seeyalater52 Reading the posts reminded me of a couple other things. I have been listening to Suze Orman some and she is a big proponent of dollar cost averaging which is why I am doing a little at a time instead of lump sum. The theory makes sense to me. www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/dollar-cost-averaging-2
Also, I remembered that I didn't go with vanguard partly because my 401k is mostly within their year target fund and I wanted to attempt to use the roth to diversify. (For all I know it's probably a ton of the same stocks)
Yes, I was just reading about the dollar cost averaging! That is a good reminder. For this first year if we fund for 2020 we will just do the 6,000 limit up front because we lucked into a much larger federal refund than we were expecting on some back taxes we filed so we actually have the money, but that's why I wanted to do monthly contributions when the child tax credit starts coming through mid-year if at all possible. Thanks for reminding me where I got that idea from.
While the money is for our kiddo we are behind on retirement savings and I think one of the best gifts we can give him later on is our own financial stability as we near retirement age
Amen!
And you call yourself a novice. Pfft.
ETA: I screwed up the quote last time, so trying this a second time.
seeyalater52 Reading the posts reminded me of a couple other things. I have been listening to Suze Orman some and she is a big proponent of dollar cost averaging which is why I am doing a little at a time instead of lump sum. The theory makes sense to me. www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/dollar-cost-averaging-2
Also, I remembered that I didn't go with vanguard partly because my 401k is mostly within their year target fund and I wanted to attempt to use the roth to diversify. (For all I know it's probably a ton of the same stocks)
Yes, I was just reading about the dollar cost averaging! That is a good reminder. For this first year if we fund for 2020 we will just do the 6,000 limit up front because we lucked into a much larger federal refund than we were expecting on some back taxes we filed so we actually have the money, but that's why I wanted to do monthly contributions when the child tax credit starts coming through mid-year if at all possible. Thanks for reminding me where I got that idea from.
You can put the entire $6k into the Roth IRA account as a lump sum and still dollar-cost average into the market. The default account is usually cash or cash equivalent (e.g., money market) and the money just stays there until you invest it. There's quite a bit of volatility in the market these days and that's expected to continue, so dollar-cost averaging is probably a good idea. I suggest funding the account with the lump sum and then making a schedule for transferring from the cash account into your target date fund or whatever you choose. You could do $1k on the first of the month for the next six months, for example.
Yes, I was just reading about the dollar cost averaging! That is a good reminder. For this first year if we fund for 2020 we will just do the 6,000 limit up front because we lucked into a much larger federal refund than we were expecting on some back taxes we filed so we actually have the money, but that's why I wanted to do monthly contributions when the child tax credit starts coming through mid-year if at all possible. Thanks for reminding me where I got that idea from.
You can put the entire $6k into the Roth IRA account as a lump sum and still dollar-cost average into the market. The default account is usually cash or cash equivalent (e.g., money market) and the money just stays there until you invest it. There's quite a bit of volatility in the market these days and that's expected to continue, so dollar-cost averaging is probably a good idea. I suggest funding the account with the lump sum and then making a schedule for transferring from the cash account into your target date fund or whatever you choose. You could do $1k on the first of the month for the next six months, for example.
This is where I get out of my depth: can I do that if I’m retroactively funding for 2020? Or is that for potential 2021 funds?
You can put the entire $6k into the Roth IRA account as a lump sum and still dollar-cost average into the market. The default account is usually cash or cash equivalent (e.g., money market) and the money just stays there until you invest it. There's quite a bit of volatility in the market these days and that's expected to continue, so dollar-cost averaging is probably a good idea. I suggest funding the account with the lump sum and then making a schedule for transferring from the cash account into your target date fund or whatever you choose. You could do $1k on the first of the month for the next six months, for example.
This is where I get out of my depth: can I do that if I’m retroactively funding for 2020? Or is that for potential 2021 funds?
Thanks for the suggestion!
Yes, you can do it with the 2020 funds. When you open and fund the account with the $6k, it'll default into a money market or similar. In order to actually invest in the market or buy stocks/bonds, you need to do an additional transaction. You could just leave the $6k in money market and you'd still have a Roth IRA. That's a bad idea. You want to invest those funds, so you'd do the purchase transactions. The $6k will take a few days to settle and be available for trading, and once it does settle, you can transact in any amount you want. So that's when you could implement a dollar-cost average plan by splitting up the $6k into chunks and doing multiple transactions over time.
This is where I get out of my depth: can I do that if I’m retroactively funding for 2020? Or is that for potential 2021 funds?
Thanks for the suggestion!
Yes, you can do it with the 2020 funds. When you open and fund the account with the $6k, it'll default into a money market or similar. In order to actually invest in the market or buy stocks/bonds, you need to do an additional transaction. You could just leave the $6k in money market and you'd still have a Roth IRA. That's a bad idea. You want to invest those funds, so you'd do the purchase transactions. The $6k will take a few days to settle and be available for trading, and once it does settle, you can transact in any amount you want. So that's when you could implement a dollar-cost average plan by splitting up the $6k into chunks and doing multiple transactions over time.
This is super useful information but I guess I'm confused (and having a panic attack) because I really REALLY do not want to have to do anything with the money investing-wise. Can I just... put it somewhere and leave it alone? Or do I have to make a bunch of investment decisions to use it effectively? Is moving it to a targeted retirement date fund an option?
Clearly I know enough to know what I WANT to do, but not enough to help myself actually DO the thing.
Yes, you can do it with the 2020 funds. When you open and fund the account with the $6k, it'll default into a money market or similar. In order to actually invest in the market or buy stocks/bonds, you need to do an additional transaction. You could just leave the $6k in money market and you'd still have a Roth IRA. That's a bad idea. You want to invest those funds, so you'd do the purchase transactions. The $6k will take a few days to settle and be available for trading, and once it does settle, you can transact in any amount you want. So that's when you could implement a dollar-cost average plan by splitting up the $6k into chunks and doing multiple transactions over time.
This is super useful information but I guess I'm confused (and having a panic attack) because I really REALLY do not want to have to do anything with the money investing-wise. Can I just... put it somewhere and leave it alone? Or do I have to make a bunch of investment decisions to use it effectively? Is moving it to a targeted retirement date fund an option?
Clearly I know enough to know what I WANT to do, but not enough to help myself actually DO the thing.
So, the technical answer is no, but the ultimate answer is yes. 😂
You can choose a target date fund ultimately and leave it there and not touch anything again. But you have to take the active steps first to get it into your target date fund. So, in this example, say you plan to retire in 30 years, so 2051. So you’d want to choose a Target date fund for likely 2050 or 2055 (I *think* they run in 5 year increments). Your steps would be as follows:
1. Open a Roth IRA account at Vanguard. 2. Transfer $6,000 to fund account and designate that you’re making a 2020 contribution. At this point, you will have funded your account for 2020. The money you’ve put in is now in your Roth IRA account, but it isn’t invested in the stock market - it’s cash or money market, basically earning the same as if you had it in a low-interest savings account. You can leave all of some of the money in this position indefinitely, short-term, long-term, or forever. But you’ve identified that you want to invest this money into a 2055 Target Date Fund...so you want to use some or all of this money to buy shares of the 2055 Target Date Fund. 3. If you decide you want to dollar cost average your investment into the target date fund, you’d take a chunk (say, $1k) and buy $1k of the target date fund and leave $5k in cash/money market. Then you can pick however many other dates and transfer portions of that remaining $5k over time - so if you were just going to do each investment evenly, you could buy another $1k per month for the next 5 months until it’s all invested. OR you could just use the entire $6k now and buy $6k worth of the 2055 Target Date Fund and be done with it for this year. 4. Once you’re in the target date fund, you’re on autopilot and don’t need to move or deal with this money again until retirement. 5. You’ll repeat steps 2-4 each year or each contribution you make to the IRA account.
TLDR - each contribution is a two step process: first, contribute to the general IRA account, second invest those funds into Target Date fund.
This is super useful information but I guess I'm confused (and having a panic attack) because I really REALLY do not want to have to do anything with the money investing-wise. Can I just... put it somewhere and leave it alone? Or do I have to make a bunch of investment decisions to use it effectively? Is moving it to a targeted retirement date fund an option?
Clearly I know enough to know what I WANT to do, but not enough to help myself actually DO the thing.
So, the technical answer is no, but the ultimate answer is yes. 😂
You can choose a target date fund ultimately and leave it there and not touch anything again. But you have to take the active steps first to get it into your target date fund. So, in this example, say you plan to retire in 30 years, so 2051. So you’d want to choose a Target date fund for likely 2050 or 2055 (I *think* they run in 5 year increments). Your steps would be as follows:
1. Open a Roth IRA account at Vanguard. 2. Transfer $6,000 to fund account and designate that you’re making a 2020 contribution. At this point, you will have funded your account for 2020. The money you’ve put in is now in your Roth IRA account, but it isn’t invested in the stock market - it’s cash or money market, basically earning the same as if you had it in a low-interest savings account. You can leave all of some of the money in this position indefinitely, short-term, long-term, or forever. But you’ve identified that you want to invest this money into a 2055 Target Date Fund...so you want to use some or all of this money to buy shares of the 2055 Target Date Fund. 3. If you decide you want to dollar cost average your investment into the target date fund, you’d take a chunk (say, $1k) and buy $1k of the target date fund and leave $5k in cash/money market. Then you can pick however many other dates and transfer portions of that remaining $5k over time - so if you were just going to do each investment evenly, you could buy another $1k per month for the next 5 months until it’s all invested. OR you could just use the entire $6k now and buy $6k worth of the 2055 Target Date Fund and be done with it for this year. 4. Once you’re in the target date fund, you’re on autopilot and don’t need to move or deal with this money again until retirement. 5. You’ll repeat steps 2-4 each year or each contribution you make to the IRA account.
TLDR - each contribution is a two step process: first, contribute to the general IRA account, second invest those funds into Target Date fund.
Thank you! This is exactly the sort of suuuuuper broken down info I clearly needed. It all makes so much more sense now!
seeyalater52 , You’re welcome. I think you will find that the process of doing this with Vanguard is very intuitive and their interface is very user-friendly. It will essentially guide you through most of the account opening process with leading questions and toggle buttons/check the box items, so it’s clear exactly which step you’re taking/what you’re doing.
Lots of good advice here already. I'll only add that I wouldn't worry too much about dollar cost averaging, especially for the amounts we're discussing here. There's some academic research that indicates it doesn't ultimately make that much of a difference, and if it's easier for you I would simply invest it all at once and let it do its thing over time. The time component--giving the investment as much time as possible to even out the market ebbs and flows over time--is one of the most important elements in investment success for broad index or target retirement funds.
seeyalater52 Reading the posts reminded me of a couple other things. I have been listening to Suze Orman some and she is a big proponent of dollar cost averaging which is why I am doing a little at a time instead of lump sum. The theory makes sense to me. www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/dollar-cost-averaging-2
Also, I remembered that I didn't go with vanguard partly because my 401k is mostly within their year target fund and I wanted to attempt to use the roth to diversify. (For all I know it's probably a ton of the same stocks)
The Target Retirement funds from Vanguard are very diversified. For target dates >15 years out, they aim to be 90% stocks, 10% bonds. Of the stock portion, 60% is invested in the Total Stock Market fund which aims to invest in most every publicly traded US company in proportion to their market cap (total value of shares). So, they hold more Apple stock than, say, Gamestock, but they hold way more stocks than pretty much any other type of fund (they have 3669 stocks, which you could compare to something like an S&P 500 index fund which would invest in 500 stocks). The other 40% of the stock portion aims to do the same thing but with international stock. So you would be hard pressed to find a more diversified option than these. (FWIW, the Target Retirement funds do similar with the bond portion, aiming to follow the whole domestic and international bond market.)
From the fund's website, Total Retirement Fund 2050 allocation:
I know when shopping for funds it is easy to get overwhelmed and bogged down trying to understand the differences, but one of my favorite things about these Vanguard funds is that they are very transparent and that the underlying principles are simple. These index funds seek to follow a market (or in this case, the whole market), and they do it very efficiently and effectively. It is such a RELIEF to be invested in something that I understand, especially because the approach has been shown to be so effective.
Oh, and as far as dollar cost averaging, I consider that mostly a psychological tool for investors who are afraid of a big market dip. On average, you will earn slightly less by DCAing because you are missing time in the market, like RockNVoll said. If you are investing a big windfall and want to minimize the risk of investing right before a sudden drop, then yeah, it can make some sense.
But if you continue to invest over the years, seeyalater, you will be effectively dollar cost averaging. More important to just get it invested, IMO, than get hung up on some investment schedule and then risk not actually following through & executing your plan.
seeyalater52 , I'll throw in that I use Vanguard, and whenever I want to do anything I call them and they walk me through it. Even though it usually ends up being something super easy, I get confused and scared I'll mess it up and they are *SO* nice about it. They walked me through rolling over 401Ks from an old employer and starting 529s for my kids. I get really anxious about money stuff too so I prefer the help.
ETA: oh, I just remembered the 529s are at Fidelity. I called them too. So both good!
Post by simpsongal on Mar 23, 2021 14:20:47 GMT -5
Do any folks here focus on investing in dividend-paying stocks? DH is very big on them, for now, we reinvest the dividends to acquire more stock. But it's DH's hope that they'll be a reliable stream of income when we hit retirement.
Do any folks here focus on investing in dividend-paying stocks? DH is very big on them, for now, we reinvest the dividends to acquire more stock. But it's DH's hope that they'll be a reliable stream of income when we hit retirement.
Sort of? I really like VYM, the Vanguard ETF that rolls up companies that tend to pay more reliable dividends. There’s another ETF too (also Vanguard but I’m blanking on it) that has a similar focus and we invest in that one too.
This is super useful information but I guess I'm confused (and having a panic attack) because I really REALLY do not want to have to do anything with the money investing-wise. Can I just... put it somewhere and leave it alone? Or do I have to make a bunch of investment decisions to use it effectively? Is moving it to a targeted retirement date fund an option?
Clearly I know enough to know what I WANT to do, but not enough to help myself actually DO the thing.
So, the technical answer is no, but the ultimate answer is yes. 😂
You can choose a target date fund ultimately and leave it there and not touch anything again. But you have to take the active steps first to get it into your target date fund. So, in this example, say you plan to retire in 30 years, so 2051. So you’d want to choose a Target date fund for likely 2050 or 2055 (I *think* they run in 5 year increments). Your steps would be as follows:
1. Open a Roth IRA account at Vanguard. 2. Transfer $6,000 to fund account and designate that you’re making a 2020 contribution. At this point, you will have funded your account for 2020. The money you’ve put in is now in your Roth IRA account, but it isn’t invested in the stock market - it’s cash or money market, basically earning the same as if you had it in a low-interest savings account. You can leave all of some of the money in this position indefinitely, short-term, long-term, or forever. But you’ve identified that you want to invest this money into a 2055 Target Date Fund...so you want to use some or all of this money to buy shares of the 2055 Target Date Fund. 3. If you decide you want to dollar cost average your investment into the target date fund, you’d take a chunk (say, $1k) and buy $1k of the target date fund and leave $5k in cash/money market. Then you can pick however many other dates and transfer portions of that remaining $5k over time - so if you were just going to do each investment evenly, you could buy another $1k per month for the next 5 months until it’s all invested. OR you could just use the entire $6k now and buy $6k worth of the 2055 Target Date Fund and be done with it for this year. 4. Once you’re in the target date fund, you’re on autopilot and don’t need to move or deal with this money again until retirement. 5. You’ll repeat steps 2-4 each year or each contribution you make to the IRA account.
TLDR - each contribution is a two step process: first, contribute to the general IRA account, second invest those funds into Target Date fund.
You lost me at step 3. What is "dollar cost average" mean?
And we are high earners so we are not eligible for a Roth. I have an IRA, but it's just sitting, I haven't really invested it anywhere. Does this advice apply to a regular IRA as well?
Do any folks here focus on investing in dividend-paying stocks? DH is very big on them, for now, we reinvest the dividends to acquire more stock. But it's DH's hope that they'll be a reliable stream of income when we hit retirement.
Not exactly what you asked, but I don't imagine that the things I'm invested in now are necessarily going to be the same investments I've have post-retirement. I mean, I'm not saying I'll do a wholesale reshuffle then, but I am not making investments now assuming I'll still have them then.
But, my dad did exactly what you said, and he lived off his dividends and Social Security primarily. And my mom does this to some extent as well. So I'm not saying it's a bad approach, just that we don't do it.
So, the technical answer is no, but the ultimate answer is yes. 😂
You can choose a target date fund ultimately and leave it there and not touch anything again. But you have to take the active steps first to get it into your target date fund. So, in this example, say you plan to retire in 30 years, so 2051. So you’d want to choose a Target date fund for likely 2050 or 2055 (I *think* they run in 5 year increments). Your steps would be as follows:
1. Open a Roth IRA account at Vanguard. 2. Transfer $6,000 to fund account and designate that you’re making a 2020 contribution. At this point, you will have funded your account for 2020. The money you’ve put in is now in your Roth IRA account, but it isn’t invested in the stock market - it’s cash or money market, basically earning the same as if you had it in a low-interest savings account. You can leave all of some of the money in this position indefinitely, short-term, long-term, or forever. But you’ve identified that you want to invest this money into a 2055 Target Date Fund...so you want to use some or all of this money to buy shares of the 2055 Target Date Fund. 3. If you decide you want to dollar cost average your investment into the target date fund, you’d take a chunk (say, $1k) and buy $1k of the target date fund and leave $5k in cash/money market. Then you can pick however many other dates and transfer portions of that remaining $5k over time - so if you were just going to do each investment evenly, you could buy another $1k per month for the next 5 months until it’s all invested. OR you could just use the entire $6k now and buy $6k worth of the 2055 Target Date Fund and be done with it for this year. 4. Once you’re in the target date fund, you’re on autopilot and don’t need to move or deal with this money again until retirement. 5. You’ll repeat steps 2-4 each year or each contribution you make to the IRA account.
TLDR - each contribution is a two step process: first, contribute to the general IRA account, second invest those funds into Target Date fund.
You lost me at step 3. What is "dollar cost average" mean?
And we are high earners so we are not eligible for a Roth. I have an IRA, but it's just sitting, I haven't really invested it anywhere. Does this advice apply to a regular IRA as well?
Dollar cost averaging is splitting up the purchase of a stock into smaller amounts and buying the stock over a period of time. The idea is that you can get more of an average price rather than potentially buying right before a drop. But the reverse is also true, you miss out on potential gains if prices rise.
Do any folks here focus on investing in dividend-paying stocks? DH is very big on them, for now, we reinvest the dividends to acquire more stock. But it's DH's hope that they'll be a reliable stream of income when we hit retirement.
We have a friend who wants to retire early and this is his strategy.
I have thoughts. This will get long, sorry. There is a TLDR at the end.
1) Dividend-paying stocks tend to be more "value" companies rather than growth companies (dividends are a way to distribute profits to shareholders, which means those profits are not reinvested in the business). This means that you are limited in the diversification you can do.
2) If you plan to live on the dividend stream, you will be managing a steady income such as quarterly payments. This sounds good, except that many people tend to spend in more of a bursty way when expenses come up (vacation, buying a car, Christmas, etc etc). Why not just sell shares as needed to fund expenses? You could of course achieve a steady income stream by selling stock as well. Kind of like the reverse of dollar cost averaging. There is no magic to dividends in that regard.
3) Taxes. Right now, dividends are mostly taxed like capital gains. But historically, dividend taxes have been higher. And you don't control your tax burden like you would if you were making withdrawals by selling stock. Lots of people in the FIRE community try to have an income (on their 1040) that hits a specific number, to maximize tax efficiency and avoid certain phaseouts, etc. Also, with dividends you will be forced to pay the taxes along the way. If you leave stocks to your heirs or to a charity, they receive the stocks with a stepped-up basis, which means they will not owe capital gains on the growth that the stocks achieved while they were held. (NOTE: This one doesn't really apply to tax-protected accounts such as IRAs, 401(k)s.)
Also, I had the chance to meet in a small group with the CFO of my former company, which was publicly traded. He took a question about dividends and said they did them out of obligation because that's what shareholders demanded, and they specifically tried to keep the dividend at a certain percent of share value per shareholder expectation. But he thought it was tax inefficient because the company first had to pay taxes on those profits, and then the shareholders paid tax again on the dividends. He felt that it constrained the ability of the company to be tax-efficient (which means lower profits at the end of the day).
Returns of a stock are inclusive of dividends and share price growth. Ideally, I want the highest-returning stock portfolio, and I do not want to be limited to stocks with a higher dividend proportion.
TLDR; I don't think it's a bad strategy, but I do think it is sub-optimal.
Post by simpsongal on Mar 24, 2021 15:49:42 GMT -5
Poppy, thank you! I'm going to run that by DH. I wonder how much the step up in basis motivates him too....he doesn't seem to have any plan for us to ever sell the stock, and we have enough in other retirement investments to live without (pension, Social security, 401Ks).
I'm trying to figure out the best next step to take with some extra monthly income. Basically, my partner now pays me "rent" to cover half the mortgage and taxes each month. I could easily afford it before him, so this is basically a bonus $1,000 each month. I've been saving it up and hit $10k in my emergency fund. Now I'm trying to figure out what to do next. I do currently have a car payment, so does it make sense to just throw the extra money at that principal every month? Should I save some and use some for the car principal? Save it all?
Poppy, Thank you for breaking down your insight on dividends. I hold some stock purchased in the 90s that pay a reasonable dividend which I have set up on DRP but hadn't considered these points about their limitations.
I'm trying to figure out the best next step to take with some extra monthly income. Basically, my partner now pays me "rent" to cover half the mortgage and taxes each month. I could easily afford it before him, so this is basically a bonus $1,000 each month. I've been saving it up and hit $10k in my emergency fund. Now I'm trying to figure out what to do next. I do currently have a car payment, so does it make sense to just throw the extra money at that principal every month? Should I save some and use some for the car principal? Save it all?
I don't know your comfort level or income, but 10k is only around 2 months expenses for me and I would want a larger emergency fund. Or I would pay down the car. I just found out I got a surprise raise yesterday so I have a little extra money to allocate now too. I am increasing my roth contributions by $25/month (from $50 to $75), my HELOC payment by $25/month (from $225 to $250, want to get rid of this asap because it was taken out as part if my divorce) and incresing my HSA contributions by $200/month (which still won't result in enough to cover our annual deductible, which is what I use my hsa for).