Finances of 2+2ers

[ImsaKidd]

50k @ 19.

I've got college expenditures coming up though ><

[AZK]

24, balla. Busto in under a year if I don't stop buying [censored] like $300 jeans now that I am no longer playing poker.

[XXXNoahXXX]

I'm 22 and living off of the student loan disbursements I am getting while in law school. I have $2K in an ING account. Thanks to generous scholarships I will only be $75k in debt upon graduating, instead of the the $200K some people will be. Hopefully I will be out of debt and making serious bank by 30.

[daryn]

ballin baby

i am looking to "invest" but have no idea what to do. i'd like to buy my own home/condo/townhouse within the next 9 months or so. i should probably look into an IRA, whatever that is. right now i have some dough in CD's, some in money market bank account.

[bowens]

31, Busto. Stupid credit card debt. I was an idiot for a long time. Got some student loan debt consolidated with my wife, and a home. Trying to dig out of the hole so we can have kids.

[fslexcduck]

[ QUOTE ]
ballin baby

i am looking to "invest" but have no idea what to do. i'd like to buy my own home/condo/townhouse within the next 9 months or so. i should probably look into an IRA, whatever that is. right now i have some dough in CD's, some in money market bank account.

[/ QUOTE ]

just set up a fidelity or chuck schwab acct in the meantime, you should get like min 8-9% with very very little work. not as liquid as money market, but not too tied up either.

[darkcore]

25, finishing university (europe), getting there, lot less worries than most of my peers...

life is good.

[img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

[astroglide]

daryn, everyone yaps about roth iras but you can't contribute if you make more than like 100k. they also work better if you'll be making more money later in life, which might not be the case for a lot of poker players. maybe a regular ira is worth looking into for retirement though.

money market bank accounts often suck. if they're not around 5% look into "no risk CDs". i hadn't heard of these either, but bank of america has 9 month CDs for around 5 points with no withdrawal limits or penalty.

fwiw i tend to just dump money into index funds, which are like stock market versions of mutual funds. SPY is where i put the most, it simply tracks the s&p 500. i use sharebuilder as my brokerage because they have easy automatic investment stuff (e.g. "take $X/month and split it among the following stocks"), allow ownership of partial shares (which makes fixed dollar amt investing easier), low fees, etc.

[Zeno]

Daryn,

Don't listen to those other crackpots [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]- Consider this: GE Interest Plus. If you have more than 15k this is not a bad way to keep some money (5.05%), completely liquid and you can write checks and wiring service from the account (there is an amount limit) and very solid, also NO FEES. Perfect for poker players. Sure the hell beats putting money in a bank at 0.1 % or whatever most now pay.


GE ain’t caving so this is as good as a bank for stability.

Trust Me. I've got more than 25k in my account at GE.

-Zeno

[AZK]

[ QUOTE ]
ballin baby

i am looking to "invest" but have no idea what to do. i'd like to buy my own home/condo/townhouse within the next 9 months or so. i should probably look into an IRA, whatever that is. right now i have some dough in CD's, some in money market bank account.

[/ QUOTE ]

I keep a few thou in a regular bank checking/savings account for monthly bills and expenses, a larger chunk is in ING gaining 4.5% or whatever, the rest is invested. (I got lucky, my best friend's dad is a big investment guy, he basically did all my investing, just told me 4-6 funds to pick up and then just to not touch it for as long as possible) Whenever I can invest money I ask him how to distribute it based on my current portfolio. ING also has a few different funds that they weight differently depending on your goals, for [censored] and giggles I decided to invest in their long term high risk fund (they suggest doing this if you will not need the $ for the next 10 years min.) which was a collection of sci/tech, emerging markets, some other stuff...

I guess I just lucked out but you can also do a ton of reading/research on the internet, I follow a few blogs and read some sites here and there, but basically I like to just buy something and then not worry/trade for as long as possible, I check it every now and then, but I'm not really concerned with it. I have no interest in trading daily/weekly, I just want to buy something and then every few years make a few adjustments... really depends on your goals/if you need the $. The money I have invested is money that I don't really consider in day to day life. I just want it to grow as much as possible for as long as possible.

edit: I'm slowly starting to get more interested in it so I've bought a few books and plan on reading, but again, not with the intentions of being an active trader.