Sure, but they need 3-4 years minimum for 3% on a CD. My money-market has gone from 0.75 to 1.85 in about a year. Wait another year, it may be 2.5% or more. feels like CDs aren’t worth the lock-in.
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Totally E46fanatic - full 18.5K for me and the wife. I think my company 401k match goes on top? Debating about education fund… Right now, have $$ for the kids in a separate 2% account (kids are in elementary).
May need to reach out to an investment advisor, just not sure how to find a reliable one.
Lately I like stability. In case of an imminent civil war, followed by a deep recession, my rate will be unchanged. 
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Nope. I am just a small fish swimming with sharks. That guy is a genius. His apple investment alone went up like 50-60 percent. So his $30B investment became something like $50B and now he owns 5% of apple. I cant even afford hist BH stcok price at $320k a piece.
can you buy a portion of an stock?
The B shares are only $214 right now.
Cannot buy a portion of A stock. And the B stock will probably take 40-50 years to be at the A atock price.
Look into ETF’s.
For me, lately, the question has been how much money do I want to be able to access without any fees? IE, perhaps not max out a 401K and have the same index fund strategy in a brokerage account. For savings, forgoe a savings account other than very very short term things, and keep emergency fund/short-medium term money in I Bonds (you’ll not be able to take the money out for a year, but transfering a set amount every week or so helps in that regard).
I’m in the same boat as you. I just started flipping homes and have one under my belt, currently looking for my 2nd project before the market switches over to a buyers market from sellers market.
After 3 or 4 projects I plan on taking the after tax profit money I make on the coastal flips (I live in the DC Metro area and prices here are still fairly healthy and the market is still strong for now) and buying in more stable rental markets like the midwest (St. Louis, Tennessee, Milwaukee, Indy) and the South (Outskirts or Dallas and Houston, possibly Florida but no where near the hotspots).
I ready a very good book about investing out of state, Long Distance Real Estate Investing by David Greene, its a good book if you’re a beginner.
Good luck to you and your investing journey
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I probably should take my investing more seriously. No idea how much it is costing me to do it this way. But here it is anyway. Self employed, last 10 years have been able to save around $30k each year. Each of those years I did $5k in IRA, $10k in Silver(usually buy 1 American Eagle Monster box once a year), $5k in Bonds, and have kept $10k just sitting as cash in a low interest Savings Account. Account Has around $100k in it at this point. I know, not good.
Would have been a great strategy for 2007-Q1 2009, but in hindsight, you missed the crazy runup of the last 9 years. Of course hindsight is 20/20 and if I new what I know now, i would have mortgaged everything i had in order to buy in March 2009, but that is only the stuff of dreams…
That’s why you buy a low cost index fund and average into it every month. Even if you are wrong with your timing here and there over the long run it will smooth out because you will also be buying at the lows. The key is to be playing with money you don’t need to touch for a long period of time. If you do this you will outperform 90% of the hedge funds.
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1 months T bills are over 2% rate now. And you don’t pay state tax on that - so in CA that’s close to 2.2% with only 1 month lockups.
Have been trying to get into multifam investing but crazy expensive in the SF bay area. Half of my savings are rolling through t-bill ladder (saving for either downpayment or market crash) while the other half is spread among index funds, individual stocks, crowdfunded debt, crowdfunded equity, and some play money in crypto.
How does one get into t-bills?
Any thoughts about municipal bonds?
I need to be more aggressive in my investing. What I do currently is max out my HSA account ($6900 a year minus what I use for the family bills) and put 14k in a 401k. I’m 33 and didn’t start investing until 2 years ago (graduate school).
Most of my extra income goes towards paying student loans off (I pay roughly $2300 a month on them). Should be done with them in roughly 5 more years.
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I’m in the same boat. I’m finally getting on the right side of my grad school loans - truly max out my 401k and save the balance. Childcare really has put a dent in savings, no surprise. I have a brokerage account full of index funds that seems to be doing pretty well, but I’d be lying if I said I knew investing as well as I know leases.
On my list of things to work on for 2019.
Same as most people here, max 401k that employers will match for me and my wife. I also do max ESPP through my employer, which is a guaranteed 15% return. I keep our cash at Discover savings, which gives about 2% APR and provides flexibility in case I need to move my money around (don’t need to tie up the cash like CDs). I do move our extra savings to new checking/savings accounts to grab bonus money, which usually has over 5% annual return with no risk.
But really my focus is on paying down the interesting-bearing debts. Got rid of our mortgage insurance last year with a refi. Wife has a lot of student loan debt, which I also refinanced with better terms. Next year I will try to sell our house and use some of the equity to wipe out all the student loans. Then the focus will be on paying the new mortgage faster. Call me overly cautious but if my return on investment is vulnerable to market risks and yet does not significantly exceed the interest I pay on my debt then why take the risk to invest in the first place?
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Eh i tried to mortgage but they refuses to lend to me. Good income and credit. They did not like appraisal then they said could do 70% ltv with some other fees.
I use Fidelity but should work with any brokerage acct. No fee to purchase, and there are auctions for new issues every week. There are no fees to purchase secondaries with Fidelity.
Munis can be good if you buy within your state then there’s no federal or state tax but duration is longer (higher interest rate risk) and secondary market is usually thin if you need to sell. Better to get a muni bond fund, but again there’s longer duration and its never good to have long duration during periods of rising interest rates (rates go up, bond prices go down).
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