They usually pay dividends taxed at ordinary rates. Stocks tend to have low or no yield and you don’t have taxed until you sell at cap gains rates which are going to be lower than your marginal rate

ah makes sense. thanks

I have a fixed rate 30 year mortgage for 225K at 3.875%. I've been getting emails and even snail mails about refinancing. Considering it but not sure of the pros and cons. Is there any reason I shouldn't be looking into moving ahead with a reputable lender?

The people I know with mortgages refinance every opportunity they get. Is there any reason not to skip a mortgage payment and lower your interest rate any chance you can?

Loans cost money.

Refinancing isn't free.

That. Also, it presumably hurts my credit score to shop around for rates which might not end up being much better. And I'm not sure how good these online only mortgage companies are compared to the local FCU that I've banked with all my life. Say I need a new roof or have some issue with property taxes or something, pretty sure my bank will help me ASAP. Not sure if the same can be said for like LendingTree or whoever.

You can sometimes no-cost refinance if the rates are low enough as compared to your current loan.

It resets the loan term of course.

Hi everyone,

I'm a 36-year-old single guy living in California who has let most of his savings sit in cash for too long. I'm an investment newb who is scared of rapid inflation. I suppose I have medium risk tolerance.

Salary > $80K

Every two weeks I get $1,100 in my bank account and contribute $1,600 to my 401k (my company matches 85 cents for every dollar, I started maxing out contribution late last year).

My total assets are $163,000, broken into:

401K > $80,000 > 50%
Crypto > $28,000 > 18%
Stocks > $6,200 > 4%
Cash > $46,000 > 29%

401K
$66K > Franklin Lifesmart 2050 Retirement Fund
"broad asset classes of equity and fixed income investments"

$16K > LifePath Dynamic 2050 Fund (Blackrock fund)
"broadly diversified global asset classes and becomes more conservative over time as investors approach retirement...portfolio of complementary funds and seeks consistent, uncorrelated return through index, factor, and alpha seeking strategies."

Should I roll over these? Should I change the investments themselves?

Crypto
$28K
I just started investing in February, mostly in Coinbase, but also some in Paypal and Kraken. I just bought a Trezor hardware wallet to store some of it on that, should arrive in a couple weeks. My big worry is that online exchanges are really that safe (i.e. government regulations could lead to assets not being available for withdrawal).

My allocation is:

Bitcoin 62%
Ethereum 22%
Zecash 7%
Litecoin 4%
Btc Cash 3%
Others 3%

If I was more confident in my ability to safely store bitcoin, I would be comfortable putting 25-30% of my assets in this.

Stocks
$6,200

It's a hodgepodge:

ARK Innovation ETF - $4,000
High Tide (Canadian weed company) - $1500
5 other stocks - $700 total

I'm willing to speculate with stocks.

Cash
$46K

Most of this is sitting in my Fidelity account, uninvested. The rest in checking account/venmo. I know it's too much, I should really only have $15K I think.

Random thought: My brother just bought some land in rural Idaho and says you can get 20 acres there for $40K. He's gonna build a house there, so it's not really an investment for him. Still, he thinks it'll rise in value over time as rich people seek remote getaways. I'm not so sure, but I think maybe it'd be a good hedge against inflation?

If you read all this, thank you, and appreciate any feedback. The idea of inflation and/or stock market collapse eating all my savings is giving me anxiety.

Thanks.

if you have good credit and steady income then you won't need to hold onto much for emergencies, could use credit as a stopgap until you can liquidate some of the more liquid investments like stocks

if you like the idea of having cash available that's 100% safe theni a cd ladder much better for interest rates - not what you're looking for most likely but it's 10x better imo than savings accounts

i'd be careful about this and only buy if you really know it well or plan on eventually using it yourself

remote areas are tricky, out west it's full of ghost towns because there's no local employment and it's not convenient enough as a weekend home for the idle rich, the hamptons suck balls compared to most beachfront property, it's cold and got all this funky long grass and just yuck - but it's beachfront property close enough to drive to straight from work on a friday and be back in manhattan by sunday night

unless this region is close to an airport, has nice restaurants/activities nearby and most importantly, has other wealthy people moving in i'd stay clear - unless it's a great place to retire in permanently or someone in la/sf can reasonably go there for a weekend

definitely post about it in the ask me about real estate thread, you'll get some real expert opinions instead of random thoughts from a schmuck like me

10-15k in cash cash is around my comfort level as a 30s single as well. Plenty of CC limit available to float me a few weeks to liquidate something if I need emergency cash.

Whats the time horizon on the cash? Whats your priority? If your focus is building for long term/retirement I would open a personal IRA (probably a roth) and max that ~6K contribution out with the cash pile. Easiest choice for the rest of the money, is stick it in your preferred etf and forget about it. VT or VTI would be my choice.

If your time horizon is shorter term, more to consider but i still likely land on Max out a Roth and buy mostly VT/VTI. Could also just buy more target date funds at whatever your time horizon is

You can also transfer your BTC into a personal IRA fairly straightforwardly these days

I only started investing last year and lost a fair bit getting caught up in options since last June. As mentioned before I am a recovered h addict, gambling addict too. I once bet 30k on a hand of blackjack in Vegas 8 years ago, had a thread in Vegas lifestyle under a different name where I was playing 2/5 then I blew it up. I'm good at saving money but have bad self control. Since I mostly stopped messing with options last October I've saved over 100k CAD, which doesn't seem possible as it's almost my wife and I whole income, but its after tax.

At 33 I am getting a late start on retirement saving and want to be done by 55 if I can keep up this rate of work for a decade, I think its possible. 75k a year would be a realistic investment for any future years, 100k more likely though

I am in Canada and have TFSA and RRSP room so that may be the way to go, I was kind of thinking of buying a couple hundred shares of SPY and selling weekly calls, but have to convert to USD and pay 3% initially, then I have all the money available in a margin account.

The only reason I want to still use my margin account is I have 5 figures of losses to make up that can be used as tax deductions, so for now its the same as a TFSA in Canada.

Anyone have any other good strategies, will be adding 5 figure payments every couple months too.

snowie963,

get professional help for your gambling addiction.

I did a year of an expensive counsellor, drugs and gambling stuff, with this kind of thing I believe you are on your own at a certain point. I do need to do something with my money though, can't just leave everything cash. I chose to put it into RRSP where it will go into TD funds and some single stocks.

Put it into exactly one target date retirement fund and don't fiddle with it. I'm assuming that this expensive counselor taught you to not gamble at all (which would include stock picking, any options trading, etc.). If not, then go back to counseling.

Or, **** up and gamble and hope this time will be different. Kind of up to you.

This. Start dumping 5k in per month in a target date fund and do that in perpetuity until you have enough to retire.

I do have a few stocks, but with the td funds it takes like 2 days to sell anything or buy so I am mostly using those.

I have 20K CAD to invest. I'm young (27), and am fine not touching this money until I want to buy a house. That'll probably at least 5 years from now because LOL Toronto housing.

I'm thinking about putting 60% in a Canadian ETF that tracks SP500 like HXS and the remaining 40% in an ETF that tracks the equal weighted SP500 like RSP (both trade on the TSX). I know Buffet is famous for saying, "it's not about timing the market, it's about time in the market", but I can't help but be concerned about the current state of the market. Especially since my investment horizon is only 5 years. If this was a retirement account and my horizon was 15+ I would be a lot less concerned.

I greatly appreciate any and all input.

^ It is about timing the market. Investing for the longer term you want to buy cheap which isn't easy in a market trending up for 12 years now. Try to be more specific when choosing ETFs there are investment themes (like energy transition) that could pay off nicely in the next 5 years.

lol @ "It is about timing the market." Feel free to show us evidence of your success at market timing over the long term or else you're full of crap and not welcome in this thread.


Puck, biggest question is how much of a drawdown are you okay with? And if you have a big draw down (if you put it in S&P 500 type investment), are you okay delaying purchasing a house in the case of a draw down?

It's all about risk profile (how much volatility you'll take) and how critical timing is for you. If timing isn't critical and you're good with volatility, putting it into a diversified equity investment (like the S&P 500 or even something more broad like US/world equities) is 100% fine.

I'll skip on being the first ever posting a trading record on this forum but thanks for the invite

I agree something like at least wait for a dip would've been sounded better it's all I wanted to say. Hope you'll be able to cope, have a nice day tho

I live in Belgium, I know basically nothing about investing/finance.

I have €50 / month I'd like to invest in something to build some capital for in 5/10 years, which I can then use to further invest.

I'm currently doing an investment plan with my bank (Belfius) it's called Candriam Sustainable High C.
I've been investing €25 / month for a while now, currently got €700 in there.
But I'm not really sure what this is or how it works or how much I'm paying my bank for this.

What should I do?

With TD if I contribute $100 a month it is free, minus the cost of trades unless I'm buying the TD pre made funds, which have a small fee built in. Figure out if and what the fees are, if you are paying something like $100 a year, or really any fees, it's not worth it to invest in those small increments.

Looking to do something with my excess bankroll so it's not just gathering dust. Is there any retirement investment vehicle that satisfies both these requirements?

- eligible to buy stocks/ETFs
- can withdraw principal without penalty if runbad (or take out a loan)

I already max out my Roth, if that's important.

A regular brokerage account

So there's no retirement plan that satisfies those requirements?