Been averaging around $15,000/year with SEP maxings lately… Used to be around $20,000-$25,000 but my hustling has slowed down over the years ;)

Oh wow! So surely you must have a very large income in order to fill up your SEP IRA so much! I can’t imagine someone doing Uber as a side hustle, for instance, really being able to fill up their own personal SEP IRA that much

SEP limits are a % of how much you make for a year, so you can always max it out – it’s just a matter of *how much* :) One year you can put in $4,000 if you don’t make much, and another $40,000 if you have a banner year!

Here’s more via Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEP-IRA

(Also there’s a cap on the highest dollar amount you can put in too)

Oh cool! Thanks or reading – I’m glad you’re still enjoying it! :)

I think she’s a 5%? I can’t recall at the moment, but I know it’s enough to get as much of the matching at least as possible, and then we stopped it there as we were playing catch up with cash flow…. Something we should probably adjust again as that was a few years ago :)

How much I invest — It’s actually somewhat similar every year as I only have one main goal to hit no matter what: Max out my retirement accounts!! :) Which includes my SEP Ira and Roth IRA, and then my wife’s Roth IRA too if we have more money left over…

Here’s some posts I wrote on it if it helps – it’s the backbone of our net worth!

https://eliteedgemoney.com/my-1-financial-goal-each-year-max-out/
https://eliteedgemoney.com/power-doing-one-financial-thing/

When Vanguard isn’t an option — Yup, pretty much what you mentioned! Just looking for the closest funds which would be other market indexes depending on what you’re going for :) Some people just stick with the one overall index (like me), while others prefer diversifying more and throwing in some bond indexes or foreign indexes as well. Really just depends on your comfortability and plan.

When you leave jobs though you can move it all into whatever you want! Just make sure to *transfer* it and not cash out and then re-invest so you don’t get hit with all the penalties!

Hi J!
Awesome thanks so much for the direction! (it was too good and now I’m back ha) Those 2 articles were SUPER informative and just what I needed (along with the linked articles within the articles:) 2 more questions for you.

1. Have you ever written any articles about how much you are able to put into the investments over the months, quarters, years? I was looking for a breakdown, thought it would be interesting to see the comparison of how much you and your wife were able to put away along with the market adjusting. Life happens right, so its not consistently the same amount year over year and the market changes as well as your investment decisions but I thought it might be cool to see I from the other side of the table. (you referenced those other 2 articles quicker than I could search for them:) )

2. What do you do in a 401K when vanguard is not an option? Curious to hear your thoughts on this. S&P500 100% contribution or do you try and mimic the VTSAX if that’s an option…or something else entirely I’m not thinking of? I have low fees for both options but S&P alone would be a lower fee total vs having 3-4 options I contribute to. I’ve been contemplating this currently and blogs go back and forth over this topic. Is this a personality (aggressive vs less aggressive) call?…

Congrats on the new new high!

Do you include the business in the tracking, or no? (I don’t put my projects in it, but if/when they sell and I get an influx of cash it’ll then show up! :))

KBB – interesting to hear it’s happening to others too! Maybe used cars are coming back in popularity! Haha… (yeah right, probably just an algorithm thing :))

Home value — I always struggled with that myself when we owned. Eventually I just had my realtor run comps and tell me what the market value was about once a year and then kept it there until we ran it again. That was nice because it gave me a more accurate picture if I were to list it on the market at that time, and then my realtor liked it too because he knew I’d be going to him the day we ever DID put it on the market (which we eventually did with him!). In fact, it ended up selling within $1,000 of what he had told me the value was just months earlier :) (And it was nice not having to re-evaluate the house every month in the net worth updates too)

I had a few notes this month I’d love feedback from you and/or readers on!

1) did KBB change their algorithms? Occasionally one of our vehicles will increase in value by a couple hundred. This month was way different. Our oldest vehicle increased by 1500! And the three vehicles together raised by 2700 total. The only other explanation i can think of is that used cars in our area just had a massive increase in demand? (Just made the last payment on the truck…one loan left!)

2) I finally figured out a way to track my home value that I like! Zillow or Redfin swing too wildly for my tastes, and I could t figure out a good algorithm for adjusting my personal market value assessment. So! I took the value of the house at purchase and used the CPI calculator for each month. It shows a nice steady increase in value and seems to be a reasonable but conservative estimate of current value. Since homes in general seem to track with inflation it seems like a reasonable method? Especially since I would rather under value the house and not include any improvements to the value as far as net worth tracking goes.

Would love comments and opinions though!