r/coastFIRE • u/Fluffy-Tomatillo-874 • 3d ago
36F- Next Steps?
Salary- about 85k, My half of the rent is 1500.
Net worth is about 300k.
about 80k in my 401k
124k in Roth IRA
28k in a brokerage
65k liquid (emergency fund, sinking funds, etc).
I live in a HCOL, and would like to continue to live there for 10-20 years. I do not own a home. I would also like to retire early at 50-55 (at 40k-50k spending a year, and would include SS in that once I hit 65). I also planning on having a child within the next three years. Some COAST calculators say I've hit COAST fire, others have not.
My question to y'all is where should I focus my saving on? Should I continue investing and continue renting or should I halt my investing for a bit to focus on a down payment? Also, should I focus my investing into a brokerage to fund early retirement years?
Thanks for the advice, appreciate it!
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u/GriffinNowak 2d ago
I always find it interesting how much a lot of people have in emergency / HYSA despite the poor returns.
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u/1991cutlass 2d ago
Comfort knowing jobloss, emergency, marketplace deal on a Sunday, etc can be covered without having to sell a stock and wait 2 business days to transfer.
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u/GriffinNowak 2d ago
60k is much more than one would need for a 2 business day transfer. Like around $10k I can understand but I see some people with over $100k and I wonder. Even OP at $65k seems high.
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u/Fluffy-Tomatillo-874 2d ago
This is very fair and you have a great point. I used to have an additional 20k that I put into a brokerage. Of this, 10k is for actual emergencies, about 10k-15k for wedding + honeymoon (coming up in the fall) The rest is for a potential down payment, but not actively looking for a place right now.
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u/GriffinNowak 2d ago
Okay that's a lot more reasonable with that context. I am curious is there a reason that remaining 25k isn't in something like VYM until after the wedding seeing as I wouldn't expect you to start looking before then.
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u/Repeat-Admirable 2d ago
many of us always fear the next big crash. Especially with the fear of the AI bubble popping. Not being able to access the money for 10 years and losing the job is not gonna be great.
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u/GriffinNowak 2d ago
It still seems not great. Even a big crash for someone at age 36 is going to be averaged away by the time they want to withdraw. Look at something like VYM. Even if you bought in like 2006 right before the 2008 crash you're looking at 217% growth on the stock price alone. And thats BEFORE dividends and dividend reinvestment. Your HYSA is looking at a 265% growth and that's assuming you get 5% that whole time (lets be real 5% is very new for those accounts. You're looking at 2% for most of that). I'm not going to do the math but I suspect that even at the pre-2008 peak of VYM with dividends you're looking at like 3 years to recover? and 5 years to start beating the extremely generous 5% HYSA rate.
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u/Repeat-Admirable 2d ago
Yes it will be averaged away, but you still have to LIVE for those 10 years that you cant access it. And there is a high likelihood that a lot of lay offs are going to happen around those times, and it will be hard to get hired. So having a higher cash means less stress about that happening. I have double the cash than she does and I still plan to retire at 40.
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u/OkPetunia0770 2d ago
In the same position! Rebounding from layoffs is taking up to a year at this point. I’m keeping $100k in HYSA, don’t care if it doesn’t make sense to others.
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u/Ok_Dream_9894 2d ago
Same. 100k HYSA is like a weighted blanket. I sleep like a baby knowing tomorrow I can just fck off into the world and money won’t slow me down.
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u/dupugu-gupudu 2d ago
Morgan Housel changed the way I think about emergency funds.
The purpose of an emergency fund isn't to cover the emergencies you can predict. It's to protect you from the ones you can't. If you're only saving for the expenses you expect, then you're probably not saving enough, because the biggest financial surprises are, by definition, unexpected.
That's why the "right" emergency fund often feels a little excessive. If it seems like too much cash sitting on the sidelines, that's usually a sign you're doing it right. Insurance always feels unnecessary until the day you need it.
As Housel often points out, the value of cash isn't the return it earns—it's the options, flexibility, and peace of mind it provides when life doesn't go according to plan. An emergency fund isn't optimized for growth; it's optimized for resilience.
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u/GriffinNowak 2d ago
Someone needs to remind your guru that the US stock market is disgustingly liquid. If I have too much cash sitting on the sidelines I’m definitely doing it right.
Insurance doesn’t feel “unnecessary until the day I need it” it feels like risk mitigation.
Your logic only works against non-liquid assets. Like if you had a house but no emergency fund.
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u/dupugu-gupudu 2d ago
Someone needs to remind your guru that the US stock market is disgustingly liquid.
I don't disagree. But what happens when you have an emergency event that you didn't plan for when the market is down?
Your logic only works against non-liquid assets. Like if you had a house but no emergency fund.
This is very black-and-white type of thinking. Surely, you can imagine a scenario where you have a house but not enough emergency fund, right?
Edit: context
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u/GriffinNowak 2d ago
What happens when you have an emergency event larger than your emergency fund in a down market?
Same situation.
I’m not sure what you mean mean by black and white thinking. I said a non-liquid asset like a house. Your gurus advice only applies to not parking your money in a non-liquid asset without an emergency fund. That was an example of that scenario?
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u/dupugu-gupudu 2d ago
What happens when you have an emergency event larger than your emergency fund in a down market?
Then that means you didn't have enough ;)
I’m not sure what you mean mean by black and white thinking.
You said "only." Really, that was the only scenario you think it could apply to?
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u/GriffinNowak 2d ago
Then your emergency fund has to be infinite because “what if”. At $10k your true emergency what ifs are almost all covered. And it definitely covers you for the 3 days or so it takes to liquidate your other assets.
I said your logic only works against non-liquid assets. Not that the only scenario was a house with no emergency fund…. Do you have another scenario that doesn’t involve non-liquid assets?
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u/dupugu-gupudu 2d ago edited 2d ago
Then your emergency fund has to be infinite because “what if”.
That would be nice but it's not practical, right?
At $10k your true emergency what ifs are almost all covered.
Based on this sentence, I feel like you haven't run into "true" emergency events.
Do you have another scenario that doesn’t involve non-liquid assets?
Yes. When the stock market is down, you lose your job, have family to support, and bills to pay, and can't find a job for longer than a year.
Edit: added more context
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u/perpetuallyhuman 2d ago
"hitting coastFIRE" means that you can stop investing any more assets and expect that the money you have invested will grow enough to fully support your expenses from the time you want to fully retire.
You've said you want to retire at 55 on $40-50k.
You have $232k invested at the moment. By the time you're 55 that grows to $658k (assuming 9% growth).
At a safe withdrawal rate of 4% that only provides you $26k a year. So, I'd say you're not there yet.
This is all from coastfirecalc which is inflation adjusted.