45 years old, tradeworker $60k/yr, single income with a 38yo housewife. House & acreage worth $425k we owe $150k. land loan is $75k over 13 years at 1.5%. 3b2ba2ca stick built foundation house is $75k at 5.12% over 27 years.

land/house mortgage is our only debt. began investing in late 2015. $86k Roth is mostly VTSAX, VIG and similar broad market funds. there is some VSS, VXUS as well as some long-proven individual stocks. buy and hold strategy. bought first house in suburbs 2004. paid it off 2019, saved and invested for 3 years, then sold suburban house 2023 and rolled into new homestead construction loan.

Rate my path, Anon.

>>60685107 (OP)
>trade worker who makes $60k a year
you're a horrible liar

>>60685153
? I also am a trade worker that makes 60k

I am curious which trade. is it one that is really hard on the body, where it's possible you won't be able to work until a typical retirement age? I have very similar investments. mostly in VTSAX in a roth ira, whatever Fidelity's s&p 500-tracking fund is in 401k, and VTI/VSUX in a taxable investment account.

>>60685248

I work in property management, maintenance & general construction. I do a fair amount of all the trades. I draw my line at foundation concrete work and below grade digging-involved plumbing.... at least on a professional, paid capacity. I still have to do that shit for "free" on the homestead.

I assume my body won't hold up until 67. I'm in good shape today, but the check is in the mail.

>>60685107 (OP)
Your property is not worth what you think it is

86k in Roth at 45 years old is pathetic

>>60685107 (OP)
Good job anon. You didn't mention any precious metals, so that's the only thing I'd dare recommend. I recommend having some in your possession and hiding it somewhere because it's physical and can be held by you, unlike stocks, bonds, crypto. Everything with investing is a marathon, not a sprint.
>>60685161
I too am around that income bracket. We're 60k frens :3

>>60685458
you're right. its actually worth $450k but I figured I would shoot low to accommodate market fluctuations and reasonable sale-by-dates for someone who would be ***motivated to sell*** which I am not.

>>45, Roth, Geezer, Pathetic
agreed. I'm working on it. I can only realistically put $50-$100 per month into Roth right now. I hope that will increase over the next 12-18 months as we complete some homestead infrastructure projects that keep sapping monthly funds. that said, I had Grok analyze my "housing first" investment strategy going back to 2004 and before. it says I benefitted more return on my purchase of house in 04 over maximum Roth investments, which wouldn't have even been possible, since I was living hand-to-mouth, paycheck-to-paycheck. having my housing covered as an equity building asset did two-in-one for my NET worth. I could not have paid $700 rent and invested anything of value. I asked it to run theoretical on if I was able to MaxxRoth while also paying rent, it says I still came out ahead buying a house, paying it off primary, and investing what I could manage since 2015.

I made it run the calculations several different ways using accurate but slightly different prompts to cover various scenarios. they ALL came back as my path worked better for me, based on my historic income and habits.

Evening Investing Crowd Bump

poor

easily the top 50% NW of biz. you're on track to retire around 67, not before though. that's better than about 75% of americans.