a) good idea

b) better to buy a REIT fund for most people

c) Only for peace of mind. On average you will be better off just putting the whole thing in the market asap.

d) Maybe if you are young. 8)

I'd like to setup something of a retirement plan for my employees, and myself. I currently have 8 employees and use a payroll service. My payroll service will administer everything and integrate it with payroll for a fee of $275 per year.

Below is their offer. Is this a good deal? Is American Century legit?

Their Pitch:

Here is the bottom line:
v You may save up to $12,500 of tax sheltered income each year starting this year
ü An additional $3,000 if you are age 50 or over
Ø Total up to $15,500 per year per head
ü That’s a personal tax savings of up to $4,000 annually!
v 1-3% company contribution ONLY for those who choose to put away money voluntarily for themselves
ü This includes yourself
ü Any business matching is also a write-off
v Partnered with American Century Investments with over 60 investment choices
ü No sales-charges on all funds available!
ü Refer to this link for the full line-up: https://www.americancentury.com/cont...rformance.html
v Plan sponsor website included to make changes to the plan
v Fully integrated with payroll
ü No additional administration for you
v You can start, stop, or change your savings anytime
v No minimum participants
ü If you are the only employee you can still contribute
ü Write off your contributions at the end of the year
v No minimum contributions
ü Flexibility of putting away whatever you want
v You can stop using the plan at any time without penalty
ü No Cancellation/Termination Fee
Please keep in mind that:

[payroll service] handles ALL the administration and money movement in this plan... That means that this is a “set it and forget it” type of plan that requires very little effort to run!

Currently, we are offering a promotion

v For our payroll clients only:
ü Only $275 for whole year
ü You can get half the annual cost back for the first 3 years in tax credits
ü You get to write off the out of pocket cost as a business expense to help further lower your taxes

I hope this helps! The Simple IRA is very easy to run. All you do is process the usual payroll and the Simple IRA just works. The plan only takes 5-10 minutes to set up.

I don't know anything about setting this up for a company, so I don't know about all that. But the American Century looks like a total POS. It's funds are absurdly expensive. The target date funds are like 1.45%. And most of their other funds are 1.50-2.00%. Even if you do match your employees with 3%, that's almost entirely negated by the outrageous fees being charged by American Century.

Certainly there has to be some way to set this up that's not a total POS for your employees.

I just had a quick question. Here's some background:
I'm 31.
I just finished my first year of work after graduating school. 60k
This will be my second year of maxing out my Roth IRA.
Last year 13% of my salary was put into my 401k. It will be 13%+ from here on out.

Right now my 401k and my Roth IRA are all in Vanguards Retirement Index VTTSX.
If I were to add in some other "riskier" funds....would I be better off doing this in the 401k or Roth for any reason?

No.

Go with Vanguard. Also find a less expensive payroll solution.

Vanguard the best place to open up a Roth account?

Almost certainly yes.

Agree with Brian and dale, but just out of curiosity what sort of "riskier" fund would you be looking to add? VTTSX is 90% stocks, and 36% of them are outside the US. I don't disagree with it as a choice for you, just not sure why you would want more risk and what sort of risk that would be?

Thanks in advance for the feedback!

I'm early 30s, single, no debt, no property, income 40K, I've been maxing out a Roth IRA for the last 5 years.

I have about 60K in a money market savings account and am wondering if there's a better low/medium risk investing option for some of it. I've heard that mutual funds are worth looking at. Thoughts?

I was thinking along the lines of maybe Vanguards Emerging Markets and REIT Fund. I mean should I even entertain the idea of going 70/15/15 or 60/20/20 across the 3 funds?

There are many ways to slice and dice, those are reasonable diversification's. I have to be honest, I've become less enamored with emerging markets, as they contain more China than I care to hold. That statement goes against my passive investor principles, as it contains elements of market timing. It may mean emerging markets are about to boom. I like REITS as a diversification to a heavy stock portfolio. I believe it will make your portfolio less risky.

Country you live in: USA
Income: Around 40k/year
Risk Tolerance: High
Timeframe for investment: 20 or more years
Debt: No debt, no car payment, rent an apartment

I'm 29 and looking to continue investing for retirement. Right now I have a Rollover IRA at Vanguard with 30k in it. I'm working a temporary position where I have access to a 401k with Fidelity but there is no company matching until if/when I get hired on permanently.

I have 70k in my savings account, 15k of which is my emergency savings. For this year should I contribute the max to my traditional IRA? Or open a Roth IRA and max it out?

What do you plan to do with the 55k in savings that isn't emergency fund?

At 40k/year, I'd lean towards Roth since your tax bracket is so low.

No plans for the 55k in savings. I don't need it for anything currently.

Maybe to buy a house sometime in the future. I'm not looking for a house anytime in the next 2-3 years though because I just moved to a new city and I'm not sure how long I will be here.

Country: Thailand
Income: $800k
Risk Tolerance: High
Timeframe for investment: Long
Debt: None
Current Investments:
-None
Age: Soon in my 30's

In the past have put all the money back to the business to build it up. Now it feels like I've quite maxed out the current business and don't have too much motivation expanding it further.

What, how and where I should do with all these moneys?

Country: UK
Income:From poker variable roughly £25k (conservative)
Risk Tolerance: Low
Timeframe: Long
Debt: £20k student loan
Current Investments: none
Age: 27

So I've got £20k of student debt still which I've never started paying because of playing poker for a living which I am still doing. Should I start paying that off voluntarily or think about that when I do get a taxable income? I own my home and have no other debt. I also have low living expenses/lifestyle.

I'm just lost as to how to make the most of my savings (£40k). I read that I should buy assets and invest but I have no idea how to go about it other than saving up to buy some rental property or land.

Hire a financial advisor.

2-3 years is extremely short term.

So do you think the best option is to let the savings sit and then max out a Roth IRA?

btw, thanks to you and LT22 for the help.

yim

I would at least try to maximize growth with that 55k in some short term holding. CDs are going to be better than a savings acct I'm sure. what's your current interest rate on that savings acct?

Heroin trade/production. Have a solid escape/backup plan for a tea planation (or hide out) in south China or India or perhaps Laos or Vietnam. If you already have contacts with Russian oligarchs/syndicates to move the product to Eastern Europe this is a leg up.

Country: American, currently living in Malta, possibly moving to Canada in the near future
Income: highly variable, maybe 500k/yr
Risk Tolerance: high
Timeframe: some long term, some short
Debt: None
Current Investments: No traditional financial investments. Various staking deals and other gambling "investments."
Age: 30

I've always used my poker bankroll pretty aggressively and not really taken any money out of it apart from living expenses. After a few good years and with the availability of very high stakes online diminishing, I think I'm finally in a position to start pulling money out of my active bankroll and setting it aside for investments.

I'm looking for advice on two separate things:

1. Something long term to do with a mid six figure amount. Leading candidates right now are Vanguard funds or something like Betterment/Wealthfront.

2. Somewhere better than a savings account to park money that I'd still consider part of my active poker bankroll. This would need to be very liquid. I'd want to be able to access it in no more than a week or so.

It would be a big plus if free/cheap currency conversion were built into this. In an ideal world I'd like to be able to deposit to and withdraw from this investment/account in any major currency. If that's not doable, being able to hold multiple balances in various currencies would be good too.

Hey Ike,

I'd look into Interactive Brokers. You can buy pretty much anything, hold different currencies, and fees are quite low.

I think the options you listed yourself are very good candidates for point 2. Those are highly liquid funds but have an EV which is higher than the interest on your savings accounts.
As your risk tolerance is quite high long-only index trackers seem like a pretty good bet for you. If you become more interested in hedging your retuns some less liquid options could be interesting (market corrections could be pretty harsh on a portfolio that's 100% long).

This looks like a great recommendation! Thanks. Anyone want to talk me out of it?