I am looking for some advice concerning investments. Below are my current investments and some additional info. about them. I basically am somewhat clueless about what to invest in, how I should go about picking things to put my money in, etc. I am willing to take risk for high reward, and I understand by doing so I could lose money. I am 31-years-old and basically want to have my money earn as much as possible. I would like to be financially independent by the time I am in my early 40’s (not necessarily, retire but just not have the pressure of “having” to have a job). Over the course of a year, I will put $20,000 into the Vanguard brokerage account listed below at my current savings rate (every year I am working). I am going to stop putting money into the traditional IRA this year and open up a Roth IRA instead and start contributing to that annually at $5,500 per year (so I don’t have to pay taxes later and after reading more about IRA’s I think a Roth is a better way to go).
I have a Retirement account through my employer, but that is managed by Morningstar so they pick the funds for me and it performs very well so just keep in mind I have a regular retirement account too outside of these investments below.
Traditional IRA – TD Ameritrade
Total: $19,653.59
This contains the following funds:
NFLX (Netflix) – 56 shares
AAPL (Apple) – 27 shares
VTSMX – 87.67 shares
AOCIX – 189.97 shares
I am going to be contributing $5,500 into this IRA within the next couple weeks – I am not sure what I should purchase with this $5,500 though so any advice would be appreciated. I recently purchased the shares of VTSMX with money I had put into this IRA last year. I previously had put some money into this IRA to just play around buying stocks – which is why I have some Netflix and Apple. I can’t remember why I picked AOCIX.
Vanguard Brokerage Account
Total: $51,553.98
This contains the following funds:
VTSAX - $41,577.26
VBTLX - $9,973.49
I invested $40,000 in VTSAX and $10,000 into VBTLX about a month or so ago. I basically did this based on some advice I got in the “ask a mustachian” thread. I haven’t put any additional money into this aside from the original $50,000 investment.
If you need more information, let me know. Thanks for any advice.