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REDDIT

Am I doing this right, new money could use some advice

W
Jan 15, 2026 · 03:12

I switched careers to sales roughly 4 years ago. Went from 65k a year facility maintenance role, to a steady climb to $750k this year. (2022-$225k, 2023-$465k, 2024-$595k, 2025-$750k)

I’m 36 years old, wife is too, she works part time basically just for insurance.

Current role is 10-99 b2c one call close, home improvement sales. Without sounding like bragging, I’m kinda a savant in my role, I made 300k more than the #2 guy in our company this year, which is multinational with roughly 2000 sales reps. But the company is constantly cutting the comp plan in small increments and I don’t foresee this lasting 10-20 years. Really hoping for 4-5 more at $500k plus though.

My first year we pocketed cash until we were able to pay our then current mortgage off at $225k. We then paid cash for 5 rental homes over the next few years, as well as bought my wife a nice Tahoe. For 4 years we didn’t splurge much, if at all.

Last year we found out we were having baby number 4, so went bought another home for 1.3 million. We are in a mcol area and live in the best school district in the state. I paid cash for the down payment.

We are now renting the original 5 rentals as well as our old primary with a roughly 4k positive cash flow a month.

The only debt we have is exactly 1 million on our new home ($7500 a month), my wife has a tiny 401k and we started Roth IRAS last year. Other than that the only retirement I have is the rental properties.

Current plan is to knock the new primary home out in 36 months or less.

Honestly my wife and I are pretty financially illiterate. Came from broke people.

Am I doing this right?