You may find these links helpful:

• Retirement Accounts
• "How to handle $"

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Welcome to /r/personalfinance! Comments will be removed if they are political, medical advice, or unhelpful (subreddit rules). Our moderation team encourages respectful discussion.

You may find our Health Insurance wiki helpful.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

You can both have separate or combined healthcare plans. It’s up to you. If you have an FSA, it’s kind of antiquated. I’d switch to the HSA plan if offered so you don’t lose money.

If you are married filing jointly you have the income limit of a married filing jointly family. But yes, 403b plans are often worse than 401k plans.

Follow the flowchart.

My generic advice:

https://i.imgur.com/lSoUQr2.png

Here is the flowchart from the r/personalfinance subreddit’s Prime Directive. If you follow that, you will be ahead of almost all of your peers.

Stop by the sidebar to see the Common Topics, which include basic money handling and investing.

You don’t need to talk to anyone or buy some random book to do this. You have all the tools right here.

I love the flowchart! Here's the wiki page with more context and information.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Here's a link to the PF Wiki for helpful guides and information.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

>I’d switch to the HSA plan if offered so you don’t lose money.

You can’t switch to an HSA unless you have an HDHP. Most likely OPs insurance doesn’t qualify and thus why they offer the FSA

Thank you! Most of my peers who no longer qualify have robust 401k plans they use instead and my public sector friends tend to be below the limits, so it has been hard to find people in my position. I really appreciate the input and flowchart.

>phased out of eligibility for Roth IRA.

Look up “Backdoor Roth IRA”. Totally legit, it just involves a couple extra steps.

>I hear absolute horror stories about 403b plans

Some are fine. My Wife’s is through Fidelity and is super low cost. All depends on the employer and how much they want to spend to make sure their employees have a quality plan. The predatory ones are the employers who don’t want to spend anything

>it has been super disheartening to have to reevaluate my options now that I am getting married

What exactly is so disheartening? You only mentioned a Roth IRA, of which you can still be contributing to via the Backdoor method. But honestly if all you were doing was Roth IRA you probably weren’t doing enough anyway.

Do you have a brokerage account?

Yep, no HSA. I have some regular appointments each month and a set copay so I calculate what I need for the year for those and leave a little extra for other expenses I know I will end of charging throughout the year. So far it has worked out well for me.

I have a brokerage account that I have used for my Roth. I have heard about backdoor Roth, but it seems complicated and I didn't want to do something wrong and get into hot water if I didn't understand the protocol properly (probably unfounded I know).

I know I need to do more, but as a teacher it has been hard to contribute more on my salary than the $6500 when I focused on being debt free and having an emergency fund right after college as a single income. These days, I finally have the income to work with but not so great advice which is why I am here.