SwordfishTough

SwordfishTough t1_jaex0zn wrote

You should try budgeting "backwards" from what you're doing now. Mortgage and house stuff is a fixed cost, start there. Next is savings. Allocate what's left to expenses. Currently the $1174 "leftover" is your savings but any of the other categories could eat into it and you wouldn't notice because you're used to saving whatever's left after expenses rather than a fixed amount.

These look high to me

  • Phones-130
  • P Car Payment-700
  • K Car Payment-422
  • Car Insurance-242
  • Car Gas-200
  • Food-800

$200 each in fun money is very reasonable, but it seems like your cars and food are also expensive so I'd imagine some portion of that also counts as "fun".

You should probably put more in retirement.

2

SwordfishTough t1_ja74zs6 wrote

Treasury bonds are paying more than 4% without the risk of the stock market and you get to avoid some taxes on the interest. High yield savings accounts are in the same range and even after taxes are probably higher than 3.48%, also risk free.

You're not going to get rich off this level of arbitrage though so if it gives you peace of mind to pay down the car, do that. Long term optimization would probably be to keep the loan as is and make some diversified ok investments.

2