-I am 25(f) debt free (finished paying off my 23K this year) student loans
-Have 35k in Roth Tsp/Ira by end of year
-Have 17k in Brokerage by end of year
-in total 52k net worth by December( I turn 26 in November)
-(Need to build savings)
-Plan on deploying in November to Syria(combat deployment) and hope to save a good 50k+ (I will put 5k-10k in emergency fund, 40K+ towards investments/retirement)
-On path to becoming an officer
-Have bachelors and am a specialist ( joined March 2023)
-Don’t have a car yet but have my drivers license (this helps me in optimizing my investing/savings and it helped me to pay off debt) (I will get a car eventually but I want to stack up before 30)
-Childfree (plan to stay that way)
Am I on the right track?
byu/Cute-Structure-1879 inMilitaryFinance
Posted by Cute-Structure-1879
2 Comments
Even if you had $0 saved up you’d be fine.
If a 26 year old with no debt starts saving 25% of their salary and does so for the rest of their working life they will be well set up for their retirement.
One other thought though. You ask if you are on “the right track”, but you don’t specify what track you wish to be on. You are got sure good if you want to retire in your sixties. If you keep up the current pace you’ll likely be able to retire in your 50s or even 40s. If you are asking about a goal though you need to be able to name it. A better question would be “am I on track to retire at fifty years old with $150k/year coming in from pension, investing, and retirement accounts?’
You’re young though and it’s fine if you don’t have specific goals yet though. Whatever your financial goals are you appear to be doing well.
Sounds like you’re on a good track. I would focus on building an emergency fund now instead of putting more money into your brokerage (unless you mean just money market account). While you’re deployed, I would do SDP and have that help with your car fund. Here’s a slide show I use when I tell people what I do to maximize money on deployment.
https://youtu.be/NKlA6Oeka-E
Overall, you’re on track to be able to do whatever you want later in life as long as you keep it up. Going Officer will only accelerate that timeline