Meet Melissa.
Melissa’s main concerns, in her own words: My base pay is $74,800 plus overtime on top of that. I have been saving for a house aggressively since January 2015 at about $700 a paycheck (last month I scaled that down to $500) plus any extra money I made from switching to work the night shift as well as tax refunds. I now have $58,000 saved. $50,000 will be for the down payment and the rest is a catch-all for vacations, car repair, and immediate house expenses when I find one. I am looking to buy a house later this summer, I know my expenses will increase some and the amount I am saving will decrease. I already have a separate emergency fund of $50,000. I max out my retirement at $18,000 a year that, as of January 2015, is all Roth (total value $189,000), a Roth IRA $5,500 a yr (total value $74,000) and an play account of several single stocks I purchased for $1,500 (total value $1,900), plus a separate international travel account of $700 that I deposit $200 a paycheck into. My question is what do I do next? My minimum retirement age is 53 (I will have access to retirement funds without penalty) but I have a mandatory retirement age of 57. I am looking to buy a house on a 10 or 15 yr mortgage if I can comfortably afford the payments. I plan to have the house paid for when I retire. I will have a pension that I estimate will be $2,900 a month. If my plan stays the same and I choose to move back to my home state after retirement, I have some paid off land and I’d like to build a home on using $$ from the sale of this house. But where else can I save money for growth that I can access when I retire at age 53 and how does that work from a tax stand point? Please help, I don’t know where else to go from here.