Would you sell your brokerage investments with a lot of major life changes coming up?
I currently have about $10k in savings and had roughly $71k invested in stocks in my taxable brokerage account.
I have a lot of major life changes coming up over the next 8 months, which has me rethinking how much risk I want to take with money I may need relatively soon:
● My wife and I are expecting our first child in January.
● My wife will be graduating from dental school and applying for jobs back in our hometown, which is across the Midwest.
● We’ll need to buy a house in the new area.
● We’ll need to sell our current house.
● We’ll also have the expenses and logistics of moving across the Midwest.
With all of that coming up, I recently decided to sell the stocks in my brokerage account and move the entire ~$71k into SGOV. Part of me feels like this was a somewhat irrational/emotional decision because I was stressed about everything that’s coming up, rather than making the decision purely based on expected returns.
On the other hand, I know I’ll potentially need a significant amount of this money within the next year, and I don’t want to be forced to sell stocks during a market downturn when I need the money.
What would you do in my situation? Was moving the $71k into SGOV a reasonable decision, or would you have kept some/all of it invested?
I’d appreciate any perspectives, especially from people who have gone through a similar period of buying/selling a house, having a baby, and changing jobs at the same time.
Thanks!