Personal Investments • Re: 30th Birthday Investment & Finance Checkup (Also advice needed for saving for kids education)

...we want to make sure we have a comfortable retirement (I plan to retire no sooner than 60), and would like to invest for our childrens' education and weddings.

Those may be competing priorities for now, but over time you may be able to do all of them.

1. Are there any glaring issues with our portfolio or plan that should be changed immediately?

How closely are you following recommendations in Prioritizing investments and Investment Order?

2. Are there any funds that are clearly under-performing which should be replaced? (I'm mostly focused on the FSMAX in my 401k but genuinely asking about all of them, especially in my 401k since VIIIX greatly outperforms each of our other 401k holdings.)

See Callan periodic table of investment returns. In other words, what you have is not unreasonable. How will things perform in the future? Nobody knows....

3. My 401k is currently set up as pre-tax but I have the ability to begin making roth contributions instead. Would this be a better option?

Probably not, unless you expect significant above-inflation income increases within a few years. See Traditional versus Roth.

4. I have access to Vanguard retirement target funds in my Fidelity 401k. Should these be used or is it better to configure our fund selection separate from a target fund?

Either way is reasonable. See the answer to #2.

5. What should I look into for college savings and wedding savings? Any suggestions for investment vehicles, funds, etc would be greatly appreciated.

For college, a 529 plan, especially if your state has a good one. For weddings, taxable investments and/or just expect to use part of your income stream that year. Presumably both events are 20-30 years in the future, so work on your own retirement plans for now.

6. I'm not sure how to determine what we need to contribute in order to achieve our goals. Is there an investment calculator that is widely recommended to determine how much you should set your contributions at?

Have you looked at Excel's PMT function?

Statistics: Posted by FiveK — Mon Aug 26, 2024 10:56 pm

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