Hey there everyone I have some simple questions that may be a waste of time to some but I was hoping for a little push in the right direction.

Here is my situation:
- Nearly 31 years old, Married, Wife is 27 years old, and one 15 month old daughter.
- Active duty Enlisted E-5, three years and some change in.
- Wife does not work (full-time student), former Paramedic, she is leaving to Basic Training May 10, 2016.
- Education two Associates Degrees, and two more classes to go until I graduate with my Bachelors (4.0 GPA!). Wife is 6 classes away from her Bachelors of Business Admin. I will pursue a dual Master's in Cybersecurity and Business Admin when complete.
- Mortgage on a home 98,000, that we are renting to family for 750.00 in Texas, while we are stationed in Germany. (This situation is complicated)
- Owe 16,000 on a purchased new 2013 Toyota Hybrid.
- Live on base so no rent.
- Applied to OTS once, will continue this effort and if unsuccessful will pursue Physician's Assistant program.
- I have a TSP contribution equal to 6% of my income.
- We have 2,000.00 in mixed Vanguard ETFs.
- We also have 5,000 in a few stocks (GOOG, DIS, JNJ, KIM), as well as 2000.00 in a Janus Triton Mutual JSMGX.
- No student loans, No credit cards, only car and house at this point.
- Our dream is that we want to retire from the military and buy something in the Midwest i.e. New Mexico, Montana of around 90 acres hunt, fish, and relax and possibly work a comfortable job (teacher, computers, etc.). I don't know if my wife is putting in 20 years just yet, but I know I will. Is there any advice that you might give to someone who is in my situation.

Something I forgot to mention was I opened a Vanguard account for my daughter with four ETFs Total Stock, Intl. Total Stock, Total Bond, and Intl Total Bond. One of each, I plan to contribute monthly 25.00-50.00. It will most likely go to a wedding if she doesn't use my GI bill, or pay her way through school. Our plan is we aren't going to give her this until she proves her effort by getting through Sophomore year on her own. I would hope she joins the military or goes Academy instead but we shall see!

My questions are:
- Are there investment firms that we should stay away from? (Like a Taurus or Kimber of the investment industry)
- Are Vanguard ETFs really as good as they seem? Am I safe to leave our small investments in these proverbial "baskets"? (no commission fees)

Our investments were all made about two years ago and have shrunk from where they were by about 1800.00. I have been making accelerated plans on the car. My wife hasn't worked in nearly two years and our adjustment to Germany was tough. I also just made E-5 and came here as my first assignment so we budgeted really well I think being the sole bread winner as an E-3 in Europe for the first two years.

That being said when she begins to make money we plan to triple payment the car. The only reason we haven't made a crazy effort on the car is because the interest rate is 3.1%.

The house is at 86,000 at 5.5%. When we hit 84,000 we can attempt to refinance with the VA and get a better rate. We also plan on hanging on to the house and paying it off in about ten years. The neighborhood in which we live is going through a gentrification. It is in a prime location for renting as well, 1.4 miles from the University of Houston and 4 miles from downtown. We plan on hanging on to it until the trendy types start offering ridiculous amounts of cash. Another cause for hanging on to the house is a lot of our household goods are in the garage like our appliances and my two Chevy Novas(62 and 70). We are using it as a storage for the time being. My brother in law lives there and is good on schedule with payments and care of the house. He is doing us a favor by living there at the short notice we found out we were moving to Germany and he has lived there ever since.

It is most likely that we will be in Germany for another three years.

If it was me I would max your TSP first and then if there's more left put it with Vanguard. The TSP is hard to beat in my opinion. The expenses are the lowest and the I know of no other fund like the G that pays close to 2% with no risk and no requirement to hold it for a length of time.  

Thank you for the advice. I definitely plan on raising my contributions up to 15% when my wife joins. Starting this month I will begin raising it by 1% until I don't even notice it. I have a raise coming in July so it should definitely help.

I would make sure to max your yearly Roth IRAs as the tax advantages stack up long term...yes Vanguard funds are some of the best in terms of fees and overall performance.

be wary that companies can shut down their ETFs at anytime, like if their's low volume. i know a few of the Direxion ETFs shut down in the past year. Imagine if you had money in them you would be forced out of your positions.

I agree with the above, max TSP contributions.

My TSP always beats my civilian employers 401K

TSP and Vanguard funds are the two best investments in the business.  Just stick to the broad index based funds and you really can't go wrong long term (there is always volatility).

The house is a bigger issue than you make it out to be.  5.5% is far from good and by not being owner-occupied you will not be able to refinance at the best rates.  Also note that you should have your homeowner's insurance changed to a landlord policy and your BIL should have his own renter's insurance policy.

That's just thoughts from the top of my head.  Contributing as much as you can afford, then 1% more is this best method to get those investments where you need them, but if this money is going for retirement you need to make tax considerations a part of the equation.  I am not familiar with military pay grades, but a quick look online tells me that you are in a very low tax bracket, especially being married with a child.  You should probably be making your contributions in the TSP to a Roth (as opposed to Traditional) because the tax benefit is just not there at your rate.  Without knowing all of the details I can only say broad things, but it's something you should look in to.

I'm not sure about the TSP.  Above posters have said it's good, so do what you can with it.  I wouldn't pay extra on the car, assuming you have a really low interest rate.  I would max out a Roth IRA for you and one for the wife if she has the earned income needed to contribute.  I have Vanguard index funds in my Roth IRA.  Any extra I would put in a Vanguard indexed ETF.  They're very low cost and tax efficient.  As for the individual stocks I'm not sure what they are, but unless you did a lot of research, had a good reason for buying them, and have a continued good reason for still owning them, I would sell and put the money in one of the other investments mentioned.  If the Janus is an actively managed high expense fund I would liquidate it too.   You can't manage the market, but you can manage costs and taxes.

If you are investing in Bond funds, make sure you know how it works.   It's probably the opposite of what you think it is.

Honestly it sounds like you're on top of things.

In terms of investment firms to stay away from, stick with the bigger names and just keep an eye on the fees.  That's what usually kills most folks returns.

I keep everything in Vanguard simply because they have the lowest fees and don't seem to play games.

Just be careful with the individual stocks.  It's lower risk to stick to index investments.  If you want to invest in individual stocks, just keep the amount in any one stock to only a few percent of your portfolio.

RF

You're doing a good job OP.



Vanguard is good. The lowest fee S&P500 index etf ticker is VOO and it's theirs. I would liquidate the individual stock investments (maybe one every two months) and move them into VOO.






Contribute spare cash to a separate checking/savings account. When it reaches 1-2k buy another round of VOO. This dollar cost averaging will even out to a respectable 'discount' over time. Read "A random walk down wallstreet" if you need a better idea of this. Don't chase individual stocks, don't get sucked into actively managed money (mutual funds). You're still young and the fees over time will consume any (if any) addition returns (read "Where are the customers boats?" to learn more about this.)









Other than that, you're fine. Focus on staying as debt free as possible and hammering out your education.





*ETA - Don't liquidate any of your VOO (S&P index) holdings until you get close to retirement. It will fall, rise, explode, turn upside down and shoot to the moon over the next 20 years. Just ignore it.

 



Also, don't get in bonds at the moment, as interest rates rise (the only way they can go at the moment) the face value will fall significantly to match the new market yields. Your time horizon is plenty far to be all stocks.