Wait 24-48 hours for two small deposits to be made in  your bank account and then log into vanguard and enter those amounts in, this will verify your bank account . Once that is down the money along with the two small deposits that were made will be taken out of your bank account within about a day.

ETA make sure you sign up for e-statements so you don't get charged  a 20 buck yearly account fee.

Keep putting as much as you can afford into it!

How do I go about choosing the mutual funds/what I invest in/etc.

I did signup for the e-forms as well.

Yep. Let's make sure everyone fails to plan for their uncertain future since its uncertain anyway. Planning is for suckers.

Math too according to that one guy.

So does VG charge you to start an account? Under my holding/balance details I see a $19.64 charge.

They didn't me but granted that has been a few years ago.

Like I said, YMMV

You don't if you picked the Target retirement fund like you stated, that's the beauty of target retirement funds.  Vanguard chooses what things that fund consists of and does a great job I must say. See the below link for more info on that portfolio.


https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0306&FundIntExt=INT#tab=2

and

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/vtivx/holdings

Great thanks. So I just setup "Automatic Investment" pulling $250 per month out of my checking. That's literally all I have to do?

 

+87

FIFY

Actually you've got some catching up to do in 2O15, better make it $65O

Yep that's the beauty of target funds.

I have the exact one and it has produced a steady 8% return over the last few years which I'm happy with especially since it requires no work on my part.

Well yeah since some months have already passed

I guess I could, or should, probably just depost the $5500 now, or at some point do the maximum.

 





 

The share price, the market close at 4 PM  EST mon-fri determines this.

This is really your first rodeo isn't it

ETA lets say your investment purchase went through today (which it won't since it takes a couple of days) each share of that fund would cost you 19.64. So if you purchased a 1000 bucks worth you would get 50.9 shares of the stock.What you want to see is that share price go up after your purchase

neato, the Target Retirement 2045

that's what I was advised to choose when I rolled over my 401K several years ago, I don't put nearly enough in but it does well

The unit price of their little fund.

In theory by 2O45 it'll be 5OO bucks a share.

As their fund grows, you're money grows with it.

Yes its my first rodeo what gave it away. I am awful with my money, not in the sense of not being able to save. In the sense of investing or what to do with it

So basically just keep dumping money into this thing sit back and watch for the time being.

IMO, don't even watch it. Maybe check in every five years or so.

Just keep dumping money in.

ETA, I have the bad habit of checking my accounts daly via Quicken and I'm not sure it helps any but I really like graphs and stuff

ETA 2, find yourself a good compounding interest calculator online and plug in some numbers. It always motivates me to bump up my contributions.

Yes, the target funds are a great "slow and steady wins the race" fund.

I check mine daily after 6 PM EST which is about how long it takes to update after the 4 PM EST market close. As an example I lost a good chunk earlier in the week when the market closed low but then gained it back plus some when it closed strong.

Sounds like me

Also the Vanguard iphone app is pretty nice.

1975 called. It wants its advice back.

Nah I am a psycho when it comes to this stuff as well. I'll be checking daily. Be nice to see how much it goes up and down daily.

 

When that money jumps 5, 10 or 50k a day you might change your mind.

I can't imagine how much a real high roller's portfolio must fluctuate on any given day.

Roth IRAs are cool, but have you ever had Stuffed Crust Pizza?

I can't take financial advice from someone who uses Os as 0s.

250 a month sounds a bit light for how late you've started.

My two year old figured she needed my zero key more than I do.



Either way I'd rccomend that you follow your instinct and DO NOT take financial advice from me.

Agreed but its better than nothing right now. Going to do the max in one lump sump the beginning of every year though starting next year. I still might do the $4500 before my $250 month starts though and just not have to worry about contributing monthly.

I don't know if Vanguard has something similar but Fidelity offers a credit card with a 2% cash back on all purchases if you use the cash back to fund your IRA. If they don't consider using whatever CC rewards you get from other cars to fund your IRA.

YOU DID WHAT?


WHY DIDN'T YOU LISTEN TO ANYONE IN THIS THREAD?















j/k -- -- good job!


ar-jedi  

i always tell people -- make it automatic.  make it regular.  make it failsafe.  

if you don't ... along the way you are going to find about a dozen ways to use some or all of that money for other purposes: "oh look, a Benelli 12ga autoloader, isn't that shiny!"  

so set it up, right from the beginning, to be automatic.  just let it go, let it do it's thing.  this also takes some of the drama out of it -- e.g., "should i commit $2500 when the market is so high?"

i'm an experienced long term investor and i have this advice to give you:
the market is going to go down very sharply, very soon.
or it will go down slightly over a longer term.
or, it will go up very gently.
or, it will just meander along.
or it will go up violently.
or, it will ...  

no one knows.  no one can know.  if i knew, i certainly wouldn't be on arfcom -- i'd be on a beach that i own on Santorini island or some such, with the entire staff of the Dutch institute of modeling providing live entertainment (my wife doesn't know about this dream, so let's just keep that between us here in GD).  so take the uncertainty out of it, take the thinking out of it, and make it a background task that happens automagically.  

along these lines, about 7 years my sister had an unfortunate circumstance disturb things and i decided shortly thereafter to do something to help her two (very young at the time) kids with their college savings.  i contribute a whopping $50 per month to each of their 529 accounts.  big spender, i know.  but it's automatic and it just happens.  every month.  

ar-jedi

How to use the Roth IRA to fuck the IRS and make your grandchildren and great grandchildren 1%ers.





http://www.bankers-anonymous.com/blog/the-magical-roth-ira/

OP, you should read some of those threads AR-Jedi is linking to for you.  Or even just go look up "stocks" and "mutual funds" on wikipedia for a brief explanation.  Here's my brief explanation of stocks and mutual funds.  I'm going to keep it as simple as possible because I'm no expert and don't want to get jumped on

Stocks are bought and sold in shares to the public.  Buying a share is buying a portion of the company.  You buy and sell the shares through a brokerage and usually pay a fee to make the purchase or sale, though some retirement account don't charge fees.  The value of that share rises and falls based on what people are willing to pay for the share (which usually, but not always, is based on the performance of the company.  There are a number of "Indexes" (S&P is one) which are basically just a list somebody made of a group of usually well rounded types of companies with a lot of history...pretty consistent stock growth over their histories.  You'll see reports like "xys index has returned #% over the last 20 years."

Bonds are typically originally sold by the government.  They ask people to let them hold your them money by "buying" the bonds so they give you an IOU for the loan amount, and as your reward the government also pay.s interest on the money you gave them.  Since it's the government, bonds are typically pretty solid since your chances of not getting paid are very low.  But, the safer they are the lower the interest amount they pay you back.  Since they are so safe, people usually move more of their money to these as they get closer to retirement.

There are a bunch of other investment types, but these are historically the bulk of most investment accounts.

A mutual fund is just a bunch of shares of different stocks and bonds that have been assembled by a fund manager.  The fund manager manages the mutual fund by buying stocks and bonds that he thinks will do well and selling stocks and bonds that he thinks may not do so well.  He's the "expert" we all need to manage our investments.  Many mutual funds are kind of centered around certain sectors or grouping of like industries.  There are index funds that pretty much just have varying percentages of their money invested in the stocks that make up whatever index ("list") it's named after.  Other mutual funds focus on foreign companies, or energy companies, or companies that are large or medium or small sized that have a history of growth (as a company).  Mutual funds are bought and sold on the stock market just like stocks.  You typically buy some different types of mutual funds to spread your money around so all your eggs aren't in one basket, and to pick a fund you usually want to find a fund that was created 10 or more years ago (not always, but...) and look at the historical averages of what % return the fund has paid back to the investors (you). That should give you an idea of how consistently good the fund manager is.  You'll pay fees to buy mutual funds through a broker and you'll pay annual fees that pay for the fund manager to buy and sell stocks and bonds within the fund.  Well, you don't have to cut a check...they just sell some of the stocks in the mutual fund and get paid that way...and they will report to you how much the fees have been historically and each year.

Vanguard (and all the other companies to some extent) basically creates some mutual funds and manages them themselves.  They sell them directly to people that have accounts with them (instead of selling them on the stock exchange), so can greatly reduce the annual fees.  Oh, and if you have a Vanguard retirement account, you don't have to pay fees to make the purchase or sale of Vanguard managed funds...only the annual fee.

Over the last few years, all these retirement account companies like Vanguard have created new types of "mutual funds" that they manage with your target retirement date/age in mind.  They basically create a mutual fund which is made up of a much higher percentage of stocks and mutual fund (and lower percentage of bonds) when you are younger, and as you get closer to that target year/age they shift the content of the fund holdings more toward the safer bonds (because when you're young, the market could tank but you still have plenty of time to recover before you're read to retire.

TLDR:  For now you will do just fine to put your money in a target retirement fund.  Just leave it there and let the fund manager do his thing...and he takes his minimal annual fee out of the money you make every year.  You can always buy different types of stocks, bonds or mutual funds to diversify later, after you are more knowledgeable.

Hope this helps.

Me an the wife each have 7% going to a 401k with a 6% match and 7% going towards a Roth IRA.  Profit sharing too of 4%.  Vanguard 2050...I don't understand it all...but I think I'm doing good.

May have made a tactical error. Really should have opened up a 2050 putting me at 63 instead of 2045.

Does Vanguard do 529s?

Your fine and if I recall correctly 2045 has had a better long term return over the last couple of years compared to 2050. I would have to look to be sure but I would honestly just leave it instead of moving.

It's really easy to switch but it's pointless.

seriously?  am i easier to use than google?  

https://www.google.com/search?q=vanguard+529

ar-jedi

i think you are missing a basic concept about your IRA here.

read this:
https://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/1672620__ARCHIVED_THREAD____Vanguard__Fidelity__TD_Ameritrade_or_another__For_IRAs__small_time_investing_and_speculating_for_fun.html&page=1#i49699589

ar-jedi

ar-jedi

 
Damn better late than never. I am 27 now.


 

Eta why does the contribution stop at age 33?

they are trying to make a point -- compare the total invested in column A ($27K) with the total invested in column B ($105K).
now look at what their respective portfolios are worth -- column A has more retirement assets, by more than $300K

and ... this is why you put time on your side.  

ar-jedi

Should of started at 21

 

They also exaggerate it with BS 10% returns every year... You also can factor in inflation to say that 3000 when you were 22 was more money than 3000 10 years later... but I still agree with the graph whole heartedly to invest early.

Roth IRAs are also great for your teenage kids; IIRC, funds in a Roth aren't required to be expended for college expenses when you're doing your financial aid applications.

So it looks like my $1,000 went through. It bought 50.787 shares at $19.69. So if I do the multiplication correctly that equals $997. That mean I lost some money already?