• The KillerFrogs

OT: How Do You Invest Your Money?

82 Frog Fever

Active Member
Just curious, does anyone out there work for a company that has a pension plan? This does not include government that is in lieu of Social Security, but a plan in addition to Social Security and a 401k?

I retired back in Jan. 2016, but Motorola did have a great pension plan.
Discontinued for new employees going forward.
 

Dogfrog

Active Member
This isn’t what you’re looking for but just wanted to mention a little known option for teachers. When our sons left my wife wanted to do something so she got her alternate teaching certificate and taught 4th grade about ten years. Only reason I bring this up is if one of you is making a pretty good living and the other is teaching, look into a 403(b) for the teacher. It’s a tax deferred savings vehicle for teachers similar to a 401k but you can contribute up to $19.5k per year or $25.5k if you are over 50. So if the spouse is making enough to live on it’s a nice savings strategy. The watch out is school districts don’t bring this up much, you have to look for it. Also a down side is they contract with administrators who try to force you into annuities or MF’s with high fees. But after asking several times they had other options and she ended up in a Fidelity 403b with most of the usual Fidelity options. When she retired she just rolled it into an IRA.

Edit: most school districts don’t do matching contributions.
 
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froginmn

Full Member
Start early, and max out IRA and 401K early. If you're earning a low amount, put money into a Roth. I created Roths for both my kids and they put money in when they were making so little as to not pay taxes. It went in tax free and will come out tax free.

Put everything you can into IRA, as early as you can.

If you intend to fund college for kids, start a 529 as early as you can. Mine has grown at a crazy rate and it's virtually tax free. Some states even offer tax deductibility when you put it in. My son went to a two year school and despite the fact that I didn't put a crazy amount in, I almost have too much for my daughter.

Don't over manage. Put it in there and it will grow steadily over many years.
 

Dogfrog

Active Member
Just curious, does anyone out there work for a company that has a pension plan? This does not include government that is in lieu of Social Security, but a plan in addition to Social Security and a 401k?

I ended up with three pensions. Stayed long enough at three separate employers to qualify.
 

jake102

Active Member
I basically max out the 401k. By max I mean the maximum allowable per year which also includes my Company's match (which is really good). From there it goes into passive investment account with a major global monstrosity bank toggled to the riskiest investment option possible (not that risky) since I'm still relatively young. I occasionally use a couple thousand to invest in random things like a 3x levered S&P 500 which has been awesome.

All that to say - two kids in 18 months and going down to single income has turned me from a rich to a medium class citizen
 

HToady

Full Member
In 2000 I had an extra $10k to invest in the stock market. I was torn between multiple shares of dot coms or one share of Berkshire Hathaway. I went with the dot coms. That one share of Berkshire Hathaway is now worth over $200k. The dot coms? 50 cents. I also bought Enron and Braniff International.

I let professionals do my investing now......
 

MAcFroggy

Active Member
Interesting discussion. Thanks for bringing it up. Obviously based on life situations, but we are debt free. We are not on the dave ramsey plan or anything, but we are definitely not a huge fan of banks notes.

My wife and I do not do anything crazy. I put as much into my 401(k) as my company allows (10% of salary with a match on part of it). My wife maxes hers out too. We also do an IRA contribution for both of us as well.

Non-retirement investments are allocated between s&p, Russell, international, and real estate funds. We have target percentages that we try to reallocate to every so often.

We have a young child, and we opened a 529 within a couple months of his birth.

I wish we were more on top of our finances, but for our age (early 30s), we are doing pretty well.
 

tcumaniac

Full Member
@tcumaniac how are you wealthfront annualized returns compared to the total market or SP500?
That's a tough question to answer because it's really a comprehensive and globally diverse investment portfolio that invests in assets classes far beyond just the US Stock market.

Check out this blog post from Wealthfront. It does a much better job explaining than what I am incapable of. https://blog.wealthfront.com/benchmark-diversified-portfolio/

Also a side note: Wealthfront charges a .25% annual management fee. However, for every person you invite that signs up, you get an additional $5k managed free (as does the person that signs up through the invite link). I've invited enough friends that have joined, that I still have all of my money managed free. Happy to send an invite link if you're interested ;)
 

tcumaniac

Full Member
Depends on how much you can invest now, what your goals are, if you are already investing max in IRA/401k, & how much you can invest annually going forward.

1st priority is to clear consumer debt and invest max in 401k (especially if there is a Corp match) / IRA.
I have about $25k in credit card debt, but the interest rate on it is pretty good, so I just make the monthly minimum payments.

Kidding. That felt gross to even type. But I agree. Pay off consumer debt before investing. Outside of our mortgage, my wife and I are lucky enough to be debt free.

My wife contributes to her 401k up to what they will match (8%), and up to this point, I've always maxed out my IRA every year, but I've made very minimal 401k contributions myself. For a while my company didn't offer a 401k, and then when they did, there wasn't a match. I'm not extremely fond of the investment options provided by our plan and think the fund level fee ratios are pretty high, so I've stopped contributing to it for the foreseeable future.

I've read a lot of literature that argues that a 401k isn't always as advantageous as it's made out to be, especially if your employer doesn't match and the fund level fees provided by your 401k plan are fairly high (which both are the case for me). With the possibility to better diversify, find a lower fee structure, and have automatic re-balancing and tax loss harvesting provided by a robo-advisor such as wealthfront or betterment, there's a strong argument that you don't always come out that far ahead with a 401k plan. And there's obviously a huge advantage to having the liquidity of a taxable account compared to the illiquid nature of a 401k.
 

tcumaniac

Full Member
I basically max out the 401k. By max I mean the maximum allowable per year which also includes my Company's match (which is really good). From there it goes into passive investment account with a major global monstrosity bank toggled to the riskiest investment option possible (not that risky) since I'm still relatively young. I occasionally use a couple thousand to invest in random things like a 3x levered S&P 500 which has been awesome.

All that to say - two kids in 18 months and going down to single income has turned me from a rich to a medium class citizen
Good for you. That's a lot that's getting put away.

And haha. Trying to enjoy life as much as we responsibly can while we are a dual income, no kid family.
 

jake102

Active Member
Good for you. That's a lot that's getting put away.

And haha. Trying to enjoy life as much as we responsibly can while we are a dual income, no kid family.

My advice - if you are planning to have kids, and your wife is going to quit work - treat these dual income, no kids, mid/late 20s as the time to save a ton of money. I wish we would have put away more during that time where we had tons of income and little expenses. Now that I need to care about which school my house is zoned to, it's become quite the pickle. Granted I have no idea where you live and work and what your threshold for commuting is.
 

AroundWorldFrog

Full Member
Don't carry unnecessary debt and put some precious metals in your portfolio. My precious metal portfolio is mostly catalyzing metals like palladium and rhodium, with some gold and silver.

Edit. And scheiss dotcoms.
 
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