Hello Everyone!
I am 24, and have been very lucky in life thus far; steady ~$40k/yr. career in finance. No debt whatsoever. In the next 6 months or so I should be transferring in my existing company, get a salary bump to $50-55k (potentially more), and be able to live at home for free. I am currently saving well over 2/3 of my income, and I should be able to get close to 70-80% in the next year or so. I have been getting into many finance blogs/articles over the last 6 months and am almost caught up with MMM. Per his advice, I recently tossed my savings in Vanguard's VFIAX mutual fund. I have read on here that I probably should not have done that since I now have to pay taxes on the gain for this year. Oh well, lesson #1 out of the way.
Here is my question. As a naive 24 year old, Lending club appeals to me to no end. I have rumbled through 20 articles/forums in the past 24 hours to get an idea of how safe I feel investing with them. I want to put in about $3,600 of savings from closing my local bank account. Should I deposit this in the traditional way as an investor, or should I consider setting this up as an IRA?
1) Can I do that?
2) I have a 401k, and I am aware of the $5,000 IRA contribution limit for 2012, I am not sure if that is for each individual account, or if I have to establish what I have contributed to my 401k, subtract that from $5,000, and then limit my contribution to the difference.
3) Assuming I am limited to $5,000 per account, should I move $5,000 of my VFIAX funds to an IRA with Vanguard? Can I have more than one IRA account with them?
4) What else would you recommend given my circumstances?
Many thanks!