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Well, not so much a newbie, I'm 48.
Never had any retirement plans at my jobs.
Been self-employed for 8 years with some cash on the side.
I'd like to know what simple/easy options I have to invest for retirement.
I've read about index funds but clueless about it.
Where do I go and how do I open an account that I can add to it monthly for retirement.
Amount to start with is $10K
Before you start investing, I would suggest you do a little research so you understand what you are investing in. A good place to begin is with a visit to an online site that would help you as a beginning investor. The site I would suggest is Investopedia. Here is the link. Good Luck!
Well, not so much a newbie, I'm 48.
Never had any retirement plans at my jobs.
Been self-employed for 8 years with some cash on the side.
I'd like to know what simple/easy options I have to invest for retirement.
I've read about index funds but clueless about it.
Where do I go and how do I open an account that I can add to it monthly for retirement.
Amount to start with is $10K
Thanks
Forget about index funds. You get the bad stocks with the good ones there. Look into Vanguard target date funds. You are young enough to tolerate some risk.
?? vanguard target date funds are made up of index funds...but yes that would be a reasonable place to start. Broadly diversified, passively managed, low fee mutual funds or ETFs [and use the investopedia link if you don't know all the terms]
Read a couple books, listen to a few podcasts, etc to boost your general knowledge and confidence level (Jill Schlesinger, Ric Edelman, David Bach some possible basic places to start)
Forget about index funds. You get the bad stocks with the good ones there. Look into Vanguard target date funds. You are young enough to tolerate some risk.
This was always my belief. It was fueled by, you guessed it, my financial adviser. I just was in contact with a fee only adviser and he sent me a PDF and essentially it said if you take your money and split it in equal parts between a US total stock market index fund, an international total stock market index fund and and a total US bond market index fund this will beat most all managed funds once fees are considered. And make no mistake fees are a huge part of all of this. What will happen is some of these funds will be up as others are down. So at a points, say in 6 months your bond fund may have $3,900 in it while the International fund may be down to $3,200. It is very important to rebalance and it's really easy to do. The site you will pick to use will have a very simple link "rebalance" or you can set it up to do it automatically at whatever interval you chose.
Look I don't think the opening poster needa to spend a week studying books about something he/she does understand yet. The OP will probably get 1/3 through it and say screw it, this is boring and complicated, and end up with money in a passbook savings account earning nothing. Don't let that happen. It's not that hard to find a place for $10,000 and you don't need to spend a summer researching it.
your entrance and exit points trump all regardless what you do? not so great tax planning of the whole thing can out do those low expenses and alot of what you gained wiping them away in the 2nd half of the game.
folks run with these mantras like indexing beats managed or low expenses are so crucial without the fact that the big picture contains so much more that is important that the outcome is anything but predictable that indexing will win.
it is never a comparable apple to apple situation in real life. as an example my fidelity managed funds are used in a portfolio that is managed , funds are switched out from time to time depending on the big picture.
while not all the funds beat its index working togather the portfolio beat a buy and hold indexing model for decades now..
for those following my once a month update i have been comparing monthly my portfolio of managed fidelity funds vs an etf portfolio of low cost etf's i am interested in using eventually.
well because markets have been see sawing the managed funds are now up almost 40k higher on a 2 million dollar portfolio over the lower cost etf index model after starting out the same.
whether indexing wins is really going to depend on the long term market time frame you are in and what the sequences of that market are as well as your entrance and exit points..
if you are going to use your portfolio to support you ,retirement investing because you are spending down at the same time as gains and losses are coming in at different sequences is very different planning than the accumulation stage. sequence risk trumps everything.
you need different stratagies than just buy and hold depending if you are investing for income and consistancy or investing for some income and legacy money for heirs but are not concerned if income falls a bit in bad times..
you require very different planning depending on end goal if you want to get things right..
Last edited by mathjak107; 09-20-2014 at 06:31 AM..
Forget about index funds. You get the bad stocks with the good ones there. Look into Vanguard target date funds. You are young enough to tolerate some risk.
This is just conceptually false. Target date funds are index funds...
I would do three things. 1 get into a Roth IRA. 2 get into an index fund with no load fees, 3. Invest the maximum plus catch up contribution amounts every year. That's all it takes, I would look into vasgx, which is the whole package in one fund, vtsax which is more aggressive, or look into target date funds.
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