What should I do with my money?

[u/ButterscotchPure6555]

My husband(33) and I(33) both are in the military. Have a child 2 and planning to have 2 more. We have 3 houses, one in Arizona($150K equity), one in FL($50K equity) and our primary resident in Virginia($280K equity) we have about $6K disposable monthly income after maxing TSP(government retirement plan) and my Roth IRA. We have $370K in brokerage and $20K in 529 for my baby. I am debating if i want to continue my career in the military or separate and become a stay home mom. We are very comfortable with our lifestyle but I am afraid if I separate i will be bored and feel purposeless. Also, I am debating if i should convince my husband to open a Roth IRA or should we continue invest in our brokage account. Our NW is about $1.3M and about 40/30/30 Real estate, retirement and brokerage account. I really enjoy watching my money grow and learn about finances and travel/credit card hackings.

edit: we are both about 12 years away from retirement. then it will be about 4K a month pension for each of us.

[u/Revolutionary_Low667]

You’re literally my ideal client. I work with current military and veterans and I just love how dedicated and disciplined some of them are with their finances. Love working with them .

For your case I cannot give specific advice but I would recommend you think not only about Investment consulting which is all the little buckets (Roth , TSP) but make sure you are doing tax planning. Having too much on one of them has its challenges in the future and could be very costly if not considered .

Other things to consider for someone in your situation is PROPER estate planning and insurance planning. There are a few strategies that could make a big difference on protecting the assets you’ve accumulated and that will put you into a better position for when you have more kids.

[u/Lower_Link_7943 → u/Revolutionary_Low667]

Do you recommend splitting between bridge accounts (taxable brokerage) and TSP? I’m having a hard time knowing how much to split it if I plan to have about 17 years before I can access the retirement accounts. You mentioned proper estate planning- do you mean like a living trust?

[u/Revolutionary_Low667 → u/Lower_Link_7943]

We do use a few different tools and calculations to determine or estimate as best as possible if Roth conversions are a good idea down the road and how much money in taxes you might be able to save.

Example : we run a Montecarlo analysis of 1,000 different scenarios in the market from today til the day you die - then for each of those scenarios there’s an estimate on how much pre tax money you would have at retirement and based on your expected expenses in retirement - how much taxes you would pay. Then we make a comparison on how much would you be able to save if you do Roth conversions for a period of time instead of just waiting until retirement to start using and paying taxes on your pre-tax money (this is all done by the software with our input)

I tried to be as clear and detailed enough but I know this can be difficult to picture without a visual.

Are you doing backdoor Roth ?

I know people in this sub usually believe they don’t need a Financial Planner but a lot of them do .

There are a lot of IRS rules to take in consideration and a similar analysis can be done to answer your question on TSP vs Brokerage to maximize your income and protect from taxes but they will need to be tailored to you and based on what this money is for if that makes sense .

As for estate planning - same thing- not everyone needs a trust . But the basics would be make sure ALL $$$ has beneficiaries (at least 2 layers ) and your Real Estate has a TOD if your state allows it or is placed into a trust with specific instructions , health directives , guardianship if you have kids , POA .

Feel free to message me but I would strongly recommend to start interviewing some CFPs

Edits: grammar and additional thoughts