Hi, I recently started my own company (last summer) and am hoping some of you could give me some advice on a few things. Thank you in advance for any help!
I am 32 (about to be 33 in April). I worked for a company for the past approximately 8 years and after about 5 years of employment was in a position to put a little money into the retirement account they offered. It was a SIMPLE IRA through Ameriprise. I wasn't able to contribute much over the past 3 years, but the account now has a balance of a little over $20,000 in it. I have probably contributed around $18,000 of that. So the account hasn't done horrible, but not great either. Of the options they provided I could choose I went with the "moderate aggressive" which the guy with Ameriprise seemed to agree was the best for me. So with all of that in mind here's my questions:
First, now that I am self employed (with no employees other than my wife) I am not sure what to do with this account. I did have it switched over to my company now, but have not contributed to it honestly because I wasn't sure of my profits/cash-flow this first year of running my company and wasn't sure it was the best option once I was ready to contribute some money. I do want to contribute to a retirement account regularly. As long as things go like they have recently, I should be able to contribute at least $5,200/year into a retirement account starting this year. Possibly more just depending on how things roll. Would you recommend I contribute to this SIMPLE IRA or start a different account altogether (i.e. Vanguard Traditional IRA)? A 401k doesn't seem very realistic for me due to the costs of it, so an IRA is probably what I should stick with, right? I do like that the SIMPLE IRA allows over $12,000 to be put in it per year, but I just don't know that this account through Ameriprise is going to be very beneficial long term? What would you do in this situation knowing that the max on a traditional IRA of $5,500 will be pretty easy for me to hit each year so anything else would have to go into a taxable account?
Second question is that I would also like to open a taxable account and I planned to just open a Vanguard VTSAX. If I maintain either the SIMPLE IRA or traditional IRA and am able to max those out, would it be best to go with the VTSAX or something else? I would have to go with the investor shares as I wouldn't have $10,000 to start right now. I'm not sure if buying into bonds right now is a good idea or not?
Lastly, we also had our first child in 2016 and I want to open both a 529 and taxable investment account for him. The 529 will be for family members to contribute to as I don't particularly care to put money into one, but I do want to put money back into a separate taxable account for him. Should I just open another VTSAX account for him but keep it in my name or is there a better avenue for that?
I hope that wasn't too overwhelming! :)
