Author Topic: How to spend my future money?  (Read 2418 times)

AnDaLe

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How to spend my future money?
« on: July 10, 2012, 01:38:15 PM »
And by spending, I mean spending on investments...C'mon, did you really think it was something else? 
 
Outline of Current Situation:
Annually maxing my Roth IRA
Contribute to employer match on 401k (8% of salary with 6% total match)
Living cheap while not feeling deprived
Will be having extra cash that needs to go to work every paycheck
Strong desire to retire early (Age:25, would like to retire by 35-40)

I've liked Real Estate over the past couple years and saved enough to get into a nice Multifamily home with my aunts (3-way partnership).  I've saved additional cash as a downpayment for another property, but just waiting for the right deal to pop up as I've lost out a couple potentials due to full cash offers.  It's just sitting in a wannabe "High Yield" savings account currently.  However, wanting some diversity while not sitting on too much cash, I'm going to start portioning cash from paychecks going forward into the market.

So given my situation, is this the way to go?  Do I "NEED" to put more into my 401k?  When and how should I start investing in a tax account?  Every paycheck, pick up some of your favorite ETF/funds? Do it once a month?  What about portfolio rebalancing? 

I plan to use the Bernstein's 4 fund "Lazy Portfolio" with ETFs as it makes sense to me and it seems relatively easy to manage. 


velocistar237

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Re: How to spend my future money?
« Reply #1 on: July 11, 2012, 06:25:41 AM »
For most people, putting as much as they can in tax-deferred accounts like the 401k and Traditional IRA is the way to go. The exception is if you have debt you want to pay down, or investments that you can't make inside a 401k, like the real estate you mention. If you have enough set aside for your near-term real estate investments, then you might consider opening a regular individual investment account through Vanguard. You can easily set up recurring automatic deposits. You'll have to figure out about ETFs vs. regular funds (with their fund minimums, usually $3000) and how to allocate different asset classes between your 401k and your taxable account. One good resource for this is the Boglehead wiki.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!