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EugeneJ posted:Or I have a NeoCon family member who's administrator of my 401k and is good friends with my NeoCon boss, and both are guilty of doing terrible things to people (paying below minimum wage, infidelity) while they share cocktails at the country club and blame Obama for high taxes. Just contribute to your own Roth IRA and taxable accounts. I personally really hope DC (big biz) pulls their heads outta each other's asses and SSI exists when I retire. I have paid plenty into it. But I figure it's bonus income if it exists and I am not counting on it in my retirement planning.
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 02:13 |
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# ? Jun 13, 2024 04:07 |
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SiGmA_X posted:Right but you also say you don't trust 401k, and trust SSI.... Contradictory points. I think the whole "Social Security is going to disappear" line is a conservative scare tactic to get people on board with privatizing their retirement plans. So when a Republican presidential candidate gets in a position to say "THIS drat LIBERAL DOESN'T WANT YOU TO OWN YOUR OWN RETIREMENT!", the millions of old people go "yeah!", vote for him, and then immediately lose all their SSI benefits before getting kicked over to rot on welfare. Next decade should be interesting - with the population trending towards minority voters becoming dominant, Republicans won't be viable past then. 10 years to gently caress things up - let's see what happens.
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 02:43 |
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I recently started a new job and am looking for some advice on my 401k fund options. The 401k is through Principal. I already have an IRA through Vanguard, invested 100% in their target date 2055 fund (VTTSX). Here's a list of the available funds and their expense ratios: Wells Fargo Stable Value E Fund.........................................0.38% Blackrock US Debt Index T Fund........................................0.07% Neuberger Berman High Income Bond Instl Fund (NHILX)........0.70% Blackrock Lifepath Index 20XX J Fund..............................0.17-0.15% Vanguard Wellesley Income Admiral Fund (VWIAX)..................0.18% Blackrock Equity Index T Fund........................................0.03% American Funds Growth Fund of America R6 Fund (RGAGX)......0.34% Vanguard Windsor II Adm Fund (VWNAX)............................0.28% Goldman Sachs Mid-Cap Value Institutional Fund(GSMCX).......0.74% Morgan Stanley Institutional Mid Cap Growth IS FUND (MMCGX).0.59% Victory Small Company Opportunity I Fund (VSOIX)................0.99% Wasatch Small Cap Growth Fund (WAAEX)...............................1.24% T. Rowe Price International Discovery Fund (PRIDX)..................1.23% Scout International Fund (UMBWX)........................................1.02% The Blackrock Equity Index T Fund (an S&P 500 index fund) seems like my best option, but there don't seem to be many good choices for diversification otherwise. Should I go with the Blackrock 2055 target date fund? Diversifying through my IRA isn't a great option at the moment because I just started contributing last year and don't have enough money for several different fund minimums (yet alone the lower ER admiral shares funds). I'm still young, so I wouldn't want more than 10% in bonds, I would even be comfortable with my entire portfolio in stocks. Ideally I'd want about a 70/30 domestic/international balance. What do you think? Asleep Style fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Jun 27, 2014 |
# ? Jun 27, 2014 03:15 |
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Tossing it all into the 2050 Lifepath fund and calling it done would be perfectly fine. If you want to massage the ER and turnover a little lower, then 90% the Blackrock equity index and 10% the Blockrock bond index would do it but you might have to adjust the ratio every 5 or 10 years. By the way either strategy is highly diversified - don't confuse number of funds with diversity of investment. If you truly want diversity you won't put it all in stocks either.
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 03:34 |
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I'd go with the blackrock 500 and bond funds, they are both textbook indices and have nice low ERs. The lifepath one is also good, but holds some REITs and commodities which aren't really my thing, although it does have international if you really want to pay the extra ER. Avoid the vanguard fund: it is mostly bonds and the stock part is semi-active so it's hard to benchmark.
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 03:51 |
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it's not really paranoia to be suspicious of financial institutions HummedExplosions posted:Blackrock Equity Index T Fund........................................0.03% Whoa, my 401(k) is through Merrill Lynch. We have the same fund, but .15% expense ratio. Celot fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Jun 27, 2014 |
# ? Jun 27, 2014 04:03 |
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Thanks for the help, that all sounds pretty reasonable. I'm not familiar with REITs, I guess I have more reading to do.
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 04:16 |
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Celot posted:it's not really paranoia to be suspicious of financial institutions Oh I agree: but suspicion needs to be tempered by knowledge, not superstition. I'm not filled with joy about trusting financial institutions with my future, but I know it's still a better option than stuffing my money in a mattress and hoping for the best.
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 05:05 |
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HummedExplosions posted:Thanks for the help, that all sounds pretty reasonable. I'm not familiar with REITs, I guess I have more reading to do. REITs are a special case but most important thing is they offer fairly high dividend yields due the basic setup requiring a good portion of the REIT net income to be send back to the shareholders. So basically a somewhat handy way to add in another asset type and also get a fairly decent dividend yield as well especially for a tax free Roth IRA. etalian fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Jun 27, 2014 |
# ? Jun 27, 2014 06:02 |
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Leperflesh posted:Oh I agree: but suspicion needs to be tempered by knowledge, not superstition. I'm not filled with joy about trusting financial institutions with my future, but I know it's still a better option than stuffing my money in a mattress and hoping for the best. An FDIC-insured bank account is not a mattress. I understand wanting to protect your money against inflation. They have a thing for that: savings bonds. And those are also insured by the government. As for knowledge: http://banking.about.com/od/securityandsafety/a/accountinsured.htm quote:Retirement Plans I work for a small business with a top-hat plan. I am at risk. I found this thread over at a forum for Benefits Coordinators where they actively discuss how to gently caress over employees using the 401k. Interesting read: http://benefitslink.com/boards/index.php?/topic/38985-employees-opted-out/ quote:Put in a Matching Safe Harbor plan - start with say 100 to 4. If no employees decide to defer (they cannot be permitted to 'opt out', only to not defer), up it to 200% to 6% to get owners to max. When employees start deferring enough, reduce the match. quote:Do not let them opt out IRS will see it for the sham it is quote:Small (but very important modification/expansion) is that the TH exemption is still maintained with discretionary and fixed matches above and beyond the basic SH match provided they satisfy the ACP safe harbors described by JFKBC (as he/she also pointed out). If the employees start draining too much money, just reduce the match and take it away! Pieces of poo poo.
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 06:03 |
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Eugene J. A big part of investing is minimizing tax burdens. However, you are in the 15% tax bracket, and have opportunities to pay 0% long term capital gains tax for as long as you stay in that bracket. You seem deadset against your matching 401k. I have laid my best arguments why you should use it anyway in past posts. At the very least you should open a Roth ira and max it out. The remaining 4.5k could be invested in a taxable account. If you think we are all full of poo poo and the market is nonsense then you really should read some of the books in the op. If after reading the books your opinions are unchanged then at least you have learned something and are making an informed decision not to invest. That said, it is my staunch belief that we have no choice. We must invest lest we live in retirement poverty. Investing isn't limited to the stock market. Maybe try buying some rental properties? Good luck. I wish you well.
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 15:21 |
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EugeneJ, you are so focused on the fact that a bank account is FDIC insured and investing is not(nevermind the fact that the market has beaten interest over any period of 25 years starting as far back as at least 90 years ago...why you ignore this is beyond me). Well IRAs are protected in bankruptcy(up to a much larger amount of money than you'll ever save in a bank account with 10k a year) and bank accounts are not. And if you live off 12k a year and are only able to save 10k a year, your income is very low and any medical emergency at all probably puts you into bankruptcy. Even if you have medical insurance, you can't possibly have at your income level a degree of long term disability that could sustain you if you lost the ability to work for an extended period of time. Please read The Four Pillars of Investing and/or A Random Walk Down Wall Street as the guy above suggested. They are relatively quick reads and probably can be found at the library. Nail Rat fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Jun 27, 2014 |
# ? Jun 27, 2014 15:33 |
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Does inflation even count as a "risk" these days? It seems pretty close to a virtual certainty. Putting $ into a bank account returning 1% or whatever seems equivalent to investing in a fund which guarantees that you will lose 2% of your money every year. The odds of the government allowing deflation seem pretty close to 0 even if the fed has to print dollars into oblivion. 401k's at most companies are solid and can be trusted and far better than some other routes like most 403b's since a 401k will have a fiduciary committee that is responsible and liable for following guidelines about appropriate funds. The stuff linked above about reducing match once employees start investing isn't the end of the world... it is just owners trying to sneak extra money into a 401k via matching without having to match for employees. While dishonest and trying to fight the highly compensated employee limitations, it isn't like they are stealing money. If you don't trust your 401k then put it all into a Roth IRA. Also, investing into yourself (via education and training) to increase salary is probably a better investment than any of the above until you hit a 50k+ salary. Lots of stuff on that, here's one: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/07/25/50-jobs-over-50000-without-a-degree-part-1/ Only other comment would be that if you are looking at the dow jones and noticing that it didn't increase a lot for a while there, that is only part of the gain you get for being a shareholder. You also get paid dividends every year, so even if the stock market is boringly flat and goes nowhere the returns still beat a bank account.
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 17:14 |
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I've pulled a EugeneJ over the last five years because I got scared when the market crashed and I got laid off and have been too busy making money since then to figure out what to do with it. I'm trying to fix that now. I got both books on audible and listened to them, but am kind of going through information overload now. I'm 30, no dependents, I've got $120k in savings right now, probably want to keep $40k as my 6 month fund. I have ~30k from a previous 401k rolled into a Vanguard 500 index fund, am putting 6% to get my full matching thing at work into LifePath® Index 2050 Fund H through fidelity, and I have about 45 or 50k in individual stocks. Stating to throw it all into the market at an all time high feels dumb, but I know you can't time the market so I don't know what to do. What would be my best path for getting that money invested properly (I know to start with maxing my roth)? Did I leave anything out other than I might be buying a house in the next few years? Just bet it all on a horse? Dum Cumpster fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Jun 27, 2014 |
# ? Jun 27, 2014 17:38 |
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Vilgan posted:Only other comment would be that if you are looking at the dow jones and noticing that it didn't increase a lot for a while there, that is only part of the gain you get for being a shareholder. You also get paid dividends every year, so even if the stock market is boringly flat and goes nowhere the returns still beat a bank account. Well, but there can and will be years that you lose a massive amount of money in the stock market...but that only matters if you're pulling the money out in the next five years or so. And by that point, most of your money should be in bonds anyway.
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 17:50 |
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Dum Cumpster posted:What would be my best path for getting that money invested properly (I know to start with maxing my roth)? Did I leave anything out other than I might be buying a house in the next few years? Just bet it all on a horse? How much do you need saved to purchase a house? If you are purchasing a house sometime within the next 5 years, it is generally not a good idea to invest the money used to save for a house in the stock market. To start, you probably should take the 45k to 50k in individual stocks and move them into index funds to decrease the risk of holding individual stocks. There's 80k left, and that can either be put aside for the purchase of a house, or put into index funds as well.
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 18:12 |
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You don't lose money until you sell.
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 18:20 |
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Grouco posted:You don't lose money until you sell. You know what I mean. I was just saying returns don't necessarily always beat a savings account. But on a long enough timeline, yes, they will, guaranteed...if the last 90 years including the Great Depression is any indication.
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 18:24 |
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Dum Cumpster posted:I'm 30, no dependents, I've got $120k in savings right now, probably want to keep $40k as my 6 month fund. You spend over $6.5k a month with no dependents?
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 18:33 |
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Isurion posted:You spend over $6.5k a month with no dependents? I thought it was 6 months of income, which I'd actually be short at $40. ntan1 posted:How much do you need saved to purchase a house? If you are purchasing a house sometime within the next 5 years, it is generally not a good idea to invest the money used to save for a house in the stock market. I have no idea what I'd be purchasing, just know it'll probably be coming up. The money I saved wasn't necessarily for that, I've just been saving. How would I go about moving that money into index funds? Wouldn't I be taking a big tax hit if I just sold them and dumped them over?
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 19:03 |
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Dum Cumpster posted:I thought it was 6 months of income, which I'd actually be short at $40.
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 19:16 |
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Dum Cumpster posted:I've pulled a EugeneJ over the last five years because I got scared when the market crashed and I got laid off and have been too busy making money since then to figure out what to do with it. I'm trying to fix that now. I got both books on audible and listened to them, but am kind of going through information overload now. To help with the psychology of going in at what feels like a high: the market value is high, but we are no where near all time high on price to earnings. So.. even if it is higher than might be ideal, it shouldn't be as bad as if you dumped everything into tech stocks right before the dot com bubble burst. Here is another helpful (imo) post for dealing with worry about coming in at a market high: http://awealthofcommonsense.com/worlds-worst-market-timer/ As far as where to go from here.. I would look at some of the following ideas: Cap out 401k and Roth IRA asap if you haven't already Set aside 6 months of expenses - keep this in a savings account Consider dropping enough to cover a downpayment into a short term bond fund or a CD. VBIRX seems like a safe short term bond fund. Consider dropping everything beyond that into Indexes. Maybe 60% US and 40% international - you can fine tune that as you feel more comfortable and educated. VTSAX and VTIAX would be my preference. Move stuff out of stocks into indexes The CD or bond fund isn't going to return much, but the main goal is to keep the short horizon money fairly safe. Put an appropriate amount there to feel safe. I would personally put 50% of the anticipated downpayment there and assume that future earnings and emergency fund can be tapped for the rest but you might not be comfortable with that. Good luck
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 19:39 |
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Edit: ^ is a more detailed version of what to do. The only small difference is that usually I prefer 70% US 30% international.Dum Cumpster posted:How would I go about moving that money into index funds? Wouldn't I be taking a big tax hit if I just sold them and dumped them over? Yes on the tax hit. The issue with keeping the money in single stocks is that they carry risk that the single stocks will do poorly over the long term. You're trading the short term requirement that you pay taxes on the stocks sold versus the long term gain of decreased risk in investing across the market as a whole. It's worth estimating the amount that you would have to pay in taxes. What's the cost basis of the individual stocks that you hold (IE. how much did you buy the individual stocks for)? Have you held the stocks for greater than 1 year? On the subject of moving money that isn't an retirement account into mutual funds, you would do so by opening a Taxable Account with a mutual fund provider of your choice. I recommend Vanguard due to their cheap selection of funds, as many others here do. Gains made in this account would be taxable: you would have to pay a small amount of taxes on dividends from stocks in mutual funds on a yearly basis, and you would have to pay capital gains taxes when you sold shares of the mutual fund. Of course, before you put money into a Taxable Account, put money in a Roth IRA if you can. ntan1 fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Jun 27, 2014 |
# ? Jun 27, 2014 19:42 |
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Thanks a lot guys, that helps get my thinking organized into some sort of plan.Vilgan posted:http://awealthofcommonsense.com/worlds-worst-market-timer/ I agree that I can probably save up the rest of the downpayment by the time it's needed again, I'll try that. Skimmed the article to get the idea, that does help. I'll read the whole thing later. ntan1 posted:It's worth estimating the amount that you would have to pay in taxes. What's the cost basis of the individual stocks that you hold (IE. how much did you buy the individual stocks for)? Have you held the stocks for greater than 1 year? Most of the stocks I've had for a long time and have at least doubled the initial investment. Lorillard is the only one I've had for a few months but it's already at 1.5x what I purchased it for.
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 20:02 |
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Dum Cumpster posted:Most of the stocks I've had for a long time and have at least doubled the initial investment. Lorillard is the only one I've had for a few months but it's already at 1.5x what I purchased it for. When I started investing, I also had to sell 80k worth of long term stocks. 1) For long term stocks. Find out stocks that have capital losses and calculate the sum of those capital losses, if you have any. Sell all of the stocks with capital losses, and sell the same dollar value in capital gains to offset those loses. You'll owe nothing in taxes yet for this. 2) Are you planning on donating this year? If so, consider donating long term stock instead of cash, as you'll save money in taxes 3) At a comfortable pace, sell of the remainder of stocks. Keep 15% + whatever you might have to pay in state taxes in cash for taxes, and then transition the rest into a taxable account. 4) For short term stocks, either sell right now or sell after one year, depending on how comfortable you are holding the stocks.
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# ? Jun 27, 2014 21:39 |
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Vilgan posted:Only other comment would be that if you are looking at the dow jones and noticing that it didn't increase a lot for a while there, that is only part of the gain you get for being a shareholder. You also get paid dividends every year, so even if the stock market is boringly flat and goes nowhere the returns still beat a bank account. Yeah dividends are another good thing about stocks, US etfs like VTI tend to pay around 1.7-2 percent while if you go overseas you can get higher yields in the 3 to 3.5 percent range. Some ETFs also selectively target companies that have a good history of raising dividend yields, so you have a good chance of getting a better yield in the future,
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# ? Jun 28, 2014 20:50 |
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The fiancee is moving with me to Roanoke near the end of July, and we are figuring out what to do with her 401k. Currently, it is offered through fidelity, and is invested in a T. Rowe Price Retirement 2045 fund. These are some alternative investment options: code:
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# ? Jun 29, 2014 02:32 |
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Donald Kimball posted:The fiancee is moving with me to Roanoke near the end of July, and we are figuring out what to do with her 401k. Yes, once she separates from the company, she can roll over to an IRA and invest in whatever she wants. VINIX is an alright option, though. It's an S&P 500 index with a slightly lower ER than you could realistically get otherwise. VBTIX is even more attractive, since it's harder to hit Admiral shares in bond funds. If you keep it in the 401k, I'd keep my whole bond allocation in VBTIX and have the rest in VINIX. You'd want to complement VINIX with a completion index and an international index in your IRA, though, so it's kind of a hassle just to min-max your portfolio by a few hundredths of a percent in fees. Rolling it over would be much easier.
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# ? Jun 29, 2014 03:18 |
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Donald Kimball posted:VINIX looks interesting, but I'm not sure. Alternatively, could we rollover to her own Vanguard IRA? The returns on her current investment are better than my own Vanguard 2060, so I'm hesitant to actually do anything. Are you sure that these returns are better than Vanguard 2060? It could also be that you both started investing in each fund at different times. In general, both Trowe 2045 and Vanguard 2060 invest in the same sets of stocks and bonds at almost the same allocations. I could understand if there is a small diff in the total return over the same period of time, but I believe they shouldn't fluctuate that much. In general, whether to roll over or not depends on your fund selection and expense ratio. The TRowe funds have an expense ratio (according to search) of 0.78%, whereas the Vanguard funds have an expense ratio of 0.18%. I'd double check the numbers (as 401ks sometimes have special deals), but in general, if these expense ratios hold, I'd advocate switching to Vanguard. A 0.50% tangible/guaranteed increase in returns yearly is not very small.
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# ? Jun 29, 2014 05:18 |
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Kilty Monroe posted:Yes, once she separates from the company, she can roll over to an IRA and invest in whatever she wants. Yeah remember that when you leave job you own the vested money balance so you can roll into your own personal IRA/401k account. Vanguard is pretty much tough to beat IMO since they offer the lowest ER for the average investor assuming you have at least $10,000 to spare get the lower ER admiral class shares.
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# ? Jun 29, 2014 06:03 |
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etalian posted:Yeah remember that when you leave job you own the vested money balance so you can roll into your own personal IRA/401k account. My wife has an Ira that she rolled over to some lovely company for 14k, is it possible to move it to vanguard as that seems to be what everyone recommends?
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# ? Jun 29, 2014 14:00 |
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Thanks all. Unfortunately, her current investment is sub $3k, so I think she would only be able to rollover into a Vanguard Target fund. The VINIX ER is 0.04%, while the VBTIX ER is 0.07%. The TRP target fund er is 0.78%. That VINIX looks hard to beat. ntan1 posted:Are you sure that these returns are better than Vanguard 2060? It could also be that you both started investing in each fund at different times. Yeah, you're right. She started investing a few months earlier. Donald Kimball fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Jun 29, 2014 |
# ? Jun 29, 2014 15:08 |
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ntan1 posted:Are you sure that these returns are better than Vanguard 2060? More importantly, "the returns on X fund have been higher than the returns on Y fund over the past Z years" is a bad reason to choose one fund over another. You need to look at expense ratio, what kind of index they are tracking or mix of assets they have, etc.
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# ? Jun 30, 2014 15:57 |
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Vilgan posted:Good luck
Thanks in advance! Edit: also I'm guessing someone might ask why I'm not saving more for retirement: long story short I've got some income-generating properties and various accounts in trust that has me emphasizing a home purchase in ~5 years over retirement. I'm not naive and not completely ignoring my 401k, IRA, and HSA; just less focused on them right now. Star War Sex Parrot fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Jun 30, 2014 |
# ? Jun 30, 2014 20:01 |
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Regarding the 40 grand. 5 years is the short term and AGTHX is therefore not a good place for it because it is mostly stocks. AGTHX is also fairly lousy in general because of the relatively high expense ratio and turnover - and are you paying a load? If your time horizon is really 5 years you should get way more conservative, and even all cash wouldn't be completely unreasonable. I swear we talked about the best portfolio balance for this not too long ago but I couldn't find- oh here it is: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3636416 not quite your situation I guess. Regarding retirement it doesn't look like you're being stupid but with the raise it would be so easy to fund that Roth IRA to the max every year. Do it, you know you want to
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# ? Jun 30, 2014 20:27 |
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Reposted from the Newbie Personal Finance Thread because I'm dumb. Does anybody have any experience using Sharebuilder for investing? I have $450 in an account there (old birthday present) that I want to invest, but I have no confidence in my ability to pick stocks that will perform well and beat the rate of inflation. Mostly I'd want to invest in something long-term as a retirement thing, so if there were like a mutual fund I could buy into (similar to the target retirement date IRA funds on Vanguard), that'd be ideally what I'm looking for. Is there such a thing, or would I be better served withdrawing the funds and just opening a Roth IRA?
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# ? Jun 30, 2014 23:49 |
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It sounds like you just want an index fund. The target retirement date funds that Vanguard offer are themselves
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# ? Jul 1, 2014 00:13 |
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Cicero posted:It sounds like you just want an index fund. The target retirement date funds that Vanguard offer are themselves Yeah the vanguard target funds are pretty good if you want to start socking away retirement savings and don't want to pick individual ETFs. Also at least for Vanguard you need a few thousand to start a account, ideally have at least $10,000 to get the even lower expense ratio Admiral shares. Star War Sex Parrot posted:So I'm looking at that $40,000 in AGTHX as a down payment on a house when it reaches closer to $80,000 or $100,000, but I'm not sure that I'm getting the most out of my money until then. I like that it's just a set it and forget it auto investment, but I'm just wondering if anyone has any specific advice for what to do with that money plus the $1000 monthly contribution? I'm sure there is, but at the same time I already work about 80 hours per week between work and school, so I'm not about Probably just keep on investing in good dividend ETFs, once you start getting a decent amount of investment money you can make decent money each year through dividends. For lazy fire and forget investing places like Wealthfront/Betterment offer pretty decent service for a small fee IMO. The fee is somewhat cancelled out by things such as no stock trading costs. etalian fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Jul 1, 2014 |
# ? Jul 1, 2014 00:28 |
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etalian posted:Yeah the vanguard target funds are pretty good if you want to start socking away retirement savings and don't want to pick individual ETFs. Yeah, I think the best plan is going to be saving up another $550 for the $1000 minimum and starting a Roth IRA through Vanguard, that way I can hopefully max it out each year and get better returns on the compounding interest than I could with a $450 investment.
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# ? Jul 1, 2014 00:57 |
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# ? Jun 13, 2024 04:07 |
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Do I gain the Admiral shares benefit of a Vanguard index if I have $10,000 split across a tax-advantaged and a taxable account? E.g. $4,000 in Roth IRA and $6,000 in a regular account.
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# ? Jul 1, 2014 01:47 |