Request the 401k summary plan document. Most employees just get the summary plan description, because the summary plan document is too large.

Not sure if this is still the appropriate thread, but figured I'd post for feedback anyways

Country you live in - Mexico (US citizen)

Income - varies a lot, lets call it 80k a year post-tax for the last decade. i can have a losing year, but i play a lot and play buyins that reduce this chance

Risk Tolerance - high in general, but looking for low-medium risk plays

Timeframe for investment -several years, retirement. end goal is living off residuals by the time poker is over

Any other information you might have that would help us - I have very little overhead expenses, own the house I live in. Not sure how much time there is left with poker, but my aim is to save as much as I can and invest it. I was a frivolous spender for much of the last decade, but have somewhat got it under control

I wasn't great with investing in my 20s. 10 years later, I have a lot more money, but no real plans on what to do with it. I've mostly let my cash sit between poker accounts for years. For a long time I was involved with backing, so I needed a large sum online, but that is not the case anymore.

I probably have 400k in liquid cash I am able to invest. I already own an amount of Bitcoin that I am comfortable with outside of this investment portfolio

I contributed to my ROTH IRA already, and have a small position in the sp500. Looking for some more advice or direction as I assume people have been in a similar spot before

I'm not an investment expert like some of the others here, but you really can't go wrong going with an index fund if you can leave it alone for a few years and the longer you can leave it the better. Definitely a low-medium risk play to invest in an index fund of your choice. Not saying it's fool proof and it can lose principle, but more often than not, you'll get a solid return without having to do much research or stock trades if you go invest in an index fund.

Another viable alternative is buying property at or near your current location. This will require a little work as either you or a property management company you hire will need to collect rents, find new tenants if your current tenants leave, etc. Of course you will have to find and research properties to purchase. Just depends how much work you want to do. This will provide residuals that you're looking for and for the most part, property is a low-medium risk proposition in most cases.

This is kinda random and off topic but in retirement..... how much can someone expect to earn yearly on a safe asset mix that would be appropriate for someone 60+ and in retirement (I’m thinking bonds, fixed income investments, maybe a little in blue chip stocks, etc)?

Just wondering bc I’m trying to analyze how much X dollar amount could go if you withdraw a set amount each year (say 150k and keep balance in fixed income, etc). Just wondering what return would be possible. I’m going to guess probably 4-5% however would include some risk.

Also anyone have an idea on what sort of return is possible on a yearly basis for a vanguard account say invested in equities. No bonds, just their handpicked stock funds. Again I would assume 8-9% but more likely 6-8%. Like I did the math based on historical returns for my portfolio ( wanna say it went through 1-2 recessions for most) and prolly ends up around 8%. Just wondering if this info is useful? I would say longer time horizon = useful and way past 5 years for an investment that hasn’t been around long is less useful but just wondering if I’m accurate here. I multiplied (% of my portfolio it takes u) * historical return on a yearly Basis.

Also known as a Monte Carlo simulation. There are various free calculators telling you the percentage of time your portfolio survives with a withdrawal rate.

https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/...rlo-simulation

Bonds are highly correlated with starting yield. So, expect somewhere between nothing and not very much at current rates.

Historical stock returns are great if you have a time machine. If you have more than 10-20 years before you need the money, you should do pretty well. Less than that and the returns vary fairly wildly, which kind of matters a lot if you are planning on using them to pay for food and other things old people seem to like having

Deleted a bunch of random bitcoin crap from this thread, let's not do that here.

Not sure if this is the right thread because I guess this is more of a budgeting or general investment question rather than a specific request for specific indexes or anything to invest in but here goes:

My household income is 6850 every two weeks (13700 every month with two extra paychecks a year). Our total expenses that are spent every month are about 2k for personal expenses, 3200 for home (have 20%ish equity in 650k home with a 3.2% interest rate on a 30 year fixed loan), 800 for utilities, 260 for gym, 60 for internet, 200 for phone, 1250 for student loans (on a ten year forgiveness plan with three years left for me and about 5 for the spouse). This totals about 7800 a month.

However, on an annual basis, we pay a total of 10500ish at various times throughout the year to cover our insurance costs for life insurance and car insurance a couple other annual type bills. We pay 18k once a year for our kid's private school.

We have a little over 100k in cash that we aren't looking to invest and just serves as our emergency fund.

I have 20kish in a taxable brokerage account.

My spouse and I both have a government pension plan which will pay us approximately 70% of our highest annual salary every year until we die from when we retire. We will both retire in our 50s from this current job and the pension payments would start right then. We aren't sure if we would be officially done working or move to something else, but it wouldn't affect our pension payments either way.

I'll take any general advice of course.

But, I'm specifically not sure of what to do with the remaining 5900 a month left over from my fixed expenses (although, if you take the insurance payments and the private school costs and add back in the two extra paychecks a year then I only have an extra 4650ish every month).

I've identified three potential strategies and would like the brain trust's advice, but I'm also more than willing to consider different options that I didn't list.

As far as retirement accounts, to the extent that we would invest in those, I think I'd prefer the Roth versions because I anticipate (given the pension, future investment income, and potentially another job, and some of the lowest taxes in history now) to be in a higher tax bracket upon retirement then I am now.


Option 1:

My spouse and I can both contribute to a 457(b) plan which is basically like a 401k. There is a Roth version available to us. Contribution limit is about 20k a year.

We can also each do a backdoor Roth IRA to get another 12k total sheltered into a Roth IRA.

That's a total of 52k in retirement contributions to the 457b and backdoor Roth IRA for us which is about 4300 a month.

Benefits of this plan that I see is that we get to maximize our investing in tax-advantaged accounts. Bad news is that only leaves about 350ish a month left over (on an annual basis) to replace any money that came from our savings so our emergency fund is back where we want it or to invest in the taxable brokerage account if there is more savings than required for the emergency fund. Although, I don't anticipate having problems with cash flow on a monthly basis because the backdoor Roth IRA would be a lump sum 12k that we contribute (6k each) in January of every year so wouldn't be a monthly draw from our paycheck but would just effect our savings rate on an annual basis.

Option 2.

We don't use any of the tax-advantaged accounts. This leaves us the full 5900 a month and 4650ish a month on an annual basis to either use to replenish emergency fund when necessary or to invest in a taxable brokerage account.

Benefits of this seems to be the greater protection in having a larger cash flow each month and the flexibility that can come with investing it all into a taxable brokerage account. Drawbacks are that it is a taxable brokerage account. However, I wonder if the fact that we have the pension makes it not as necessary to tie up money that can only be used in retirement (the 457b plan can't be withdrawn including contributions until age 59.5 but the Roth IRA has more flexibility than the 457b but less than the brokerage account) and maybe the tax implications from the brokerage account are worth the greater flexibility.

Option 3.

Some sort of mixed strategy where we do both to some extent. Perhaps I set a minimum monthly savings target and I can contribute to tax deferred accounts anything in excess of that minimum monthly savings target.

Advantages would be achieving tax-advantaged growth while still having the flexibility mention in option 2. Disadvantages would include the taxable part of that flexibility.

I know this post was kind of long but I've been putting a lot of thought into it and can't really decide what I want to do. Thanks in advance for the advice.

100% do Option #1. You're missing out on major major tax savings in the long run if you do anything else. Tax advantaged savings >>>> brokerage account, and I do both.

I also have a large emergency fund...you might consider lowering that to $50k, particularly if you are going to do some investing in a taxable account that you could liquidity. No complaints from me if you want to keep it $100k. Consider investing that into something like a short term treasury fund (or short term munipal bond fund) to get better return that you'll get from savings or money market accounts right now.

Great job to put yourself in a position to have this conversation. Glad to answer other questions.


Edit: One other note - also remember that with Roth contributions, you can withdraw those at ANY TIME without penalty. So you can effectively hammer in tons of Roth contributions and pull money from there if you got into a dire emergency.

Age: 33
Emergency Fund: $15k
401K: $125k
529: $10k (I have 3 daughters - Oldest starts kindergarten next month so we will start to use this for her private school.)

I’d like to buy 3 1oz gold bars ~$2k each as an investment for my girls but I do not want to deplete my emergency fund under $10k. Thoughts?

Thoughts = don't buy gold. Just invest it, preferably for yourself or if you want to do it 'for them', put it in the 529's or a taxable account in their name.

What's not to like?!? Best way to make money is to buy retail and sell wholesale!

Hard to answer without knowing several things...like 15k are 6 month expenses , you own a house or pay rent etcetc...but just an idea

If u put 5k normal deposit , 5k very low risk (and obv rel low return fund)
and 5k in another low risk fund , making sure they have liquidity and you can sell in 24h that will give you 10 times more money over 25 years while still allowing you to sell at anytime if u need.
The key here is knowing where to invest in this specific situation , just read
and research

What is the rationale for buying gold (ellaborate the vision+time frame)?
Make sure you have a proper ratioanle and objectiv knowledge before you invest in anything

That seems like a stupid idea. Why not just have a 6 month emergency fund and invest the rest in equities (maybe put small % of portfolio in silver/ gold). Meh equities are going to have a better return long run vs gold most likely and are safer I feel. Stocks/ ETFs/ etc are much easier to liquidate vs gold if you need cash also.

Your #s provided seem solid so whatever you do most likely is fine but silver/gold are not going to provide returns like stocks.

Get your daughters 6k worth of bitcoin.

Question about portfolio balancing:

What's the right amount of cash? Trying to wait for good buys, but not try to time the market

Right now I'm about 90 percent invested, thinking to scale back to 80?

It's a reasonable question.

I keep enough cash in an emergency fund to make my wife and I happy (I keep that in a conservative muni bond fund).

Other than that, I stay fully invested. I just assume I can't effectively time the market and my time horizon is long, so I assume plowing it in will work out in the long run.

I did do a LOT of tax loss harvesting this year, lol.

Yeah, I have cash outside but I'm talking about cash in my actual portfolio. Now I keep most of the reserve cash in short term bonds to get a small return. I don't know if it's really market timing, I'm just waiting until I see deals on stocks. Right now I don't want to buy anything as they're all so expensive, just hoping for a pullback. The only bargain I see now to add shares is Frankfurt Airport (fpruy) but even it's been recovering pretty fast.

I think there's some way to optimize this based on say the pe ratio of SPY. When it's lower, be fully invested, when it's higher, be 80% as a pullback is likely coming. But again, it's all about finding deals not timing per se. Of course I could be wrong.

I have about 20k USD cash on me...and am willing to be a little risky with it.

I make a humble 45kCDN a year but it is a government job with a decent pension.

I'm thinking to start buying 2 shares of Amazon and 20 MSFT to start and then buying more and more as i go monthly.

I am currently single and would still have plenty of cash on hand for bills and entertainment like my poker club (slight winner at too) and what have you...so i'd like to start going more aggressively

Buy some small cap value ETFs, buying Microsoft and amazon at these prices isn’t great

Country = Canada
Income = Not a lot but around 20k/year will be set aside for investing.
Risk Tolerance = low
Timeframe for investment = 20 years
Debt = $0
Any other information you might have that would help us:

Hi,
I have around 80k to invest. I'm clueless but trying to learn about stocks and options (from Option Alpha YT videos, the Rational Reminder Podcast, and reading this forum so far).

I've always heard that actively manage portfolios usually fail to beat index investing long-term. Is that true? If so, any recommendation for index investing? Just buy SPY and forget about it?

From what I've gathered so far, I'm doubtful I could be +EV when it comes to options (since accurate market predictions are part of the equation), but I think occasional gambles with limited risk may be ok at times. Any good trading platform recommendations for Canadians, and in general should options always be a fairly small part (<10%) of an investment strategy?


Thank you for any considerations

I'm just curious what is your situation? Your income is not alot but you have 20k per year to invest and 80k now?

Big life nit.
100% of eating out expenses for over a year were <$3 coffees.
I don't have any expensive hobbies, except an occasional gym membership.
Driving the cheapest car possible until it dies for good. I maintain it myself, min insurance etc. Have an old phone that was given to me w/no data, and cheapest pay as you go plan I could find. Someone gave me their old computer and I currently have no need for a better one. I wear my clothes until they're rags.
Had two jobs at the same time for a while until the hectic routine got to me (round the clock days that negatively impact digestion and sleep = not fun), but now I focus on the FT one that pays slightly better than average.
Pretty much willing to sleep in my car if my living situation got too expensive.
Don't watch TV, go to movies, events (unless I get the tickets for free) or travel.

This may change some day but for now I'm fine with it for some reason.

Have you looked into selling put options or spreads?

I'm posting this in case it helps one person out there because the vast majority of Americans had zero financial education and I really wish I had learned this when I was 18.

There are also summaries of financial education books free on YouTube if you want to learn more. But you don't have to make investing a big project that takes a lot of time to learn; you can start today, keep it simple, and set it up in one hour and that works too.

Even if you don't want to invest before Spring at least get yourself ready to buy low if there's another market crash by opening your investment accounts today and planning what you'll do. You can even practice trading for fun with free play money online based on the real market (to find sites google "paper trading").

(If you open the videos in a new window be sure you watch the real video by clicking "skip ads" in the lower right corner because sometimes YouTube plays other channels' videos as ads.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkNueyFs8zQ



(note for the below video, bank interest rates are lower now)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBNpqSMiffY



(note for the below video, you can do this but instead of using Robinhood use a brokerage that offers IRAs for your first $6000 per year)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruvOZQavzjM