Hi All,
I figured I'd tack my questions to this user since I'm totally spanking new to this forum/site and also have close to minimal knowledge about investing.
Here is my basic situation and questions:
I'm 35 with a partner and no kids. Currently own a home in IL with 4% 30yr fixed rate loan. Just bought a new Toyota Prius with a 1.49% financing for 6yrs. and intend to keep it till it dies. In about 2yrs. my partner and I plan on moving to Portland and buying a larger property so we can do gardening which is our passion. The house doesn't need to be anything grand since we like being in the yard more. We would loose money when we try to sell our current house and i will probably have to tap into the invested funds for a downpayment on the new house, but we may get some money back from the sale in IL since on Zillow the house price is currently estimated about 10k more than our mortgage at the time.
I actually already have some decent after tax investments with American Funds which i started in 2010. These are separate from 401k and previous employer IRA accounts which i have with Charles Schwab and Pacific Life respectively.
My main concern is that even though my American Funds (i will call it AF for future reference) investments are doing fairly well, when i started reading Mr. Money Mustache's advice on investing i quickly came to the realization that i am one of those people with expense ratio of 1.4-1.9% depending on the fund. Needless to say i want to change that! As of now i don't want to make a drastic move like pull all my money out of AF and invest them elsewhere, say in Vanguard VTSMX. I can, however, start making future investments into Vanguard and gradually pull my money out of AF if it seems like it's doing better.
Having said that, the reason i started with AF is because we had a rep come to my work and since i was ready to invest and i went to meet with him individually eventually. Since i know nothing about investing and though it's going to sound ignorant... , would rather do other things (like gardening) with my time than read a bunch of books on investment which will put me to sleep and make my head spin, how would you advise me to set up an account that is painless, easy to manage and understand? Do i just call up Vanguard to ask them?
I was thinking of using VTSMX since MMM recommended it, but if things have changed since he gave this advice should i invest elsewhere?
Also, from what i could tell Vanguard makes you start with 3k. is that correct?
Just as an FYI, for now this would be a likely more of a short term investment, but in the future once i start moving out my money from AF then it would be long term.
Thank you for your advice!