So I know, I know, I have to hire a financial planner. I don't like them though cuz it seems like all they do is recommend some sort of insurance. What types of investments do you have?
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We have a money market account (not sure if that really counts as an investment) as well as retirement accounts. We don't really invest in any other ways.
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@highwire: cool, we have those too. Although, we should put more into retirement funds.
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If you go to an investing company (Edward Jones, Charles Schwab, etc), you pay as you invest--you don't really "hire" them.
Then they give you personal recommendations for your own investment goals (and do college funds for your kids, IRA for you and spouse, and even single investment accounts--bonds, stocks, mutual funds, etc. -
@pastemoo: awesome, need to look into that. Thx!
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Mostly low cost index funds. I recommend Vanguard for that. I also have more speculative investments in individual companies but its a limited part of my overall portfolio. I wouldn't be able to sleep if my portfolio value had wild swings.
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We do the same as @Sunny - index funds through Vanguard. My 401k is in a fund geared to my retirement date (i.e., a 2040/2050/whatever year fund) - not sure what those are technically called. They are aggressive investments for a while, then get more conservative as you near retirement.
I don't have the time or desire to really get into investing in particular companies; except maybe those that are extremely stable and should be going forward (but then again, those ones are also usually $$$ already!).
LO's 529's are managed through Fidelity.
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We also do the same as @Sunny and @Yoursilverlining. We try to match the target retirement date funds in terms of the percentages we have in particular types of stocks and bonds.
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@yoursilverlining: they are called target date funds : )
My 401k and my daughter's 529 are both invested in target date funds. Our IRAs and our taxable investment account are invested in a portfolio of individual stocks and mutual funds. If we had more money we would also invest in some individual corporate and municipal bonds but for now we use bond funds for fixed income exposure. What @pastemoo: said about paying as you invest can be true. Places like Schwab and Edward Jones do primarily do transactional based business. But with some of the larger brokerage firms (UBS, Morgan Stanley/Smith Barney, etc) you can also open a manager account where you pay annual percentage of your account total and then you don't pay individual transaction costs. This style of investing allows your advisor to make moves as he/she feels the market demands without worrying about transactional costs. A good financial advisor will also do a financial plan with you to help you can an idea of how best to invest in order to meet your goals like retirement and education.
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After a few years of trading individual stocks, my husband invest in solely options trading on DIA now, which as you probably know is the DOW average, so essentially in the whole market. He decided that a stock portfolio on it's own was just too risky. He's been doing really good with that and consistently out performs the DIA and S&P.
I have a managed portfolio with Bank of America, which has a mix of stocks, funds, and bonds. I went this route because I'm too lazy to really take care of my own portfolio, and don't know enough to trade stocks and pick out funds myself. I did dabble in trading for a few years, and got really lucky since I started in 08/09 at the low. My portfolio, I believe, has a fee based on how much is in there, I think it's like 1.2%, which is ok by me since the growth has been a lot more than that. They have different manged accounts based on your goals and risk level.
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Don't forget EFTs which are funds you can trade like stocks in real time. Fidelity has 65 that you can trade without fees. Also be mindful of what you buy with respect to dividends if you want to limit your tax liability, because those dividends are taxed.
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