What do you do with the money in your brokerage account?

[Anonymous]

We'll use ours for college savings. We have about $600k in brokerage, 2 kids 11 and 15. Only about $70k each in 529s. We inherited some of that and were thinking of buying a house, but generally didn't want to tie it to one purpose. Another $400k in a high yield savings.

[Anonymous]

Invested in individual stocks and adding more when I have the cash.

[Anonymous]

Retired early and am pulling 1-2% per year to supplement other (rental) income. In a few years my pension kicks in and then I'm not sure if we'll need to withdraw at all from the brokerage account. It will just be reserve for medical emergencies and end-of-life comfort.

[Anonymous]

We only put enough in 529s to fund in state tuition. For DC 1, they are out of state but got merit aid, so tuition is fully covered by 529. DC 2 is attending private, out of state (north of $80k), so we'll use the brokerage account to fund their college education. DC 3 is still in HS, so we will see, but likely more college from the brokerage acct

[Anonymous]

We are still in our starter house in thf city, so we'll probably use a chunk of it to move in a few years when the kids hit middle school. Although maybe not.

Otherwise I hope to use it as a bridge from age 50 (when we want to retire) to age 60 when we can draw down our retirement accounts.

I regret not maxing out my retirement accounts in previous years though. Idk what I was thinking, I was so focused on saving up for a new house I routed money into our brokerage instead of our 401ks. Now, we have more in a brokerage than we do in retirement, we make more than enough to save in both, but I'm limited in my ability to catch up retirement.

[Anonymous]

Another “I don’t know”. After maxing out retirement we put leftover savings into taxable accounts. I always thought we would use it for a bigger house or college savings beyond our 529s but we have only rarely pulled money for renovations.

I felt bad about not having a purpose for that money. After this thread, I feel better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I felt bad about not having a purpose for that money. After this thread, I feel better.

I’m at the front end of starting to dump large amounts in there without a purpose. I thought it was just me and also now feel less like a weirdo.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Line go up.

Squiggly line go up.

[Anonymous]

Already in retirement and plan to keep a chunk of it as "end of life" money. DH's parents spent A LOT on assisted living and nursing care. My family tends to just drop over when they die, but you never know. We do not have long term care insurance so it's our insurance.

[Anonymous]

It's our slush fund for special projects, trips, purchases etc. It's great to have and we're motivated to save extra in it because we know it's for fun, rather than this massive pile that is "I dunno." We already have ample in our retirement accounts and emergency and sinking funds.