxes you paid back), assets with low capital gains distributions, and low need for rebalancing

However, the benefits here are far less than the benefits for using the right account types for you. For example, the Foreign Tax Credit is something like 0.23%/year of your taxable investments if you're invested in something like VTIAX, and you'll be paying taxes on something like 2.8% of that same investment. So use your tax advantaged space first, and then optimize from there.

Conclusion

Investing can feel overwhelming, and there's so much conflicting information available out there. My personal advice is to keep it simple using tried-and-true methods that have consistently had good results in the past. Here's what I do:

• max my tax advantaged accounts
• 70% US stocks, 30% international stocks asset allocation - I think the US will continue to outperform, but I want to hedge my bets some
• buy low-cost index funds, one fund per account to keep it simple; in my case, this gets me close:
  • 401k - 100% US stocks
  • IRA - 100% US stocks
  • HSA - 100% international stocks
  • taxable brokerage - 100% international stocks
• I don't have any bonds because I'm not retiring anytime soon and I have a high risk tolerance (I didn't panic sell in 2008); I do count my emergency fund as my "bond" portion though, so there's that
• check on my investments about 1-2x/year to make sure everything is close to my target (if I'm over in US stocks, I'll swap some IRA space to international; if I'm over in international stocks, I'll swap some HSA space to US)

My IRA and taxable brokerage is at Vanguard, and my HSA is at Fidelity. When I switch jobs, I roll my 401k -> my IRA.

This got pretty long and I probably should've broken it up into multiple posts, so please let me know if there's an area you'd like more detail on and I'll consider making a post about it.

when i do A for long enough and my overall net worth comes close enough to zero, i switch to B and am only sometimes capable of wrangling it in

it seems impossible to actually have a balance - those two philosophies make the most sense (trying hard vs nothing matters)

whyyyy. furthermore, are there any good ways to manage this that aren’t sort of self-flagellating or overly concerned with minutia (ie like the YNAB thing). no cult stuff pls

Most people take a simple view of cash: they have a checking account for spending and a savings account for savings, and if they get fancy, they'll have a CD for longer term savings goals. Power users will change to an online bank with better returns, and that's about as far as it goes. That certainly works, but we can do a lot better with few downsides and a lot of extra benefits.

I'd like to start with explaining how traditional banks work and then look at alternatives. Basically, banks make most of their money by lending it, either for mortgages, auto loans, credit cards, etc. Federal regulations require they keep a certain percentage of their assets in "cash," so they pay interest on checking and savings accounts to attract deposits. The larger the bank, the less they need to work for deposits since they have brand recognition. That's why you'll see higher interest rates at online only banks (e.g. SoFi, Ally, etc) than at huge brick and mortar banks (Wells Fargo, Chase, etc), they need to pay more to attract customers since they don't have branches to do so. However, they'll never pay more than a certain percentage of loan rates, otherwise they'll lose money. Switching banks is time consuming, so customers rarely do that, which means banks only need to have periodic promos to encourage people to move their money to them.

Let's compare that to a brokerage. Brokerages offer a variety of features, and most of their money is made on commissions from trades (or for free brokerages, bid/ask spreads) or from fees on funds they run. The friction in changing funds is pretty low, so funds often compete for low fees to attract investors, and the more investors they have, the lower their fees can be (managing $1B isn't that different from managing $10B in terms of costs). They sometimes offer loans (e.g. margin loans), but that isn't the core of their business, and those loans are backed by the debtor's own assets, not the brokerage's funds, so risk is much lower and not related to deposits by other customers.

So now that the high level differences between banks and brokerages are out of the way, let's look at products brokerages have and how they line up with traditional banking products:

• Money Market Funds - basically savings/checking accounts, but run by a fund manager instead of a bank; you can select from any number of money market funds, from funds that look to reduce taxes (e.g. buy mostly Treasuries) to funds that seek to maximize returns; interest is generally accrued daily and paid monthly; banks sometimes offer money market accounts, which are similar, but they operate a bit differently, and you only get the one they offer
• brokered CDs - similar to regular bank CDs, but you're buying them on the open market instead of from your bank; these CDs cannot be broken early like bank CDs, but they can be sold on the market like any stock for the current fair market value; this means they can reduce in value if you sell before maturity, but since you're able to shop for the best price, you usually get a much better return if you hold to maturity
• t-bills/notes/bonds - similar to brokered CDs, but issued by the federal government in increments of $1000; these are not subject to state and local taxes, and some brokerages allow them to be auto-rolled (when they mature, the same denomination will be purchased); there's no early redemption, but they can be sold at any time for fair market value
• municipal bonds - buy bonds directly from cities and whatnot; these are usually not subject to state, local, or federal taxes, but also have higher risk due to cities generally being less credible debtors than state or federal governments; I don't bother with these, but maybe they're worthwhile in states with higher taxes (mine is <5%, so not that high)

Generally speaking, the brokerage options over a greater return than traditional banking products because it's trivial for investors to switch products without changing brokerages.

Here's what I do:

• checking/savings - invested at Fidelity in SPAXX, which currently yields ~5%, and I think it's ~30% state tax exempt; if my state had higher taxes, I'd probably opt for a Treasury-only fund; switching takes like 30s to enter a trade; Ally Bank savings is 4.25% and money market fund is 4.4%, and I use my brokerage as checking, so I'm getting 5% on all money held there (Ally checking is 0.10%)
• CD - I had a no penalty CD @ 4.75% @ Ally, which was a fantastic rate when I got it; Fidelity offers non-callable CDs @ >5% for periods from 3 months to 5 years, and Ally only offers those rates for 6-18 months (and they're still lower than Fidelity); I don't buy any because I buy...
• Treasuries - no equivalent at banks, but they're close enough to CDs; current rates are 5.2-5.4% depending on term (4 weeks to 52 weeks), and even notes (2-10 year terms) are 4.5-5%; my efund is invested in a t-bill ladder; I bought 13-week (3-month) t-bills every other week and set them to autofill, and my gains live in my money market fund (SPAXX @ 5%); this is half of my efund, with the other half in ibonds; if I need money, I either cancel the autoroll, or I sell the t-bill on the market

Here's my list of pros:

• significantly higher interest in checking (5% vs ~0.10%); no difference between "checking" and "savings," they're all just brokerage accounts
• more options for investment - I now feel comfortable keeping my efund, checking, and regular savings in the same place without having to sacrifice returns
• debit card rocks - Fidelity and Schwab both have worldwide ATM fee reimbursement and low/no foreign transaction fees (Fidelity is 1%, Schwab is 0%)
• can have cash savings and investments in the same place - Fidelity also has my HSA, and I may eventually move my IRA as well
• paycheck comes a day earlier - lots of banks offer this, but often only on their checking accounts

And some cons:

• SIPC instead of FDIC insurance - coverage is about the same, but FDIC is automatic, whereas SIPC requires me to make a claim; I doubt I'll ever need either
• a lot more options means the UI is a bit more complex; once familiar, it's not an issue
• some services don't play nice with brokerages - I keep an Ally account around just in case, and I honestly haven't noticed any real issues (sometimes I can only link accounts one way, but that's not an issue)

I switched from Ally to Fidelity last year for my primary bank and I'm loving it, and I highly recommend others give it a shot. If Fidelity isn't your speed, Schwab works well too. Vanguard doesn't offer a debit card, otherwise I'd recommend them as well (their money market funds are even better than Fidelity's). I used to shop around for better savings rates, and now I don't bother because Fidelity beats all of them on features and average returns (e.g. a better savings rate still loses if checking is near 0%).

Feel free to ask questions.

Ok, so I've been contributing to a backdoor for almost a year, and since I don't have the liquidity to just find it outright at the beginning of the year, I put some in each paycheck. Sometimes while it's sitting in my settlement fund, it will gain like $0.10-$0.30 before I get a chance to move it to my rIRA.

I know after a certain point, you can be taxed on those earnings, but at what point is that? If I have a total of like $5 in earnings in my tIRA the whole year, does that jeopardize my rIRA, or would I just owe on that $5?

And does it multiply while it's invested in the Roth IRA?

These US healthcare systems are effectively scams. Yes in theory they can save you money, however in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, while in practice there is.

48 years old, currently have no investments. My net worth is my car and the clothes on my back, and I don't ever want to be in this situation again.

(Edit: I don't need to buy a house or anything whatsoever related to a house, so please don't mention the "h" word in your response, it's triggering me for tangential reasons. Let me be clear, I will NEVER care about real estate whatsoever, mmmkay? Just trust me when I say I have a roof over my head and it's completely paid off, no property taxes, and No, I will never sell it, so the whole h-word" aspect of life is not a concern for me, k?)

Just looking for guidance where to invest this relatively small amount of money every month so in a few years when I'm older & frailer I'll have enough for retirement. I don't want it to just sit in my bank account, I want it to grow.

For reference, I've been living on approx $1500 per month for as long as I've noticed, so I don't need much per month, and the sooner I die, the less retirement fund I'll need, but we can never predict when anyone's death will happen, so let's assume I'll live to 100 because I'm ridiculously healthy & an exceptionally good driver, never been in an accident, one speeding ticket in my entire life, no social life so I never get into risky situations, so let's just plan for the possibility I'm going to live another 50 years.

Climate Town recently did a fantastic video detailing how banks use our money just sitting around in our account to invest in fossil fuels. Wanting to avoid this, I figured it'd be better to direct my money in an investment that's at least a little less planet destroying, which lead me down this ecological rabbit hole that I thought might be worth sharing.

I know there's a lot of controversy around ESG funds, and after checking a lot of common index funds and money markets with this fund checker, that controversy is unfortunately pretty well earned. A lot of ESG funds are still heavily invested into fossil fuels, or industries and banks that support fossil fuels.

However, there are a few amount of funds that really do seem to divest fossil fuels. Unfortunately most index funds will often still be invested in unethical companies like Amazon and Google, but it's nearly impossible to truly ethically invest unless you pick individual companies, which if done in isolation is probably a recipe to lose a good chunk of your money. So I settled for at least doing better, even if it's not perfect.

I also want to note that most ESG funds tend to have pretty damn high expense ratios (the yearly fee you'll pay on your investment for them to 'manage' it), though I have found a couple that buck that trend.

The most promising fund that has a low expense ratio that was the Sphere 500 Climate Fund, which is basically a copy of the S&P 500 minus all fossil fuel investments. The only downside with it is that it's fairly limited on what investment brokers host it, with the main one being Vanguard. It has an expense ratio of 0.07%.

The other low-cost option was Vanguard's ESGV ETF, which unlike every other mainstream Total US Stock Market ESG Index from Fidelity, Shwab, or Blackrock, actually does seem to limit their fossil fuel investments. It's not perfect, as a small percentage of the portfolio is still invested in the fossil fuel industry, but it's significantly better than its peers, which gets it consideration from me, purely due to its low expense ratio and the fact that it's an ETF, so you can get it from any brokerage. It has an expense ratio of 0.09%.

Vanguard also has an ESG Total International Market Index fund (for those of you who follow the Boglehead 3-fund strategy), VSGX, with an expense ration of 0.12%.

Alternatively, if you're willing to accept a higher expense ratio (0.91%) to divest from ALL fossil fuels, the Amana Mutual Fund seems like a decent one. It has a solid performance track record, and I believe (though I may be wrong!) this is equivalent to a Total Stock Market Index Fund.

Anyway, I hope some of you found that website useful! If you have any other suggestions on climate friendy-er investing, I'd be interested to hear it. :)

FOSS/self hosted preferred, but open to anything!

I have been contributing to a HSA the last couple years, and it's been fine. My work contributes $1800 over the year and it hasn't really been a problem at all.

Now I have a kid and a spouse on my insurance, and they tend to go fairly often it seems. The copay and deductible on the HDHP is a bit crazy and I'm thinking of swapping to a PPO. Is that a good idea, or is turning down the free $1800 from my work a no no?

Here is a link to the plans

In the US, if you make a lot, are covered by a work retirement account or you contribute to a Roth, you can't deduct traditional ira contributions right?

So that money gets added to the rest of your traditional ira monies right? and then when you hit retirement age, you have to pay income level taxes on deductions on that already post tax money right?

Why get taxed twice? What's the benefit? +Not being able to touch it til retirement age.

For four decades, patient savers able to grit their teeth through bubbles, crashes and geopolitical upheaval won the money game. But the formula of building a nest egg by rebalancing a standard mix of stocks and bonds isn’t going to work nearly as well as it has.

Is anyone using Gnucash? I've been on a kick of streamlining my finances and want to simplify from my current spreadsheet for tracking expenses. I have seen Gnucash mentioned around and am considering it. Is it easy to use and import transactions from credit cards?

I hate manually entering each purchase because I invariably typo an amount somewhere and spend hours at the end of the month trying to figure out why I don't balance.

I've downloaded it and tried playing with it but it seems clunky. I'm wondering if it gets easier once you get past the learning curve. Thoughts/experiences?

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/7528778

Age	2022 Net Worth (Median) USD$
Less than 35	$39,040
35-44	$135,300
45-54	$246,700
55-64	$364,267
65-74	$410,000
75 or older	$334,700

Source:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/chart/

I'm almost 40 and according to the wisdom found everywhere on the internet, I don't have enough saved for retirement. Which worries me because I've been saving for as long as I've had a proper job with access to a retirement vehicle. But also because the internet wisdom doesn't make sense or sound feasible.

According to what I've read, you're supposed to have:

• 1x your income when you're 30
• 3x your income when you're 40
• 6x at 50
• 8x at 60
• 10x when you retire

I'm almost 40 and I have just barely over 1x saved. So it feels like I'm 10 years behind. However, my income has grown substantially over the course of my 30s, more than doubling. So accounting for growth in income, I do have almost 3x my salary in my late 20s. But similarly, the above advice could be interpreted as needing 6x the income you had when you were 30 by they time you're 40. And by that metric, I'm doing even worse!

First time poster! Outside of my retirement account provided by work, I'm just beginning to get brave enough to move other money around. I'm very late to the game and pretty scared of gambles.

There are many high yield savings accounts out there right now. Outside of the 6-withdrawl/month restriction are there any things I should be aware of? Do people hop between savings account regularly to keep up with the highest interest rates?

UFB Direct is on the top of many charts. Backed by AXOS bank, but an Internet bank. I've put some cash there but still nervous. Any thoughts on UFB Direct and Internet banking in general? I don't necessarily need a brick and mortar. I think I've been to my local bank less than a dozen times in the lifetime of my account.

Please forgive me ignorance!