Husband recently FIIRE'd, I lowered my 401k contribution...
My husband recently retired at the age of 41. I am about to turn 41 and tentatively plan to work until age 50, just to get retiree medical at my employer (and, I still like my job!). After thorough review and discussion with a CFP, I lowered my 401k contribution to enough just to get the full company match (6% gets me 7% match). After 20 years of maxing, and some years doing after tax/roth on top of the pre-tax max, it felt like I was violating the very principle that got me to where I am. However, we need other buckets of money filled, and we plan to more aggressively fund our brokerage (bridge fund) to give us what we need in early retirement. I am also toying with an idea of taking my cash balance pension (which will be $1M at age 50) and a portion of my 401k and rolling into an IRA and perhaps doing a 72(t) on that amount only just to create a makeshift "pension" of sorts while the rest of my 401k sits and compounds. Here are the numbers:
my 401k - $2,951,000 ($121,000 in Roth contributions/earnings) - invested in index funds and some managed funds such as FSELX, FCNTX, FDGRX
My cash balance pension - currently $286,000 but will be $1,000,000 at age 50
spouse 401k - $1,950,000 ($87,000 in Roth contributions/earnings) - invested in index funds only
Husband HSA - $121,000 (s&p 500 index fund, earmarked for retirement)
My HSA - $4,000 and growing (just started this one as my husband retired, plan to max it out, it is in FXAIX as well)
Taxable brokerage - mix of index funds and some individual stocks - $425,000
Cash equivalents (SGOV) - $151,500
Cash at bank - $140,000 (planning to pay cash for a home upgrade that will take about half of this amount)
Kid 1 529 - $265,000 (age 17)
Kid 2 - working on establishing a special needs trust/ABLE fund
Kid 3 529 - $22,500 (age 5, plan to aggressively fund more)
My annual salary is around 220k and bonus is on average 100k, with an additional amount of vested RSUs that can vary widely, from 50k - 70k. Our annual household budget is around $110,000, that includes our mortgage, which is our only debt, and has a very low interest rate. (could pay it off but SGOV is higher % rate than the mortgage rate) We plan to do roth conversions once I retire and am in a lower tax bracket. Going through all the estate planning stuff and worried about burdening my kids with giant retirement accounts they could be forced to empty in 10 years.....I also don't want to be forced to take giant RMDs too when the time comes (Lord willing we live that long). Looking for a sanity check here on dialing back the 401k contributions (which goes against conventional wisdom but honestly doesn't seem to make sense for someone who's accumulated a high balance and plans to retire early) and increasing brokerage contributions.