this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2024
118 points (94.7% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35884 readers
1206 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

An index that either tracks the top 500 companies or the total market. Look up a 3-fund portfolio if you want to go a little deeper.

Alternatively, max out an IRA if you haven't already this year and are in a position where you won't need that money until retirement.

Edit: I realized I'm assuming a lot about your situation. So instead, here's a general list of priorities that applies to more or less any situation. You should only proceed with a step if all the steps above it are achieved. Also keep in mind, I'm not a financial advisor just a random stranger on the internet sharing my personal financial strategy.

  1. Pay your future-self first. Establish regular contributions to your retirement account and HSA if you have one, totalling between 3-5% of your compensation or whatever your company's matching policy is (That's not free money, it's part of your compensation package. Not claiming it is like waving a portion of your income).

  2. Pay off all debt since interest is essentially paying a percentage-based monthly fee for owing money and we're not privileged enough for our assets to cover that expense.

  3. Build and maintain a liquid (cash) holding as an emergency fund. This isn't for investing or expensive new toys, it's insurance that will cover your expenses for 6-12 months. Put it in a high-yield savings account or money market since it will be a significant sum and inflation will otherwise reduce its value over time.

  4. Max out your retirement accounts to the contribution limit, your 401(k), IRA, and HSA if you have one. These accounts have tax advantages that essentially mean you can put more money towards retirement than you could in an individual trading account. This doesn't have to be one lump sum, you can divide it up into monthly contributions so long as you're on track for maxing your contribution limits by the end of the year.

  5. Open an individual trading account with a broker (Vanguard, Fidelity, etc.) and invest in index funds (3-fund portfolios are reliable and low-cost). If you anticipate a significant expense over the next 10 years, i.e. a down payment for a house you can budget between this and the funds going towards Step 4 but keep in mind the tax advantages of retirement accounts means you're likely missing out on some retirement gains.