SAHM saving money and retirement help

[whitemerlot]

I've been a SAHM for 3 years and before having kids had a 403b at work. It has been sitting for 3 years with 25 k in it. Prior to having kids, I was teaching and 5.5% of my salary was put into the pension plan for 8 years. I'm not even sure what the status of that is at this time.

We have been putting a lot in my h's retirement accounts because it's very easy, but I want to start a Roth IRA in my name while we qualify. I don't intend to return to work for a minimum of 6 years, if at all and am 33 years old.

I'm planning to invest 2k in the vanguard target retirement 2040 fund this week through ING and am hoping I can manage to get the funds together to top it off to 5k this year. Is this wise? Is there anything I should do with the 403b?

What else would you do in my situation with extra money? We don't have debt and our savings is all in retirement accounts.

[whitemerlot]

RNV:
I look at the statements from the 403b and the money is invested in a mixture of things in a moderately aggressive allocation. I can get specific numbers if it would help once my baby wakes up. I'm neither happy nor unhappy with it. It is just sitting there. What is the advantage to converting it to an IRA?

The reason I want to use ING for the Roth is because I already have accounts with them and it seems very user friendly. I think the target date funds might make sense for me because I tend to just deposit and leave money.

I have a small amount of non-retirement cash. I just used most of it to pay off the mortgage and my monthly expenses are now very low so I can rebuild quickly. I have approx 2500 a month that was going towards mortgage that is now available. That decision may not have been one everyone would make, but it was important to me. I had the money in an account earning less than 1% interest. I'm not sure where to put this money going forward or how much to keep in cash.

[whitemerlot]

You are helping.

I feel like I'm great at paying things off and great at saving cash, but freeze up when it comes to choosing investments. Both of our parents are financial disasters and I don't know who to talk to about this.

I'm comfortable with the target date funds and that seems easy. It will be no problem for me to do that.

I will start saving non-retirement money again, I'm not sure what to do as far as investing other than that. I fear I will just let it sit in ING savings at 0.8% again.

[whitemerlot]

I will read that book.

I'm not afraid for the value to fluctuate, it's more overwhelmed by the choices and not knowing how to sell stocks if we decide to in the future or when to make a move on selling something. For example, I have some non-retirement money in a single stock that I have done nothing with for 8 years. It's around 10k but was once double that.

Retirement seems easy because you are supposed to leave it in and add more.

Thanks so much for the help.