What is a good 401k match for truckers?

Yes, diversify is key. I have 401k, Roth, stocks, and property. I mentioned 401k because that is the most basic of all retirement accounts.

Pro tip: Stay away from day trading. You will fail.

 

Unless you have a very healthy 401, I would be backing off those stocks. If you are unable to work, that would be a big hit.

 

I'm not going to be so vulgar as to say how much is in it. However I am not eating the corpus and actually am rolling close to 65% of my monthly payments back into it. I live in a 3 bedroom apartment and live a rather frugal life as a bachelor. I have no car because I can no longer driver because of epilepsy. My biggest transportation expense is my HRT 30 day bus pass. I'm living on a bit under 3K a month. the cost of living is VERY high here in Hampton Virginia. Honestly right now I am living off of some investments made back in 2004. i have no children and everything i own will be give to my oldest sisters kids.

 

Never put a penny in single stocks. Mutual funds are, by definition, diversified.

Large cap mutual funds that have 30 year plus track records of beating the market. If they didn’t lose money on black Monday, 2001 or 2008, they never will.

 

Move to Tennessee. Very cheap. No state income tax either. I guess in your predicament you have to stay close to family. Good luck.

 

You would get 65 cents on a dollar at the 65k pay line. You put it in with a match, you keep the whole buck and get another buck. $0.65 vs $2 easy to see. Or $0.65 vs 1.50 for the fourth %.

 

That's good for trucking companies in my experience, depending on vesting schedule. Most companies have a tiered vesting schedule where the employer match is not fully vested until you have 5 years of service or something like that. Be sure to check the vesting schedule and max out contributions...since it's free money.

That depends on what the tax law says so many years in the future, as well as how long you plan on living, how you plan on living and what you plan on doing with the money. Traditional IRAs are at a slight advantage if you plan on living at or about the same as you're living now for the rest of your life, since you end up paying less tax now and generally have a lower effective tax rate in your retirement (when you take the earnings out).

That depends entirely on what you plan on doing with your life, way more than what your tax rates will be at that time. It also depends on what risks you have in life, as people here have gone to great lengths to explain.

The other thing to be very careful about is making sure that you're rebalancing your core portfolio and not letting short term gains bump you up into another tax bracket. If you're really doing great in the markets and cashing out those gains, you really need to make sure you're OK for tax time this year and all paid-in before 1/31/19.