Investing megathread extravaganza

[DaFace]

A place to talk about investing stuff.

[myselff77]

Originally Posted by Pasta Little Brioni

I need 8.7 million then

That's a good problem to have!

[myselff77]

Originally Posted by lewdog

Looking at UPS shares above 127 with stop loss 124.50.

I've held on to some shares of UPS for 20 years. It's performed fine, but I really thought UPS was going to blow up with the increase in e-commerce over that time. I still hold on to it, but now just waiting for it to take a hit some day when Amazon decides to destroy FedEx and UPS and handle shipping for everything.

[Sassy Squatch]

Thankfully I learned from my dad completely ****ing his retirement so I've been relatively responsible and have a pretty decent amount in my 401k. For those of you much smarter than I, am I on track to be in a decent place come retirement age if I just let it be in a passive fund or should I be more aggressive and invest myself?

32 years old.
Current balance in 401k bit over 100k.
Current contributions are roughly 9%, matched by employer, averages out to about 250 per week.

[Sassy Squatch]

Rainman isn't kidding about the variance in those calculators. One give me 600,000 and the other gave me 6,000,000 at 67. What the ****

[myselff77]

Originally Posted by Sassy Squatch

Thankfully I learned from my dad completely ****ing his retirement so I've been relatively responsible and have a pretty decent amount in my 401k. For those of you much smarter than I, am I on track to be in a decent place come retirement age if I just let it be in a passive fund or should I be more aggressive and invest myself?

32 years old.
Current balance in 401k bit over 100k.
Current contributions are roughly 9%, matched by employer, averages out to about 250 per week.

My only suggestion is to up your contribution % as much as possible. It may seem difficult, but find a way to do it. My approach was always anytime I got a merit increase or raise, I split that amount and bumped up the contribution. For me, that often meant for the annual 3% merit increase I would up the contribution 2% and then my take home $$ still increased 1% so it had no real negative impact on my budget. Over time, those little percentage increases add up.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Sassy Squatch

Rainman isn't kidding about the variance in those calculators. One give me 600,000 and the other gave me 6,000,000 at 67. What the ****

Yeah, it's kind of criminal. People shouldn't be allowed to put calculators up that are inaccurate. I've seen some that don't include Social Security and some that I don't think account for inflation and some that are apparently flat-out wrong on the math. I was seeing ranges like what you saw, which is why I built my own that I trust.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Sassy Squatch

Thankfully I learned from my dad completely ****ing his retirement so I've been relatively responsible and have a pretty decent amount in my 401k. For those of you much smarter than I, am I on track to be in a decent place come retirement age if I just let it be in a passive fund or should I be more aggressive and invest myself?

32 years old.
Current balance in 401k bit over 100k.
Current contributions are roughly 9%, matched by employer, averages out to about 250 per week.

Give me a bit and I can run some basic numbers.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by Sassy Squatch

Thankfully I learned from my dad completely ****ing his retirement so I've been relatively responsible and have a pretty decent amount in my 401k. For those of you much smarter than I, am I on track to be in a decent place come retirement age if I just let it be in a passive fund or should I be more aggressive and invest myself?

32 years old.
Current balance in 401k bit over 100k.
Current contributions are roughly 9%, matched by employer, averages out to about 250 per week.

An awful lot depends on your funds in your 401K.

Get your statement and look up what their performance has been compared to the others OVER TIME. Most of them have a 5 and 10 year performance. Check that and the fees. Make sure you're not getting your ass beat on those.

This year I set up a qualified plan for my business despite the relatively few employees. In the process, I pushed out A LOT of numbers. Blah blah blah, long story short, when I backtested some of these funds they were SHIT compared to common index fund portfolios (Mine is 37.5 VOO 37.5 VUG 25% SCHD - You'd do better historically leaving out SCHD - but I wanted exposure to those stocks I wasn't getting in the other 2).

Prudence dictates that you pay attention to the assets you're putting 9% of gross in.

Gut feel is you're probably ahead of most guys your age. I'd up it as much as you can muster. Obviously you don't want to be cash poor because you can't get it back out but much like myselff77 said, if you up the percentage a little at a time, it doesn't hurt less.

One thing I've implemented that definitely helps is I have a fair wad of cash in an "emergency fund" role to go with my set asides for taxes, and mortgage and whatnot. Psychologically that has helped me be OK with taking more risk in the market. The other thing I've done is started a taxable brokerage account (schwab RobinHood whatever) and then if I have any extra cash ahead of payroll hitting, stick it in there. Just getting it the hell out of my checking account adds up a bit, rather than seeing it in there and subconsciously making different decisions that ultimately end up with it being blown on dumb shit. That gives me more savings in the market and if shit gets REALLY hairy I can liquidate it without the penalty of a 401K.

[Rain Man]

I agree with Buehler's 1st, 3rd, and 6th posts. I disagree a little with his 5th and 2nd post, and I strongly disagree with his 4th post.

[Sassy Squatch]

As far as I know all fees for the 401k are paid by the company, unless I'm reading this wrong.

[Sassy Squatch]

Ah, I found it. It's 0.070% for the expense ratio.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Sassy Squatch

Thankfully I learned from my dad completely ****ing his retirement so I've been relatively responsible and have a pretty decent amount in my 401k. For those of you much smarter than I, am I on track to be in a decent place come retirement age if I just let it be in a passive fund or should I be more aggressive and invest myself?

32 years old.
Current balance in 401k bit over 100k.
Current contributions are roughly 9%, matched by employer, averages out to about 250 per week.

I ran the numbers in a simple manner, assuming a $250 per week contribution that increases by the long-term inflation rate of 2.9 percent each year. Then I took your starting balance and assumed a 9 percent return, which is the long-term average if you're 100 percent into stocks.

With those assumptions, you'd end up with about 14 times your salary at the age of 65, which is good but less than optimum. To get it up to 20 times your salary, you'd need to up your contribution to $405 per week. I'm using a ratio of 20 because you'll also probably get Social Security, which will help.

A 9 percent return seems a bit aggressive to me if you're always keeping a little cash or other things, so you might need to go a little higher on the contributions.

Oh, and you're contributing 9 percent, but do you get any matching? That would make a big difference.

Edit: I see now that you already mentioned matching. Is that a 100% match? So you're contributing about $125 per week? Hang on. Let me rerun.

If the $250 per week is a 100% match, that would put you at 28 times your salary at Age 65, which would be great.

[Sassy Squatch]

My current contributions are 9% of 40 hours, which is roughly 126 per week. We don't actually have matching contributions, our employer puts in roughly 10% of our gross per week regardless of what you contribute.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Sassy Squatch

My current contributions are 9% of 40 hours, which is roughly 126 per week. We don't actually have matching contributions, our employer puts in roughly 10% of our gross per week regardless of what you contribute.

Ah, okay. I think that matches (roughly) my edit.

[Sassy Squatch]

Yeah. Unfortunately that 10% contribution just took effect last year or I'd be way better off.