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💸 💸 Investments and stocks, how do you learn about ...
3 years ago
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I haven't had access to money or stability for most of my life. Finally 32 and rent is on autopay which is my biggest achievement.
But now with a husband and pets, I would really like to do better. Earn any more income I possibly can. Problem? Stuck in strict isolation for my weak immune system. I work as a freelance artist and it's incredible. But my disability often makes me stop physically working many days of the week. It's been a struggle to get consistent income while fighting with my health. So far every solution just ends up being, "we need more money" as it usually is for most people.
My goals are to learn life long skills to help myself bring more income into the home so we can afford to put money away into savings for moving or maybe someday getting to buy our own house (LOL someday). I guess my most immediate goal? I would like to pay off student debt. Around 25k last I saw I believe... I always considered this an impossible goal. But I don't want to keep thinking like that. I want to make 1-2 thousand a month like I used to be able to when I was a full time artist worker. Disability has stopped a lot of my progress and I'm determined to get it back!
So after reading all that, haha, would anyone have any advice they would be open to sharing? Can be about stocks and investments, or just better financial earning skills for home bound disabled people?
But now with a husband and pets, I would really like to do better. Earn any more income I possibly can. Problem? Stuck in strict isolation for my weak immune system. I work as a freelance artist and it's incredible. But my disability often makes me stop physically working many days of the week. It's been a struggle to get consistent income while fighting with my health. So far every solution just ends up being, "we need more money" as it usually is for most people.
My goals are to learn life long skills to help myself bring more income into the home so we can afford to put money away into savings for moving or maybe someday getting to buy our own house (LOL someday). I guess my most immediate goal? I would like to pay off student debt. Around 25k last I saw I believe... I always considered this an impossible goal. But I don't want to keep thinking like that. I want to make 1-2 thousand a month like I used to be able to when I was a full time artist worker. Disability has stopped a lot of my progress and I'm determined to get it back!
So after reading all that, haha, would anyone have any advice they would be open to sharing? Can be about stocks and investments, or just better financial earning skills for home bound disabled people?
Also, Dollar Cost Averaging, ie. spreading your investments out in time, to limit the impact of timing, is a good idea.
And whatever you do, stay the hell away from cryptocurrencies and NFTs. The former are 50-50 scam and bubble; with the latter, the percentages are something like 80-20. Either case you don't want to have anything to do with those.
From there, assuming you're american, start looking into an individual 401k or Roth plan. You can usually find no-fee plans, and the 401k invests with pre-tax dollars, where you pay taxes on the amount you withdraw later, while a Roth invests with post-tax dollars but where you don't pay taxes when you withdraw. Which one you choose to put how much money into depends a lot on your current taxes and the taxes you expect to pay in retirement. Given you're probably pretty low on the income scale you're likely not paying much income tax right now, so a Roth might be more beneficial for you.
If you manage to fill up your Roth and 401k limits, or if you want an investment account that has quicker access to the funds, you can usually open a no-fee brokerage account with your bank. This will allow you to buy and hold stocks and ETFs, which you can do over time as you can afford it. Buying individual stocks involves more risk and research, but puts you in control of where your money is going. Buying ETFs is very easy, and you only need to pick between a few broad market categories (Some example ETFs might invest in the 500 largest companies in the US, or companies that contribute towards global sustainability, etc). Purchasing stocks and ETFs this way is done with post-tax dollars, and you'll owe capital gains tax on the balance of gains when you sell (like if you sell some stocks at a profit and some stocks at a loss, you'll add up the profits, subtract the losses, and declare the balance on your income taxes to pay capital gains on).
If there's more you'd like to know I'd be happy to share.
I like Vanguard.com, they have easy signup and their management fee of 0.03% on their S&P 500 ETF ($VOO or $VTI) is the lowest in the business I'm pretty sure.
If you end up having kids one day, a 529 lets you put money into an investment account per kid and you can withdraw from it tax-free when it's to pay for college tuition or supplies for your children.
I would extremely recommend creating an ABLE account then. It's a special tax-advantaged savings account meant for paying for disability expenses. https://www.ablenrc.org/what-is-abl.....-able-acounts/
This is probably the most important piece of advice in my wall of comments.