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Take care of your health. Eat well and exercise. Sleep is important. Learn about personal finance and the power of compound interest. Create a budget and start

Take care of your health. Eat well and exercise. Sleep is important. Learn about personal finance and the power of compound interest. Create a budget and start saving for retirement. Contribute to a 401k/IRA/etc. Your goal should be to save 12-15%. If you can't save that much today, start lower, but increase it every 6-12 months and every time you get a pay raise. Save 6 months of expenses for a rainy day fund -- this is especially important in 2020. Pay yourself first. Save for a vacation every year and take it. Travel the world and get a different perspective. Every year you don't save for retirement means you'll need to work another year, or save even more when you're older (think 20-30% of your salary). I'm making up for lost time now. I used to buy new cars and toys. I bought my current car 27 years ago; it still runs great. I wish someone had told me this 30 years ago. I hope I would have listened.

Catsandkites 6y ago
What would some recommended reading about saving for retirement? For example, I have a healthy amount of savings but none is invested and it sits in an account doing nothing (@ 0.1%). I read the obvious subreddits, have a basic working knowledge of financial concepts, understand that I should just invest in the broad market / ETFs and not touch it for decades. But when I go to invest, I feel I have no idea what I'm actually doing. When I look for brokers I'm bombarded with advertising and marketing and get frustrated with what I feel is a lot of dishonesty. Decades of stories about pension funds screwing people over mean I have no trust in the "systems" at all, which is probably wrong. Why would I pick one broker over another? Or a pension fund over another? Should I just go with a big name like Vanguard as I could always move it later? For example, I've never had anyone answer this question: If a pick company Z, invest through them and one day they go bust or disappear, what actually happened to what I invested? I understand risk and that some financial instruments are like bets and so on but seemingly can't wrap my head around this concept. If I buy specific stock Y, through broker Z and broker Z disappears, what happens to my stock Y? Like where is that actual record kept that I have X quantity of stock Y? It's really dumb questions like these that stop me doing anything and lead me to fill an account, technically losing money from inflation.
- melvinroest 6y ago
  I know this one! Disclaimer: not a financial advisor, I do trade stocks as a hobby and am interested in personal finance. Invest in an index fund. I am a fan of Vanguard based on that one good friend of mine is a fan of it (and he studied finance) and that one acquaintance who has this as a very big hobby is a fan of it. (early bitcoin investor, read way more personal finance books than me, etc.). I only know specific vendors in The Netherlands. If I were you, make an ask HN about it. I'm sure that enough people on HN can give you some directions as even high frequency trading people frequent this site. My point is that people who work in the field of finance are probably happy to help and guide you with this question, but it's better to create an Ask HN than to dump all your lifesavings into Vanguard just because I say so :P Disclaimer: I only have a portion of my lifesavings in Vanguard. I actually trade stocks more often, but that is a hobby, not a saving mechanism.
- btkramer9 6y ago
  No affiliation, just a happy long time user of wealthfront.com. It goes one step further than investing in domestic index funds and diversifies into foreign stocks, emerging markets, bonds etc. Their fees are slightly higher than just index funds but still lower than actively managed mutual funds and it's very acceptable in my opinion. betterment.com is a similar service although I haven't used them both these services are known as robo-advisors and they have an algorithm that decides what to invest in as opposed to an individual person

Catsandkites 6y ago

What would some recommended reading about saving for retirement? For example, I have a healthy amount of savings but none is invested and it sits in an account doing nothing (@ 0.1%). I read the obvious subreddits, have a basic working knowledge of financial concepts, understand that I should just invest in the broad market / ETFs and not touch it for decades. But when I go to invest, I feel I have no idea what I'm actually doing. When I look for brokers I'm bombarded with advertising and marketing and get frustrated with what I feel is a lot of dishonesty. Decades of stories about pension funds screwing people over mean I have no trust in the "systems" at all, which is probably wrong. Why would I pick one broker over another? Or a pension fund over another? Should I just go with a big name like Vanguard as I could always move it later? For example, I've never had anyone answer this question: If a pick company Z, invest through them and one day they go bust or disappear, what actually happened to what I invested? I understand risk and that some financial instruments are like bets and so on but seemingly can't wrap my head around this concept. If I buy specific stock Y, through broker Z and broker Z disappears, what happens to my stock Y? Like where is that actual record kept that I have X quantity of stock Y? It's really dumb questions like these that stop me doing anything and lead me to fill an account, technically losing money from inflation.

melvinroest 6y ago
I know this one! Disclaimer: not a financial advisor, I do trade stocks as a hobby and am interested in personal finance. Invest in an index fund. I am a fan of Vanguard based on that one good friend of mine is a fan of it (and he studied finance) and that one acquaintance who has this as a very big hobby is a fan of it. (early bitcoin investor, read way more personal finance books than me, etc.). I only know specific vendors in The Netherlands. If I were you, make an ask HN about it. I'm sure that enough people on HN can give you some directions as even high frequency trading people frequent this site. My point is that people who work in the field of finance are probably happy to help and guide you with this question, but it's better to create an Ask HN than to dump all your lifesavings into Vanguard just because I say so :P Disclaimer: I only have a portion of my lifesavings in Vanguard. I actually trade stocks more often, but that is a hobby, not a saving mechanism.
btkramer9 6y ago
No affiliation, just a happy long time user of wealthfront.com. It goes one step further than investing in domestic index funds and diversifies into foreign stocks, emerging markets, bonds etc. Their fees are slightly higher than just index funds but still lower than actively managed mutual funds and it's very acceptable in my opinion. betterment.com is a similar service although I haven't used them both these services are known as robo-advisors and they have an algorithm that decides what to invest in as opposed to an individual person