Hi, I just joined the site and it seemed like there was very sensible information being passed about so maybe I could get a little life advice for money.
I'm 32 and so is my wife. I have a stable job making about 50k a year. I have a company matched 401k I just started paying the full amount that the company matches into. At the moment it has about 7.5k in it. We have around 12k in savings sitting in a bank with basically 0 interest. We have no debt except a small amount of student debt we are paying off. My wife has a teaching credential but due to the California budget crisis cannot find full time work as a teacher, she is subbing and is perhaps pulling in 20k a year, no retirement or anything. We are planning opening a Vanguard Roth IRA for her for retirement, looking at either the STAR fund or the Vanguard Target Requirement fund... That we'd put about $1000 to $2000 into to get it going
Our financial hope in the near future is to buy a house, we'd like to invest our savings into something that will actually make money, at the moment it seems that even savings accounts barely pay above inflation, savers are getting screwed today, but without a stable income from her and a better downpayment we may not be able to buy a house before the housing market picks up and locks us out once more...
I guess it's actually nice to sit and type out our situation for my own benefit. It is unlikely my wife will get a stable income in the next two years, we are also at an age where we are starting to think about having kids soon... Is there a way to make those savings actually make some decent money? Or are we basically SOL due to the economy?
Thanks in advance