Quoted:
I want to create a plan and then find places to put money I to for these goals and when to jump on buys and sells to build as needed.

Posted: 12/17/2013 12:05:30 PM EST.

i attempted for two years to bring something resembling sanity into the B&I forum. in my experience there is little to be found there. every thread ended with a pile of people demanding that the OP buy precious metals and bullets, and completely ignore rational asset allocation approaches. i gave up. even Sisyphus gets tired.

if you want good, useful financial guidance from folks who have something more to offer:

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/
FWF is like ARFCOM GD, only very finance-oriented. some of the stuff that folks suggest AND do in FWF is incredibly brilliant. some of it would cause members of the SF to run screaming from the room. note: you are going to need a thick skin if you want to toy with folks there. if you start a thread asking whether you should buy or lease a new car, you are going to get pummeled with replies about tacked threads. on the other hand i have seen some of the absolutely oddest scenarios played out and the advice given is top notch. there is a brazen honesty in both the OP's and the replies on FWF, which is simultaneously refreshing and also pushes aside some of the social tiptoeing that occurs in other forums. by the way, the "FWF vehicle of choice" is the Crown Vic PI edition...

http://socialize.morningstar.com/NewSocialize/asp/AllConv.asp?forumId=F100000026
morningstar's forums have a unique attribute: it costs $5 for a lifetime subscription, which enables you to post. that's it, you pay $5 once and you are good forever. the reason for this is that it completely removes the spammers, as well as the folks who just create an account to stir trouble. for this reason M* forums are the opposite of ARFCOM GD. that said, the Fidelity-specific forum on M* may seem like an odd place to point you to, but i assure you that a many of the folks in the T/A (technical analysis) and market/economy relevant threads in the Fido forum know EXACTLY what they are doing. if you do nothing but read the threads in M*'s Fido forum once a week for two months, i guarantee you will be way ahead of the curve on market economics. you can make a decent amount of money in the bond market (by buying or selling bond funds about every 6 months) doing nothing else other than monitoring threads in the M* Fidelity forum.

http://seekingalpha.com/
seeking alpha is quant-heaven. it is also one of the best places to get raw financial news, from folks that deal in finance, rather than folks that deal in "the news". for this reason you get unbridled analysis of trends and so on. e.g. http://seekingalpha.com/article/1903641-zero-hedge-is-wrong-about-gold
most of what is presented on SA is going to be slightly esoteric for the typical individual investor. nevertheless some of the information will provide a lot of insight into *why* certain companies or markets will succeed or will be doomed. i have to credit a story on SA for the single best investment that i ever made; in the 10 years that i owned it, it returned a stratospheric amount of money and i'm looking for a reentry point on it, although it's much less of a secret now.

http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php
bogleheads is simultaneously the most user-friendly financial investing site but also the most religious. the "john bogle" way dictates investment behaviors which don't provide a lot of latitude. for example, a so-called boglehead would opine that the *only* way to invest in the equities market is via a total market index fund. why? because it has the lowest intrinsic cost, the most breadth and therefore the least risk, and statistically outperforms the majority of "managed money" in traditional mutual funds. i encourage you to get an account on bogleheads and inform them that they are all wrong, and that there is a better way. i'm exaggerating a bit here, of course. i will say that if you have a financial situation which you would like some advice on -- example, i'm 34, i have two young kids, i want them to go to college, what's the best way to invest so i can pay for it? -- you will get a variety of excellent ideas and positive advice from the folks on the bogleheads forum. bogleheads is another site where if you would just read once a week for a couple of months you will learn an incredible amount of useful, practical information.

http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/
the religion at this forum is known as "FIRE" -- "financial independence, retire early" -- and it is the mantra of this website. the idea of FIRE is to "get off the merry-go-round" as soon as possible; that means different things to different people, but in the end it's the same: escape. read this forum and learning how people are planning to FIRE, how they are actually doing FIRE, and finally how they did FIRE. one thing you will notice is that these folks DO NOT SPEND MONEY ON NON-ESSENTIAL things. if you ever need to be told, "it's not what you make, it's what you save", well this is the place.

related to the above site is this tool:
http://www.firecalc.com/
(there is an entire forum at the above site discussing how to use/not misuse this tool, incidentally)
the point of this tool is straightforward in terms of answering questions: given you want to retire, how much will you need, how quickly will it be used up, and what return will you need? the tool uses Monte Carlo simulation to statistically work out the bounds of various market scenarios, and how they will affect your retirement monies.

ps
to finish up, the single text that i would advise folks pick up is Ferri's "All About Asset Allocation". after you read this the light will go on, and it will help you take "big picture" stock of your investments in totality. the $20 or whatever this book costs at Amazon will be repaid many times over.

ar-jedi

Quoted:
You're going to be limited in the funds your 401k provider gives you access to. Pick ones with low fees and gives you broad, diversified access to the total stock market.

You don't sound like you should be cherry picking funds or stocks. I don't normally like target date funds, but it sounds like that might suit you well until you have a better understanding of your goals.

I would love to take nothing to turn it into a gold pile worthy of Donald Duck to dive into, but realistically I know that takes more knowledge and experience than I have, and even then a good bit of time.

Quoted:
You sound like a prime candidate to not do anything that you claim to want to do and just invest in a Target Retirement fund.
Doing what you are proposing (buying/selling, timing the market, etc.) sounds like a great way to lose the bulk of your potential growth to gambling.