I hope I'm heading right direction...

[Kamban]

Texas is both hot and sunny.
If you can't pay your taxes and set aside enough for retirement while meeting your other wants and needs, you'll need to modify your budget to reduce some wants and perhaps re-evaluate your "needs". .

And luckily for hm Texas has no state income taxes too.

I have geothermal heating and cooling. Best investment I made for long term lower AC bills.

[TheDangerZone]

Thx for your advice. Agree decreasing spending is Home priority followed by paying off loans. We’ll sit down this weekend and work out a plan together. I appreciate everyone’s input, especially flp. Wow, who would have guessed that I would pull the original bad boy of the WCIF out of hibernation my first Beginners helping beginners post.

Good luck! Keep us posted.

[F0017S0]

Definitely fixable, but better start now becasue the numbers get less "friendly" the longer you delay (in terms of savings requirements to make up lost ground).

Nuke the cars and pool, since the federal government is being generous on the student loan front (not for long, but it's more than nothing).

Geography is being very friendly to you, tax-wise being in Texas with no state income tax; just be sure to pay the feds everything they are owed so they don't come over early one morning to "wake you up".

Maybe yesterday was a better time to think about all of this stuff, but right now is the second best time. You'll get it buttoned up and the ship sailing in the right direction...

[PreCancerDoctor]

@Objn: follow-up questions about your priorities:
I give you real credit for being open and honest. You're helping a lot of other readers.
But financial reality is coming. The sooner you read the writing on the wall, the easier it will be to climb over it. Trying to not come off as too harsh.

My concern: college appears to be 3-4 years away. You're on the highway, and that exit is coming up pretty quickly.

1. What is your expectation about what type of college (public, private, Ivy) your kids will attend? Graduate school?
2. What is your expectation about who will pay for that? Will they be taking out loans for all/some/none of it? Are they full-scholarship superstars?
3. I will say that if you expect to cover the cost, I would be the dream-crusher and point out that you do not and will not have the savings to pay for it, and that you cannot cash-flow it. The new financial aid rules mean zero need-based aid for you despite having 3 children.

It's easy for us to post that you should stop contributions to the 529s. But you might have kids wearing Rice sweatshirts who have different ideas.

Better to rip the bandaid off and have a kitchen table conversation as soon as possible. Hiring a financial planner to tell you that paying for 3 kids' cars and 3 sets of college tuition is impossible might take some of the heat off you, but you might get both barrels on the way home.

I would submit that getting all 3 kids on the same page ASAP would work out way better than signing a blank check for the oldest's education, and then having to tell the younger 2 that they are 100% on their own.

Retirement comes (much, much) later. I don't see you being able to drop OB when you get older and achy because I don't see you being able to tolerate the income loss.

Your current investments would provide an annual income of $25K before taxes (4%). That's not going to feed you and your spouse. Even if it quadruples, you will not retire at 62.

Live as long and as strong as you can. Take care of your health. I would bump that life insurance up to 5M+.

Can I just add that $250/mo for disability insurance for a practicing obstetrician seems RIDICULOUSLY low. Is this a minimal benefit like 3K/month? I pay over 3x that for own-occupation DI, and I'm not a proceduralist. Maybe I should have shopped around more or used your agent.

[Hatton]

@Objn: follow-up questions about your priorities:
I give you real credit for being open and honest. You're helping a lot of other readers.
But financial reality is coming. The sooner you read the writing on the wall, the easier it will be to climb over it. Trying to not come off as too harsh.

My concern: college appears to be 3-4 years away. You're on the highway, and that exit is coming up pretty quickly.

1. What is your expectation about what type of college (public, private, Ivy) your kids will attend? Graduate school?
2. What is your expectation about who will pay for that? Will they be taking out loans for all/some/none of it? Are they full-scholarship superstars?
3. I will say that if you expect to cover the cost, I would be the dream-crusher and point out that you do not and will not have the savings to pay for it, and that you cannot cash-flow it. The new financial aid rules mean zero need-based aid for you despite having 3 children.

It's easy for us to post that you should stop contributions to the 529s. But you might have kids wearing Rice sweatshirts who have different ideas.

Better to rip the bandaid off and have a kitchen table conversation as soon as possible. Hiring a financial planner to tell you that paying for 3 kids' cars and 3 sets of college tuition is impossible might take some of the heat off you, but you might get both barrels on the way home.

I would submit that getting all 3 kids on the same page ASAP would work out way better than signing a blank check for the oldest's education, and then having to tell the younger 2 that they are 100% on their own.

Retirement comes (much, much) later. I don't see you being able to drop OB when you get older and achy because I don't see you being able to tolerate the income loss.

Your current investments would provide an annual income of $25K before taxes (4%). That's not going to feed you and your spouse. Even if it quadruples, you will not retire at 62.

Live as long and as strong as you can. Take care of your health. I would bump that life insurance up to 5M+.

Can I just add that $250/mo for disability insurance for a practicing obstetrician seems RIDICULOUSLY low. Is this a minimal benefit like 3K/month? I pay over 3x that for own-occupation DI, and I'm not a proceduralist. Maybe I should have shopped around more or used your agent.

I think PreCancerDoctor makes good points about college. Being honest with the kids and spouse is important. Remember that your kids can get student loans but there are no retirement loans.

[Hank]

@Objn:
My concern: college appears to be 3-4 years away. You're on the highway, and that exit is coming up pretty quickly.

1. What is your expectation about what type of college (public, private, Ivy) your kids will attend? Graduate school?
2. What is your expectation about who will pay for that? Will they be taking out loans for all/some/none of it? Are they full-scholarship superstars?
3. I will say that if you expect to cover the cost, I would be the dream-crusher and point out that you do not and will not have the savings to pay for it, and that you cannot cash-flow it. The new financial aid rules mean zero need-based aid for you despite having 3 children.

It's easy for us to post that you should stop contributions to the 529s. But you might have kids wearing Rice sweatshirts who have different ideas.

To the original poster: if your kids are bright enough to get into Rice, they're bright enough to get into UT Austin. You'd have far smaller class sizes for freshman English and other undergraduate gen ed courses at Rice than at Texas. However, Texas has the number one accounting program in the country, a respectable computer science program, solid engineering programs, and one of the relatively few undergraduate business programs worth pursuing (along with Virginia, Berkeley, Michigan, and not many more public schools). If your kid is dead set on being a lawyer, there likely is more of an anti-Texas bias at Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and a few other of the top 14 law schools compared to going to Rice. That's perhaps the only reason I would shy away from your flagship state university. Otherwise, save money, get a great education, and a solid alumni network if your kid plans to live and work in Texas.

[Kennyt7]

70k FOR A CAR???? that's for the wealthy

[PedsCCM]

OP I had to chuckle at some of the comments. I completely understand where the constructive criticism is coming from, but this feels a little like a casual 5k runner who lifts weights 2x per week going to a professional marathoner's forum and asking about his level of fitness. You recognize you have room for improvement but you're not starting off terribly and it looks like you're open to some advice. I want to point out that you're still only 20 years away from a $5MM nest egg by saving 20% of your gross ($80k) yearly toward retirement and getting 6% real. I had a similar moment of realization a couple years out of training and had to sit down with my wife to map out a plan. Things that helped:

• It really helped to skip expert rules or concepts and to start with the end goal (nest egg required to retire) and work backward. How much do you want to spend yearly when you retire? When would you like to retire? I used $4MM and 6% real as we guessed $160k yearly would be enough and I went with the 4% SWR estimate.
• Using 62 as retirement age, we used the FV function of Excel to calculate where we would end up at current savings rates and then at various higher levels of savings.
• The above gave us a yearly savings amount that we both agreed that we needed to reach our goal. (I had done all this when I first started learning about finance through this site but working through each step with my wife really helped us both come to value saving at a goal rate).
• We suck at budgeting. We tried. It really did not go well. I use Mint to help us keep track of categories and make sure that savings + spending < earnings but as long as we're hitting our goals we only glance at where we spend our money 2x per year.

Hope some of that might help y'all.

[uksho]

OP I had to chuckle at some of the comments. I completely understand where the constructive criticism is coming from, but this feels a little like a casual 5k runner who lifts weights 2x per week going to a professional marathoner's forum and asking about his level of fitness. You recognize you have room for improvement but you're not starting off terribly and it looks like you're open to some advice. I want to point out that you're still only 20 years away from a $5MM nest egg by saving 20% of your gross ($80k) yearly toward retirement and getting 6% real. I had a similar moment of realization a couple years out of training and had to sit down with my wife to map out a plan. Things that helped:

• It really helped to skip expert rules or concepts and to start with the end goal (nest egg required to retire) and work backward. How much do you want to spend yearly when you retire? When would you like to retire? I used $4MM and 6% real as we guessed $160k yearly would be enough and I went with the 4% SWR estimate.
• Using 62 as retirement age, we used the FV function of Excel to calculate where we would end up at current savings rates and then at various higher levels of savings.
• The above gave us a yearly savings amount that we both agreed that we needed to reach our goal. (I had done all this when I first started learning about finance through this site but working through each step with my wife really helped us both come to value saving at a goal rate).
• We suck at budgeting. We tried. It really did not go well. I use Mint to help us keep track of categories and make sure that savings + spending < earnings but as long as we're hitting our goals we only glance at where we spend our money 2x per year.

Hope some of that might help y'all.

Good comments,
I assume 4% real for my calculations.
Both are unpredictable , inflation and returns. so being conservative would hopefully help, if we get lucky, might end with more than we need.
we also can't budget day to day or on categories, but have a set amount left in checking on 1st of every month, that helps.

[Moon]

OP sorry your big issue is really spending.
Our HHI is 3 x yours ( dual physician family. attending for 7 years but making this much for the last 3 years because we were on visa and you know, they like to low ball us visa wavier) but we never have 70k cars or a boat.

What we did right out was to make sure to prioritize saving and know exactly where every dollars goes.

1. Make a budget out of every month for at least 3 months. Look into every credit card transaction. I like YNAB because putting in every transaction yourselves help you to take a hard look at them. I find this very helpful and eye opening. Do this for 3 months . Now you know where all you money goes. I believe this is a good tools to talk to your wife and help her see exactly the situation well. It helped with my husband. He is in high paying specialty ( He makes about 850k but some of his peer makes up to 2 mil. But he comes home and pick up our son from aftercare every day, took him swimming every evening, doesn’t have to take brutal calls and be in hospital all the time ). When he got out of training , he wanted to buy porch 911 with $2000 car loan. This budgeting help stopped him doing that.

2 Then , look into what you can cut down as you prioritize saving. So each month you need to have exact number how much you should save for retirement or whatever. We make sure to half of our take home pay goes straight to taxable brokerage account and 529 or down payment for next rental property. (25% take home). Our tax deferred accounts are already fully funded and we do not use 457. We are very aggressive in taxable investment because I want to retire early. ( My husband wants to work until 65 but he may want to cut down after 50. I don’t want him to work too much )

3 The rest, we allocate to fix cost and variable cost . Such as, are w2 income so our tax is huge. We have to save about $ 3000 a month for tax yearly. Then budget for new cars ( projecting every ten years for each car) and vacations as well as our wants ( like luxury watches for my husband and bags for me etc. until we have enough we fund, we don’t buy them )

Sorry for my poor English and good luck

[Fugue]

you’re fine in the sense that all you need is a course correction, and you posting here probably indicates you’re ready to make some changes. Your problems have been well encapsulated by others in this thread, I won’t rehash those.

But you really need to get your wife on the same page. Maybe show her some of the responses here. I think getting a financial advisor in this case may actually benefit you, for her to hear it from someone else other than you if it’s constantly leading to fights. It’s not good enough to not want to rein in spending when you have ridiculously high auto costs and a boat. Or ask her to go back to work to help supplement the income so you have more income to save from.

[Tim]

OP sorry your big issue is really spending.
Sorry for my poor English and good luck

Your English is fine and your common sense is superior.