If you're young and being more aggressive look at VOO, VGT and VXF.

If you just want to manage one fund look at VTSAX. Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund is designed to provide investors with exposure to the entire U.S. equity market, including small-, mid-, and large-cap growth and value stocks.
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Yeah, my last job matched the 401k contribution but my current doesn’t so I just rolled it into a traditional IRA. I’ve maxed out the contributions the last few years and have been considering opening up a Roth as well. I think I asked what others thought about the traditional vs Roth in this thread a few months back. Like you said, I can’t imagine taxes going down in 30 years when I’m looking to retire. Either way, as long as I’ve got contributions into some from of IRA, I think the time invested will be more important than how it’s taxed.

My biggest issue lately is that I’ve got a lot of cash in a money market that’s only getting, like, a .00003 return. There’s no reason a six figure account should only be getting me $100 per year in returns. I appreciate not having any risk but inflation is eating those savings up far more quickly than I’m comfortable with.
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I moved all my savings shit out of a bank into a taxable brokerage account and got a Vanguard Money Market fund with them. Almost 5%.
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This is terrible money management unless your like 65 years old.

If you are under 40, you should find a financial advisor.

You're flushing money down the toilet.
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I took this to be his emergency fund or whatever.

Up until interest rates moved for the first time in 2 decades I had it in a local bank money market too.

If his intention is to invest it, he should. If his intention is to find a better yielding money market, he can do that without a financial advisor.
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Eh, I don't take offense to what he said, though I do not think I need a financial advisor. Someone from my bank has reached out a few times over the years about investing and I ignored them. My issue is and always has been that I'm a safe little bitch about my money. I've kept it in a money market all this time exactly because I do not like risk.

But over time, things and people change and I'm finally ready to put a good chunk of this change in the market or a HYSA at the very least to cut the effects of inflation.

I think my emergency fund really only needs to be, idk, maybe $30,000 at most. 6 months of bills/expenses might be $10,000-$20,000. I'm driving a 20-year old car so she could take a shit on me at any moment. Other than that, the rest of the cash should be put to better use. It's just a matter of what type of account/investment, where and how much.
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Anyway, thank you all as well as Buehler for the advice.

I am 100% not built for the individual stock game lol y'all are different.

My next issue is the constant threat of this looming recession. What does everyone make of that?

Part of me thinks it'd be best to just park the bulk of this cash into a HYSA and ride it out 'til the storm's over. It looks like you can find quite a few with returns between 3-5%. The other part of me says fuck it, throw it into some ETFs. Even if/when the market dips, it'll recover down the line and it's best to be in when that recovery starts.
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Ah. I see. That makes more sense from what you were saying before.

If you've got 100K in your dogshit money market account, I'd do the following. I've got my shit with Vanguard, but I think they're all pretty much the same. Choose the brokerage of your choice, just make sure your brokerage has a money market fund that yields.

Open brokerage account.

Link to your bank account. Vanguard has free ACH. It takes a couple days both ways to clear, so it's not a huge deal to get money back and forth.

There are limits for IRAs. If you make more than 138K (single), 218K (MFJ), you can't do contributions to a ROTH. You can do a traditional, but it won't be deductible, so I wouldn't do it. There are some backdoor ROTH options if you make more than that, but you need some CPA/Advisor help. If you're below those levels, fire away on the IRAs.

Start a ROTH IRA. Put $6,500 in it (that's the limit). I have mine in a target dated fund. Mine is in VFIFX, but choose your projected retirement date and set it and forget it.

Put $6,500 in your traditional IRA (That's the limit)

I'd put the emergency fund and car amount in a money market fund. If you're rolling a 20 year old car, probably 20K. So if you have 20K for a car and 20K for emergencies, put 40K in the money market. VMFXX is the one I'm using. The interest will be taxable, but so is the dogshit interest in your bank account.

That leaves 47,000 to invest. I'd stick 35,000 in VOO, it's an S&P Index fund. Then put 12,000 VIGAX. It's a Vanguard Growth ETF. There are a few options here, but I'd just get it in there. Any gains will be taxable when you sell. There will be some dividends that will be taxable income, but so is your dogshit interest in your bank account.

That gets you to 100K. Adjust numbers to reflect what you have.

This is what I'd do. If you're more risk averse than that, you can leave more in the money market, but I'd definitely get some in a S&P ETF and forget about it. If lump sum scares you, put it in VMFXX and split it into 12 increments and Dollar Cost Average it over a year, but after the big pullback, I wouldn't worry about it. Just get it in there.

In terms of management, it doesn't have to be any more than what you're doing to get it in the money market. Vanguard's site lets you pull directly from your account and into whatever fund you want. And you can automate it if you want. Probably from what you're doing, I'd probably just transfer it to the money market and distribute it to wherever you want (IRA, ROTH, Taxed Instruments) once a year or so.

JMO.
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Open up a high yield savings account. There are plenty of places to choose from with rates over 4%, and as high as 4.85%.

https://www.bankrate.com/banking/sav...ings-accounts/


Assuming you put in $100,000, and earn 4.85% compounded daily, you should get $4969.20 in interest after 1 year according to this compound interest calculator.

https://www.bankrate.com/banking/sav...gs-calculator/


If you want to go with CD's, you can get well over 5%.

https://www.bankrate.com/banking/cds/cd-rates/



I opened a high yield savings account a few months ago with UFB Direct, and was able to get an interest rate of 5.02% APY. I was tired of getting 0.5% at my local bank, and before that it was at 0.1% for the longest time.
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You don't need individuals stocks at all the build wealth. I mean that. And I keep less than 20% of my total investments in single stocks.

You are killing yourself in the current environment to not be getting interest somewhere. It's risk free money in a higher yield money market, savings account, no penalty CD or TBIL. These get you 4-5% interest and access to your money quickly for liquidity. At least get your emergency savings in something like this.

Based on your car scenario I would probably put about $40k in something like this. If you still aren't comfortable investing the rest, than at least just dump the 100K in there while you decide what your investment strategy will be.

As far as timing the market, that's impossible, not matter what we talk about in this thread. Are your current investment contributions going into investments or just sitting somewhere doing nothing? I am a big fan of dollar cost averaging no matter what and rebalancing 1-2x per year if your timeline is 10+ years. Don't let trying to time the market make you miss compounding interest if the market makes a run.

I am VERY proud of that amount of cash/investments you've got. That's damn impressive as I think you're in your 30's. Good job, but don't let it sit there doing nothing while we have the highest interest rates in years. There's lots of options to get 4-5% pretty risk free.
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$100,000 invested in "MAIN" would net you $575 /Month

FREE MONEY!

nfa
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I missed this, must have been while typing what I would do.

I wouldn't worry about it. Park a good chunk in an interest bearing account, and if it makes you queasy, put less into the ETFs and more into the money market account. But I think with as much as you've got sitting around, making an investment in the future is prudent.

Like lew said, you'll fail far more often than you succeed trying to time the market. Just put it in regularly and you'll be good - kind of like an extension of your 401K, same principle. After your emergency fund is adequate and your tax shelters are maxed, get it in an ETF.

As far as the question, I think a recession is likely. The labor market AND the interest rates are not both sustainable to maintain corporate earnings. The most effective way to boost corporate earnings is layoffs. I think the job market will fade some.

I haven't looked at any of the metrics, but my opinion on the ground is US inflation is slowed substantially. I think it's probably close to a sustainable level. That points to interest rates slowing and perhaps rolling over.

However, I'm reading that inflation in Europe is not cooling off. Yada yada global economy yada yada interest isn't going anywhere. I think we're going to plod along for a while here. Bank profitability will remain difficult with poor interest rates spreads, and there might be more failures. I think there will be a lot of overstaffed, inefficient companies will eat shit. I think the bumps CEOs got from mentioning "AI" in their earnings calls. I think there will be some bright spots, too though. I think the chip companies that are onshoring production will see sizable growth. I think there will be some unwinding of activist price moves. I think if some shipping companies can staff up and lean out there is real growth opportunities there. I think infrastructure companies will cash in on government money.

But I'm a flaming moron, so don't make any decisions based off my dumbass analysis.
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This is me today, and probably all of you too.

via GIPHY

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Yep, pretty good day. My HKD even took its monthly rip and triggered my sell order. WLGS almost there too. Sell order set at 2.00
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I can live another month.
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