Hey there, new here. Let me lay some groundwork.
I, 24F am a new stay at home mom. My husband, 26M works full time to take care of us. We rent and plan to forever. We don’t want the financial responsibility of homeownership (I like that when something breaks I can say “hey landlord, your thing broke” and she fixes it.) We love our neighborhood, live close to family, and have a great, well maintained apartment and an awesome landlord. So plz don’t try to convince me to buy 🫶
I want to know where we should start putting money back to save it and for it to grow. We’ve never done any kind of investing because we literally don’t know how. High school should teach you that but they don’t 🙃
We are in a great spot of being debt free. No car payments, no credit card debt, no backed up bills. Just our monthly rent, utilities, groceries. We don’t even have monthly subscriptions like Netflix or whatever. We’re ready to save this extra cash. We have a savings account but that doesn’t *grow*.
I also need to think about my retirement now that I’m not working. We want a big family and to homeschool, so if I ever go back to work, it will be many years from now. Where should I invest in myself in case God forbid something happen to my husband?
Thank you for the help! Sorry if I sound young and dumb, I’m just thinking more seriously about this now that we have our baby. Other than paying off debt, we’ve kinda been flying by the seat of our pants until now.
Explain where I should put money to save it like I’m dumb (I am)
byu/squidreadsbooks inpersonalfinance
Posted by squidreadsbooks
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See the /r/personalfinance Prime Directive: https://reddit.com/r/personalfinance/w/commontopics
As for what to invest in, Consider this: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio The bonds are the part that adjust volatility level (if you really can stomach 100% stock, they can even be set to 0%, however not everyone is actually able to tolerate 100% stock). More bonds should equal less volatility. Alternatively, a target date (index) fund or target allocation (index) fund are effectively the 3 fund concept in a single wrapper, managed for you. They are designed to be “one and done,” the only thing you hold. They’re fully diversified internally for you. These can be found with expense ratios as low as 0.08%-0.12% for the Fidelity, iShares, Schwab, and Vanguard index based ones. The target date and target allocation funds typically are not recommended for taxable accounts but are fine for tax advantaged. VT (2 letters)/VTWAX would cover both stock roles in one fund.
For brokerage, Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard are some very popular ones (for good reason).
With you not working, look up “spousal IRAs.”