You spend a lot on vehicles and pets. Those jumped out at me. Also food is kinda high. I don't have interweb I use my mobile Hotspot with unlimited data and it works fine. Phone is high as well. Mint mobile is super cheap. I used to have pest control. When I moved I dumped it and in 2 years haven't had a problem. Ymmv. You could free up like 2k if you get tighter with it

CK check about once a month. I use their recommendations for applying for ccs and have been approved for all 4 they said I was good for. I like it shows who has 0% periods and sign up bonuses, and I use those to my advantage

Moving with a pregnant wife sounds rough. This is the worst time to buy a house darn near. You are thinking of signing up for about 5-6k in mortgage payments a month. Yikes

Some would argue on if those 2 is all you need. You can sprinkle some QQQ if you like tech. Or IWM if you like small cap. Its whatever you wanna do. What really matters is consistency, auto contributions, and a high savings rate. Most of my stuff is total market or sp500 index stuff

Yes. I like VTI as well. But VOO is great

Roth 401k and after tax are actually 2 different things. Roth 401k is after tax money but not technically categorized as such. If you wanna do MBD, you need to contribute to "after tax", not "Roth 401k." At least for me with Fidelity and my workplace plan. Ymmv

I convert every 10k ish from after tax 401k to my Fidelity Roth ira. I'm calling in to do that about every 2 months now. Not that bad. I just changed my contributions to a stable value fund so there won't be any gains to pay tax on for the conversion. Yeah I'm missing out on a bit of gains, but 2 months isn't much anyway on working up to 10k

This gets bashed...but whatever. The more you pay down your principle, the better throughout the life of the loan. The sooner, the better. You pay interest every month you have the loan out based on outstanding principle. The more paydown, the fastest possible will save you money. I paid down over 100k in my first year ish and probably saved 100k in interest and over 5 years in payments. I like that ROI. Not optimized, but not a bad way to go. I'm back to minimum payments now 2 years in.

Save up the cost of transmission repairs or replacement and keep it until the wheels fall off

Not sure about Schwab. Vanguard is ok. Good for auto investing in their mutual funds. Not much else. Fidelity is great. One stop shop they do it all

Money Guy show on you tube for financial roadmap. Ynab for budgeting. Dave Ramsey on you tube for motivation to get out of debt. Fidelity for brokerage and ira. Total market index etfs.Automated savings. Savings rate and discipline 🔑

If you can afford to take the tax hit in the present then after tax and roth is for you. If taxes are kicking your ass then traditional pre tax is your jam. This country is in big trouble if you haven't noticed and God knows what taxes are gonna look like in 15-40 years when we're trying to retire. I'm playing the pay now play later by doing mostly roth and after tax. It would make me sick to give uncle sugar 20 ish percent of appreciated holdings so im eating it now. I can afford it based on how my income is taxed. Employer contributions are pretax. Spreading around to all 3 is likely best some might argue. You can use some portion of roth ira for first time home purchase

Vanguard auto contributions into VTSAX in a taxable brokerage or roth ira Or Fidelity into FZROX in a taxable brokerage or roth ira

While that's true, don't sleep on cashflow. You're out 500 a month with that car payment. That's nearly enough to max a roth ira. An option could be max this year and next roth ira and pay down the car with the rest.

Have a good foundation of total market Etfs in a roth ira, taxable brokerage and a 401k if you have one. Send as much as you can to these hopefully maxing them out in contributions. Any left over cash after an emergency fund is built can go ibto a play account with options and goofy stuff.