I had to take 17,000 as a federal loan but have already paid 7,000 (I saved every penny and paid one lump sum in January of 2014. The loan begins to build interest in March so I am in my last month of interest free; the interest is the standard 6.8%.
I am employed in this region and have a comfortable salary in the mid 50痴, I was able to turn my internship into my first really job in the profession. My employer matches 4% of my 401k and currently I知 adding 11% into my 401k
.... I currently have 6k that I received ( legally) and am looking to create a long term retirement account. I am somewhat confused on where and what I should be investing in. any advice on where should I begin reading about vanguard vs. t row vs. fidelity.
I am not throwing this at student loan because right now I知 allocating 1000 dollars ever month to student loan and will pay it off this year.
I'm going to go against the grain of my fellow mustachians and say NOT to put it towards the student loan. Already I can hear people begin to shout "hey! It's debt! It's bad! It's a virtual 6.8% return!!"
Yes, all that is true. But the OP is still in deferrement (he's not paying any interest at all this month). He has $10,000k outstanding and he's budgeted $1,000/month towards wiping out that debt. In all he'll pay about $300 interest on that note in the 10 months it takes to pay it off. In a sense he's already planned for eliminating that debt.
I believe what the OP was asking was where else he could or should park his funds.
I'd recommend two things;
1) how much of an "emergency fund" do you have? If you don't have a lot of cash on hand I'd put that $6,000 toward a money market account.
2) if you are all set with your emergency fund, definitely look into setting up either a ROTH IRA or a traditional IRA. Both have their advantages, and you can contribute $5500 of income per year (until you reach a certain income level, which you are not at yet).
In terms of Vanguard or t.row or fidelity... any of those can work. I go with Vanguard because I like my long-long term savings to be in market funds (for me it's the SP 500) and I chose the one with the lowest fees, which happened to be Vanguard. But both t.row and fidelity offer great low-fee options for index funds as well. Any will work, just decide what you want to put your money into and check the fees before investing. There are unscrupulous brokers that will charge up to 2% annually to do the exact same thing that the Vanguard SP 500 fund does.
just my thoughts
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