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For today’s Money Snapshot, we’re talking salary, net worth, debt, and more with reader A in Charlotte, NC, who works as a Biglaw associate. She noted, “We got out of law school during the great recession and both had a hard time finding full-time, well-paying jobs in our chosen city. We were on income-based repayment for a while, and then “graduated” out of that as we started earning more, so only in the past 18 months have we gotten aggressive. We each also had an investment account that had been started by our respective grandparents and have only sold a small part of the stocks (about $20,000) to buy our first home.”
We got a few requests from readers to launch our own “money diary” series, so we’ve asked willing readers to fill out a form with lots of details about debt, spending, saving, and more! If you’d like to fill out the form and be considered for a future personal money snapshot, please click here to submit your response! You can see a PDF of the questions if you want to review them ahead of time. See others in the Personal Money Snapshot series here.
Please remember that this is is a real person who has feelings and isn’t gaining anything from this, unlike your usual friendly (soul-deadened, thick-skinned, cold-hearted, money-grubbing) blogger — so please be kind with any comments. Thank you! — Kat
Name: A
Location: Charlotte, NC
Age: 35
Occupation: Biglaw associate
Income: $280,000
Household income: $440,000
Family: Husband, 36 years old (in-house lawyer for a large company) and a 2-year-old
Household net worth: $1,225,000
Net worth when started working: -$15,000 due to student loans.
Debt
What does your debt picture look like?
$300,000 is student loans [A's & her husband's], $517,000 is our mortgage, and $20,000 is a loan against our investment account/stocks.
How much money are you spending each month to pay down debt?
About $6,700, which consists of approx. $2,600 for our mortgage debt and $4,200 towards student loans (between me and DH).
How did you pay for school?
Our parents each paid for our college degrees, but we were each responsible for law school, hence the huge amount of debt we have.
Do you own or rent? How much do you pay monthly?
We own. Our mortgage payment is about $3,300 a month, which is $2,600 for principal and interest and $700 escrow for taxes.
Home debt: Share your theories and strategies with us (including any that lead you to rent rather than own).
We own because we wanted a SFH and to be in a specific neighborhood where there are just not houses for rent. We plan to live in our city (and probably our specific neighborhood) indefinitely, so owning makes sense for us. We have a 30-year mortgage.
Have you paid off any major debt?
I finally refinanced my student loans with a private lender in December 2019, and between December 2019 and June 2021, I've paid off $70,000 in principal on my student loan. Still have $140,000 left to go, but I was proud when I realized that.
Psst: In honor of this series' original title, Tales from the Wallet — here's a wallet we love!
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Savings, Investments & Retirement
How much do you save each month or year in retirement vehicles like 401Ks, Roth IRAs, and others?
I save (and max out each year) a 401(k) through work (no employer match) and a backdoor Roth IRA. My husband maxes out his 401(k) and gets an employer match.
How much money do you allocate to other tax-savvy investments/accounts like HSAs, 529s, FSAs, and others?
We each max out our HSAs and don't currently use them for medical expenses. We hope to avoid using them for medical expenses until retirement but recognize that is not a given. Additionally, since our child was born, I've had a dependent care FSA that I have maxed out. We've used this to slightly defray the cost of childcare.
We don't have a set monthly amount that we have put into a 529. However, we've added all monetary gifts our child has received to their 529, plus portions of our annual bonuses. Since we make too much money and our state doesn't allow for a tax deduction for 529 contributions, we split money between a 529 (with our child as the beneficiary) and a regular investment account where our child is the beneficiary. Our goal is to be able to fully pay for four years at a private university for our kiddo.
How much do you save outside of retirement accounts?
We have $1,600 transferred each month to a joint savings account. It's an automatic transfer.
Talk to us about investments. Do you have/use a financial adviser or planner?
When we graduated law school, my investment account had about $140,000 in it and my husband's had $250,000 in it.
We do use a financial planner who we really like. Honestly, I pushed for it more than my husband. I felt stress that we weren't doing the “best” thing with the investments we had. My husband and I were fortunate that we each had a grandparent that bought us some stock in the companies they worked for when we were born, and then the companies just paid dividends which got reinvested. There were some additional small stock birthday gifts on my husband's side until he was 10, which just got added to the principal and then dividends reinvested.
I like our financial advisor a lot. He is a few years older than my husband and I, but works with people who are in their late 50s/early 60s as the ones running the office. So, we get the benefit of experience, but also our FA understands our current life — kid, student loans, saving for college — because he does the same thing. I am one of those “you don't know what you don't know” people, and our FA gives me piece of mind that someone who actually is looking at the market and understands it is making the decisions. I'll also say that my husband is a person who (if he cares a lot/is interested in the matter) will ask people (in my opinion) rather challenging and probing questions about their job/profession/how they do things. So, he asks our FA a lot of specific questions and, sure enough, our FA answers all of them with really well thought out, detailed, and researched answers, so I feel very confident in what our FA is doing with our money.
Do you have an end goal for saving or are you just saving for a rainy day?
I feel like we're simultaneously saving for a few things — an eventual kitchen renovation, slightly early retirement (maybe 60 vs. 65), college costs, and a rainy day.
When did you start saving seriously? How has your savings strategy changed over the years?
About five years ago when we were looking to buy a bigger place, I got a job that paid a Biglaw salary and felt like we had more breathing room to save, and we were starting to talk about trying to have a baby.
What’s the #1 thing you’re doing to save money, limit spending, or live frugally?
Setting up automatic transfers to a savings account and paying extra on our student loans
Have you ever made a big money move or investment with savings in mind, such as rolling over an older IRA into a Roth IRA or superfunding a 529?
Yes — we have put a lot of money into our child's 529 and education investment account (about $75,000 since they were born in 2019).
Do you have an estate plan in place? A trust?
Yes. Considering DH and I are both lawyers, it took an embarrassingly long amount of time to get one in place. I was sort of intimidated by the idea I'd have to gather all of my information — bank account numbers, life insurance policy numbers, etc., to be included in the will. Turns out, you don't have to be that granular, so it was a rather easy process.
How much do you have in cash that’s available today?
$80,000
How much do you have in cash that’s available in a week?
$80,000
How much is in your “emergency fund,” and did you include it in the previous question?
$40,000 — joint savings account
How much do you have in retirement savings?
$535,000–$200,000 in my 409(k), $35,000 in my backdoor Roth IRA, and $300,000 in my spouse's 401(k)
How much do you have in long-term investments and savings (CDs, index funds, stocks) that are not behind a retirement wall?
$655,000
If property values (home, car) are included in your net worth, how much are those worth?
Our house is worth about $850,000.
Spending
How much do you spend on the following categories on a monthly basis?
Groceries: $900
Restaurants, bars, takeout, and delivery: $400
Clothing and accessories: $300
Transportation: 0 (Cars are both paid off as of May 2020. We bought them new, and plan to keep them for at least another five years.)
Kid-related expenses: $4,200 a month for our nanny; $200 a month for private swim lessons
Entertainment: $75 a month on various streaming services
What’s your spending range for these things? What’s your average?
Vacations – Range: About $5,000–$7,500 per week between hotels, airfare, food/entertainment
Vacations – Average: $6,000
Charity – Range of donations: $50–$300 per month
Charity – Average donation or giving amount: We give $300 a month to our alma mater
We asked A about her donations to her school, and she elaborated:
My husband and I met in undergrad, so it has a lot of sentimental meaning to us. We also each have an incredibly close-knit group of friends from our school. The alumni network is very strong, and we each have received help getting a foot in the door due to these alumni connections. Donating regularly feels like we are paying back just a very, very small part of what the school has given us. My husband’s company also matches (up to a certain dollar amount) charitable donations that are made to educational institutions, so we feel like we can really make our donations go far. It’s a long-term goal of ours to fund a full-ride scholarship at the school, and/or provide funds for student and faculty research.
Individual items of clothing – Range: $25–$100
Individual items of clothing – Average: $60
Apartment or house – Current main residence: Bought for $700,000 about 4.5 years ago
Car or other vehicle – Range: $30,000–$45,000
Car or other vehicle – Last purchase / current main vehicle: $30,000
If you have children, how much do/did you spend for childcare and/or education?
One kid, 2 years old, who is home with a nanny and will be going to full-time school later this year. Between salary, taxes, and a payroll service, the nanny expense averages to $1,000 week.
Fill in the blank on this question: I could save _____ if I stopped ______, but I don’t because _______.
If I stopped buying new clothes and books for my child, I could probably save $150–$200 a month. However, I love buying kid clothes and I find that all the stuff I want is gone by the time things are on sale, so I spend the money.
If you're married: When was your wedding, how much did it cost (total), and how much did YOU pay?
2013, and I'm not sure how much it cost, as my parents and in-laws paid for the whole weekend.
At any point in your life to date, has inheritance played a role in your money situation?
Not inheritance, but husband and I each had an investment account that was started when we were born, and those grew a lot in the 25-ish years before we touched any of the underlying stocks.
How has your family provided financial support in your adult life, if any? (Or, do you provide support to them?)
Yes, tons: paid for college, helped out with some expenses in law school, bough my first car for me, paid for our wedding.
Does your family provide any non-financial support?
We are extremely fortunate that both my parents and my in-laws have moved to our area and are in great health. They watch their grandchild regularly for date nights and overnights and have helped out with daytime childcare when our nanny has gone on vacation.
We asked A whether she planned to say in Biglaw, and she had this to say:
This is tough. While my job has some of the terrible aspects that are common among bigger law firms (perfection is the expectation, long hours, no true vacation), I actually have carved out a decent niche for myself. I work for partners that are incredibly great people and I’ve developed excellent relationships with them. I also don’t have the pressures of being in a big city like NY, which is helpful. On the downside, my particular practice area doesn’t have a lot of great or well paying exit opportunities in my geographic region, so I am also stuck if I want to keep doing the kind of work I do.
So, at the moment I am relatively happy with where I am, and my skills are valued in my office, so I am not overly concerned about being “pushed out“ if I don’t make partner right away. Also, my salary and bonuses keep getting increased, and I’m taking advantage of that by funding my kiddo's 529, paying down student loans, and developing as many transferable skills as I can. We’ll see. I had enough job upheaval in my early career that I am constantly keeping my resume updated and Networking, as I think one should always understand what other career opportunities are out there.
Money Strategy
Do you have a general money strategy?
Pay myself first — retirement, savings account, then pay down our highest-interest debt first (student loans).
Time vs. money — do you spend money to save time (e.g., cleaning service)? Do you donate your time instead of money? What else does this phrase mean to you?
Yes, we spend money to save time. We have a regular housecleaner, and I sometimes send our laundry out (maybe once every six weeks when we have an especially busy work time/weekend).
The biggest thing is that a few months after I was back at work, I was getting really stressed about us making dinner each night in the very small window between getting home and getting our child to bed. I heard about a local meal delivery company from a friend, and it's been awesome. The menu changes each week, and we get 3–5 dinners (depending on our schedule and what we like on the menu) delivered to our doorstep each Sunday in the late afternoon. Everything is already cooked, so we just pick a meal and heat it up.
Is it the most delicious and interesting food I've ever had in my life? No, but it's relatively healthy and saves us so much time between meal planning, cooking, and cleaning up the kitchen during the week. Could I make some of it better myself (because I love to cook)? Yes, absolutely. However, it's bought us back probably an hour each night with our kiddo. I also think, but haven't done the hard research to prove this, that it has ended up not being all that much more expensive than when we were buying and cooking everything, because we have so much less food waste. It averages out (with the occasional coupons we get) to about $23 a meal for the two of us. I try to sell every set of working parents I know on the meal service.
What are your favorite resources for personal finance?
The Corporette blog always has interesting posts and brings up topics I've never heard of.
What advice would you give your younger self about personal finance?
I would say, “seriously — refinance your student loans sooner!! The job loss protections from the federal student loans that you think are worth the high interest rates are really, truly, NOT worth it.”
Icons via Stencil.
Anonymous
I am curious why you chose to take out loans for law school instead of selling the stocks you received from family.
I am also interested in what sorts of advice the financial advisor provides and how much they charge in fees.
Anon
I’m always curious about why people work so hard to fund their children’s university while they’re still working to pay off their own. Why save $70K for kiddo (especially since you say you don’t qualify for a tax advantage) when you have $300K of student loans? Are the loans extremely low interest or something?
Doodles
This was exactly my question as well. To me, “pay myself first” means paying down student loans, mortgage and saving for retirement… all before I save for my kids’ college. My kids can take out loans for college, I can’t do the same for retirement. My state does have some tax advantages to 529 plans so we put in the max for that tax advantage every year (less than $10K), and the rest goes to my mortgage and retirement accounts. No student loans.
help
I wondered the same thing.
And since the loans were private, I figured the interest rates might be on the higher end. But with their huge income, they could pay them off in no time.
They must be doing extremely well in the stock market (as most of us are…. for now….), deciding they would rather keep lower interest loans and invest all of the cheap $$ instead. Honestly, that’s how the rich get richer. Beezos doesn’t pay cash for his 50 million dollar new estate. He has a low interest mortgage, and saves all of that 50 million to invest other ways.
Was also surprised she didn’t list her large loans up front, right next to her net worth.
But very interesting read – thanks OP for sharing!
Anon
I don’t have kids and won’t have them, but it seems to me like she can afford to do both. I definitely agree people should fund their retirement account before saving for kids’ college, but I’m not sure why you wouldn’t pay off your student loans and save for college all at one if you can afford to do so. It seems like she’d be missing out on some returns on the college funds by waiting to start a 529.
Anon
Annnd this is why I would never do one of these myself: it’s amazing how many folks we have on this board who have made perfect financial choices their entire life, their own financial lives are apparently stupendous and above reproach, and they feel the need to nitpick and snark about the choices of others who are doing, objectively, pretty great. OP and husband are already maxing out 401ks and she’s doing a backdoor Roth, and she’s paid off $70k in a short amount of time on the loans. They are in the top 5% of earners nationwide. They’re going to be fine financially. Yet, there’s always some little detail all the sanctimonious financial folks find to harp on. I dunno, maybe she really loves her kid and wants to be able to fund their education fully so the kid doesn’t end up with student loans? Just taking a wild guess here. I would love for you two to post up your finances! Let’s see how well you’re doing compared to the OP. Literally put your money where your mouth is. It’s anonymous here, right? What do you have to lose? Unless you’re worried your choices may not stand up to the scrutiny of others.
Cool
I think you miss our points. We are asking why so we can learn. She has a financial advisor. She is obviously doing well. Maybe she can teach us something that may or may not be helpful for us.
Anon
Calm down, the person you’re replying to just asked a question.
Anonymous
I don’t necessarily agree not to fund it at all, but I’m surpised they continue to fund it unless they plan to have several more kids. The amount $75,000 alone will grow in the next 15 years will likely create an excess that has limited uses.
Senior Attorney
I’m taking all of this with a grain of salt because if OP thinks she’s spending “zero” for transportation because she doesn’t have a car payment, she’s just wrong. What about gas, maintenance, and insurance? To me this just shows OP doesn’t really know what she’s spending and it makes all of her other numbers suspect as well.
Anonymous
That was weird to me, too.
NYCer
Ha! I had the same thought, particularly when we were in California recently and gas was nearly $5 per gallon. We rarely drive in NYC, and I haven’t lived in California for years, so it was a bit of sticker shock.
A
All, I misread the question. Not trying to hide anything.
HSAL
This is a strangely aggressive take. I can totally see thinking that was asking for a car payment.
Anonymous
Agreed, this seems like a weirdly overly aggressive take . She’s clearly a higher earner. An extra $100/month is just a blip in the big picture.
Obviously a lot of time and effort goes into filling this out. And it’s extremely personal info. She misread one question or left out a small expense. Who cares?
NMR
Thank you for sharing. I love these kinds of posts. You guys are doing great but add me to the chorus of folks wondering why you don’t pay down the student loans more aggressively. Your emergency funds and savings accounts are already more than healthy. Diverting all or most of that automatic monthly savings contribution to tackle the loans would knock out so much principle. (This has been our strategy for the past year and we have knocked down a TON of law school debt.)
A
A here! To answer some questions –
Why Didn’t I Pay for Law School by Selling Stocks? At the time of starting law school, I thought I’d have a job when I graduated that would easily pay for the loans. Then I didn’t, and I was relieved that I had that money as a backup. So, it was an emotional/comfort thing, and maybe not the best financial decision at the time, but the accounts have gained a lot of value, and I’m happy with the way things have ultimately panned out.
What Advice Does Our Financial Planner Give? We meet in person/over zoom, with our financial planner twice a year. He has helped us run numbers for how much of a house we can actually afford/how. much we should put down/what kind of interest rate we should be able to get when we were looking to buy our current house, set up my back door Roth IRA/manages the Automatic draws from my checking account/doing the rollover (or whatever it is that makes a back door Roth happen, helped us set up both the 529 (and manages those investments) and brought up the idea to us about having the separate “educational investment account” (which is just a separate investment account where funds are currently earmarked for our kiddo’s college; and advises on what 401(k) options we should target for our 401(k) contributions. the cost is 1% of assets under management.
I know that most (all?) of the things I just listed above that our FP does are things that are also available on the internet if you read persona finance/financial planning blogs, and that several people manage their own back door Roth IRAs. I am not a person who wants to spend any free time doing that, and I would have never set up the back door Roth without our FP telling me about it and then getting it set up for me (literally printing the papers and putting them in front of me to sign). So, I’m happy to pay the 1% fee and we re-evaluate every six months how the plan is going for retirement and our other goals, what has changed (job changes/promotions, new house, child care costs once we had our kiddo or really any other big life changes). If I didn’t have these conversations every 6 months, I wouldn’t really be thinking about these things in a critical manner the way that I do when our FP asks questions. Our FP makes us answer these questions either in the meeting or by following up until we do (which we asked him to do for us, he’s not just being annoying), so we’re forced to have these conversations with each out and put a plan in place. I honestly admire anyone who can have these conversations unprompted by a third party. I know myself and I just wouldn’t do it.
Kiddo’s 529/Education Investment Account Contributions- So, about $25 k of the principal was baby shower/baby is now here/birthday/holiday gifts that are for kiddo directly from family and friends. We also have taken our bonuses each year and split them up into – adding to 529/education investment account, paying down student loans, cash saving, and a bonus gift for ourselves. We are contributing to kiddos education now while we have these large influxes of cash (in the form of bonuses) AND time on outside for these investments to grow. I don’t know how much longer we’re going to have these huge bonuses coming in, so we’re front loading these education accounts with the plan of stopping huge contributions at some point (and if we still get large bonuses, then diverting funds elsewhere).
Paying off Student Loans – honestly, both DH and I bounced around in a few jobs (that didn’t pay well at all) after law school. Once we got these well paying jobs where we are now, we feared (perhaps irrationally) losing jobs again and wanted the protections of job loss from fed student loans and it was nice to have a small monthly payment. After the birth of kiddo and interest rates being low, we finally have gotten serious about paying the loans off and refinanced. We have a very low interest rate on the loans, so principal is slowly getting paid down. However, it would take quite a bit more money to make a serious significant change in the payoff date of the loans. Since refinancing in December 2019, I’ve paid off **$70k of the principal** on my loans, mostly from bonuses and adding a small extra payment monthly. I’m hopeful that most of it will be paid off before kiddo starts kindergarten (just because that seems like a reasonable goal). We’re currently able to contribute to both kiddo’s future education and our retirement, while also enjoying some of life’s other pleasures.
“Paying myself first” /thoughts on debt— each year, DH and I max out a 401(k) and HSA each year and I contribute to a backdoor Roth, along with saving cash each month. I know that a fair number of people in the world have the approach to pay debt off as fast as possible. My husband and I don’t love debt, and definitely don’t LOOOVE having these huge student loan balances or anything, but we’re comfortable with it because we have a plan for paying them off, and we just make the payments each month. Our other investments are also kicking butt in the market, so should we need to, we could sell and pay the student loans off. I’ve done some messing around with amortization schedules for the student loans and it would take a lot of money to move the needle to pay the student loans off much faster, so we’ve accepted that for the next while, we’re going to have the student loans and it’s the largest budget item each month. We don’t sell any of the stocks because the rate of return on those is way better than the interest rate for our loans.
Transportation Expenses – I mean, we live very close to work and don’t drive all that much. We fill up our cars once a month. I’d say with tax and registration and gas and oil changes and repairs/new tires for both cars this year, maybe $2500-$3000 a year?
General thoughts – I don’t think we have always made great money decisions, and we definitely need to focus more on our budget of every day expenses (which we don’t do at all). Putting this out there has given me the kick in the but I need to do that. I’ve tried YNAB and it was incredibly frustrating (even after watching a lot of YouTube tutorials) so I am looking out for other options, but haven’t found anything that just works easily and does both big picture net worth and day to day budgeting.
help
Wow – thank you for taking the time to explain. Very interesting, and very reasonable.
You are doing so well, and I appreciate the decisions you have made that reflect your needs at the time. Thanks for sharing.
Enjoy your life!
AnonInfinity
Hello OP! Thanks for taking the time to explain all this and to submit your money snapshot. It was really interesting.
FWIW, this internet stranger thinks you’re doing amazing. You say you haven’t always made great money decisions– I don’t know your whole past of course, but this snapshot shows that it’s all working out well. Also, you’re saving for everything you need (it seems like), so don’t feel like you have to have a high maintenance budgeting system or anything if you don’t want to. I know a lot of high earners who are happy and saving for their future who do not keep a strict budget. They just transfer to retirement and a savings account and they can spend whatever is left in their checking. If that’s working and is stress free for you, it’s not a problem! (I say this as an avid YNABer– it just works for me and other systems work for other people).
anonn
thanks for the additional insight. Part of my financial plan is to be like your parents and grandparents! It’s awesome they were able to do this for you and you’re working on the same for your kids. I also appreciate your awareness of how fortunate that is. We’re a few years older, with similar incomes, had similar grad school student loan amounts, but with lower expenses, and our net worth is maybe $400K.
My only question is why wait till 60 to retire?
A
Thank you for these words (and for taking the time to read my very, very long response/explanation).
AnonInfinity – Financial decisions are hard (duh) because it’s not like a formal science experiment where you have a “control group” and can run different scenarios where you pay for law school with stocks in one scenario and then pay for it with loans in the other. At the time of starting law school, taking out loans seemed like the best option. Maybe it wasn’t in hindsight. At the time I got my current job (and making more money than I thought I ever would) maybe I should have refinanced my student loans and started paying them down aggressively. That’s what I mean by “maybe didn’t make the best financial decisions”.
I wanted to write a Personal Money Snapshot because I think I haven’t always made the best financial decisions so I wanted to show something that was “not perfect”, and because I feel like most people who are writing them (with the exception of maybe a few more recent ones), the people writing them don’t come across as particularly comfortable with debt outside of a mortgage. I think the *right* debt is not necessarily a bad thing, but I appreciate that not everyone is comfortable with it.
anonn – currently our plan is set up that we’ll retire at 60. But part of the purpose of meeting with our FP every six months is to discuss things like this, and figure out the tangible steps to making it happen. And these meetings are like 2-2.5 hours every six months with several follow up phone calls and emails in the week or two after. They’re rather intense discussions, it’s like having a 2 hour oral exam with a professor from college – we are given a few “thought points” that DH and I will discuss with each other before our meetings, and then our FP and his team really push us to give answers about how we’re going to tackle X, where we want to invest Y, what our goals for funding our kiddos education are, are we thinking public or private for K-12, if so, how does that impact everything else? what we’re going to do with raises and bonuses, should we invest in rental property? etc. I certainly don’t think this is the best approach for everyone (or something everyone wants), but it works for us.
Also, in submitting this, Corporette thought I would get a lot of questions about our charitable giving to our undergrad and I totally thought I’d get a lot more questions about the loan against our stock portfolio, but no one has even brought either one up in the comments. Just interesting that what people focused on is not what I expected!
Anon
My commute is three miles a day with a fully paid off car, and my transportation expense are:
Insurance
Repairs
Regular maintenance (oil changes, tires, the occasional nail in a tire)
Gas to/from work
Gas to/from the gym, grocery store, church, run group…..
Road trip costs
Car washes
Annual excise tax and registration renewal
SS
Wow great job A working hard and getting yourself to where you and your family are! I love reading Money snapshots as it gives me real good perspective and I always learn something new (thank you, Corporette!). I am an immigrant so learning about US financial markets and strategies you can employ here took me and my husband some time. We moved here from India 20+yrs back for my husband’s job. We both have undergrad engineering and MBA degrees (husband from India and mine here in US) and we both work in bay area, CA now. We manage our own investments though we do have a CPA to help out with tax filings.
A, learning about your grandparents buying you both stocks early on is a great idea. I never thought about it. I have 2 boys (19 & 9) and we started 529 plan for both of them when they were young. I do have savings account for both of them and put small money there each month plus anytime a family member gives them monetary gift. Now I am thinking I should transfer that to an investment account and let it grow further. I do have an investment account for older one which I recently opened to teach him whatever little I know so he gets a head start which we didn’t when we came here.
Would it be possible for you to share some overall learnings from your investment portfolios as to what worked so far and what didn’t? I mostly invest in index funds. Early on we tried getting FA service through one of the big companies but honestly that turned out to be useless. I am wondering if you or Corporette have any advice on finding good FA. Thanks in advance!
A - Personal Money Snapshot from Yesterday
SS – I’d say the one thing I’ve really learned from our FP is that it is “time IN the market, NOT timing the market” that matters. This is part of the reason we’re front loading investments to our child’s 529 – we only have a short runway (shorter than our time to retirement) for that to grow. Our FP has also put some of our newer investments in emerging markets (that’s the term he uses), because those have a larger upside potential. We also have a lot of “large cap” stocks that help balance the risk of the emerging markets.
As for finding our FP… we met with a few people before we settled on this one. For example, there was one who forgot he had an appointment with us (and we were waiting for him to show up at his office for 30 minutes). A mentor of mine at an earlier job recommended this particular firm to me. She and her husband are smart, no nonsense people so I trusted their judgment. The person who is head of the advisory firm we use is their FP. We, since we had a LOT less money at the time, ended up meeting with their younger associate (who is now our FP). Initially I was a bit miffed about this, but it’s actually been a great fit. So, get lots of recommendations and meet with these people. They’re dealing with your money, you should have a good feeling about them.
SS
Thank you so much, A! Appreciate your thorough response.