Rodents of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist.

Also, the original SW explosion of the Death Star did NOT have the halo/hula hoop/ring, that was added. I really dislike those rings around sfx explosions as real explosions do not have one. What's that all about??

My cold is almost gone. I suppose it jumped to other addictionites.

Since I am over my cold, I plan to ride tomorrow. Start time of 8:30, weather will be 30F and winds at 12MPH. Brisk.

Most 401(k)'s allow the participant to invest in mutual funds. Select several and distribute your contribution. Conventional wisdom is to invest 10% of your pay. As Billy said, put the money in and don't touch it.

Which is it?

Cold is 95% gone. Gone enough that it's not an issue. Most colds leave a lingering bit of congestion for a few days, that's where I am.

Capishe??

I think you should invest all of your 401(k) funds in one company. Put all your eggs in one basket as they say.

As RollCNY suggested.

More likely than not, the bull is about to become a bear. Mutual funds are lovely, but somewhat misleading, in that their past years success is no indication of how they will handle the transition. At the questioners age, and at this time in the market, you almost have to expect everything to drop before it recovers. That is good, because a loss in value means you are buying more shares, playing for a game 40 years out.

I would start with one of the many funds that is just a retirement fund 20xx, with the xx a little further out than your planned retirement date. That should bias it to a more aggressive side. If you want to be anal, I would look more at what the fund charges in maintenance fees versus what past 2 year yield is, because you have to pay that regardless of portfolio performance.

Or you could just buy penny stocks. How far could they drop?

I'm starting to get a nice dry cough. It perfectly accents the dripping nose and occasional sneezing.

100%

I'm bummed that one of my stocks hit an all time high about a month ago. Wish I had been tracking it, woulda sold off half of it.


Watching it like a hawk now. If it hits 80 again, I'll be getting emails and text alerts.

So...yer gonna be blowin snot rockets during the group ride.

Teh Metalz.

There's some of the best advice you will get. If your 401(k) does not offer a Target Date type setup, get a variety of the funds. With a long time toward retirement you should put more in stock funds, less in bond/income funds. As you grow older you may want to start to shift that.

There are many calculators available online to help guide your investment decisions. Most likely, the company your 401(k) is with has them as well. Use them frequently.

Or, buy penny stocks.

Unfortunately, I am not in a position to put as much as I should into the plan at the moment because from February to August, my wife will be unemployed. However, I'm super lucky in the my employer, who I sometimes complain about, is actually pretty nice and contributes 3% regardless of whether or not I put a penny in. So I'm going to go with that and probably do an additional 1% for now, and hopefully ramp it up to a full 10+%, including the employer contribution, over the next couple of years.

Right now, just because I'll be starting with very little, I'm considering putting it into more aggressive funds just to see how it does over the next year or two. About half in capital appreciation funds that have done well over the past few years (which is of course no guarantee) a quarter into a health and sciences fund and another quarter into a tech fund.

That's definitely what I'm thinking at the moment. The government bond stuff is pretty rock solid, but super conservative. If I can play a little bit of an aggressive short game with a smaller pot to see how it does, at least I tried.

Luckily, I'm well on track to have the major stuff paid off well before retirement, so any retirement funds will hopefully just be to pay bills/upkeep. I don't like expensive cars and with bikes as my vice, I'm not likely to loose 100K a year on car projects like some rich fools.

No one can time the market. Best advice is dollar cost averaging and low-fee/index funds when you are younger....move gradually towards more stable funds (bonds etc) as you get older. Don't follow market gyrations, it's just going to stress you out.

Unless your last name is savant, now is a very risky time to go aggressive stock. Now is actually a better time to go all bonds, from a pure retain value standpoint. The stock market is overvalued. It has to absorb the 401(k) contributions somewhere, so current values have no bearing on actual worth. Expect a correction by either buy on long term goals and weather a short term storm, or plan for no short term growth, and retain value. I would do the former.

I know that it may sound like a lot, but put in 3% of your own dollars up front. These are pretax dollars, so real take home hit is closer to 2%, and it is really hard to actually miss 2% in your take home disposable. If you budget that well to notice, please give me budget advice/advise.

Locked. They are a very bad troll. Completely fails to actually engage in the thread in a meaningful way.

Please discuss.

I dunno, interest rates are bound to jump and that will tank bond values.

Bond yield, but bond value? I guess I would look at them as a potential value safe harbor. But I am no expert.

I strongly suggest you invest 3% of your own money as well. As noted, the money goes in pre-tax. At 3% your reduction in take home pay will hardly be noticeable due to the tax advantage.

holy ****. the newest web version of outlook is trash.

god help you if you click off the page while writing a message, it closes the popup and takes its sweet ****ing time "autosaving the draft" so i end up writing half the email about 6 times.