I'm planning on leaving my full time job to head to grad school starting in the fall semester. It's only a 10 class degree, of which I've already done 2 - leaving the job cause I couldn't continue even one class at a time while working here and stopped for a bit.
Each class only ends up being ~$1000 at my school, and I'm on track to have $8k dedicated to just tuition by the time I leave in 3 months.
Currently, I do have a pretty high savings rate. With 5k net each month, I put
- $563 in my Roth IRA to hit the annual limits
- $800 into a couple of investment accounts
- $1000 into the Grad School account to reach $8k by August
- $500 into other short term expense savings (trips, car repairs, etc)
Since there's likely going to be additional and unexpected expenses, would it be a good idea to cut the amount I put into non-tax advantaged investment accounts and increase my savings rate for grad school to hit the $8k quicker and have some extra? If I dedicate all $800 of that I'll have an extra $2.4k to work with...
I have a $10k emergency fund, and a few k more in short term expense savings (all of this is in a HYSA). Currently living at home and paying $1000/mo, but this will probably (hopefully) drop by a significant margin once I leave my job and get started with grad school. Car expenses will certainly drop - I commute 70 miles a day and end up spending close to $400 on gas and tolls each month.
I know whatever I put in stocks now will be leveraged a lot more later on when I ever pull it out, and I am going to try and grab a school research position or something so that may help a bit. But you never know.
Any advice will be very helpful!