If you invest 200$ each month into the S&P 500 you can make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars over time

[Crepitus]

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I believe I can qualify for an IRA. I will look more into it of course.

in any event huge numbers of Americans don’t have more than $1000 to the name for an emergency. This is occurring under the Joe Biden administration. Crepitus have any solutions for this? Have any advice on stocks to buy? Hbu The Duke other than supplying a “let me Google that for u” link what is your advice?

Anyway Mike as somebody who’s brand new to this type of investing I was looking at the “capital gains taxes” and it’s really interesting that it differs from state to state. You know I had to ask what’s up with that. Why can’t we simply have a flat rate throughout the whole country? Obviously, it’s easier said than done but there are massive differences between say Florida compared to California. Capital gains in California is very high compared to somewhere like Florida.

Seems 5 to 10% flat rate on capital gains across-the-board would be fair.

In Florida



In ny

I don't actually have any stock picks. I have a guy who handles that stuff because while I know how it works I also know it's not my area of expertise.

The other question about how they get money to get started I can't really answer without going all political on ya other than to say "save where and what you can".

 

[multivita-man]

I appreciate that. But with the Roth IRA isn’t there a minimum age requirement to access those funds. Perhaps it is 60 or 65 years old?

You can withdraw principal at any time - it's your money, unless of course the investments go south. Then you get whatever the value is.

You can't withdraw the growth beyond the principle until, what, 59? Something like that. I mean you can, but you'll pay early withdrawal penalties.

I'm an S&P 500 indexer and it's probably the safest 'bet' that I can think of. It grows quite a bit faster than inflation most years.

The only thing people need to keep in mind is that the S&P is really dominated by the big tech companies, so its fate is very much tied to those few big-cap tech stocks. The rest of the index could be doing okay yet get dragged down if those tech firms have a bad quarter or two.

The power of compounding math was shown to me a long time ago, which is why I reinvest and will continue to do so until I no longer have regular employment income.

 

[MarathonMike]

Thank you. Now I should note that right now I believe the only stock I own that pays a dividend is Exxon mobile. And I believe I’m about to sell that so I can put that money into an S&P 500 index fund. But on top of everything I will consider also just throwing $200 a month at Ira account.

I learned something about dividend investors. Short term guys who they buy a stock knowing the next day they know it’s paying a dividend and they immediately sell everything. it appears that most dividend stocks pay their dividends four times a year to their investors.

Obviously, you probably have to invest a ton of money into such an idea to make a profit after the taxes. But that’s interesting as well.

But as for dividends, I suppose I would have to invest in the companies that pay dividends in order to keep this in mind for what you’re saying. My main investments right now are Snapchat, Lyft, Amazon, PayPal, exrof, sea limited , Exxon Mobil, I have a small amount of cryptocurrency on Robinhood, and smaller investments into a few other stocks and I believe the only one that pays a dividend is Exxon mobile.

Exrof is the only company I’ve lost quite a bit of money on it’s down about 60% since I invested into it. An older friend of mine gave me the idea he is a Biden supporter but a good guy. It’s some kind of electric car company and it got crushed in the past two years. So I’m hanging onto it and hoping it comes back. Who knows if it will. But every other investment that I have made on my own is up anywhere from 15 to 50% including Victoria’s Secret that I sold at a 50% profit recently.

Anyway, I plan on holding onto my current stocks with exception to Exxon mobile. Selling that buying the S&P 500 index and considering your idea of the Roth IRA at $200 a month.

Just as you point out, it’s very important that America stays patriotic if you will. We cannot give into the left-wing fanaticism, the Marxist type people who want social credit, scores, and all sorts of nonsense. That would make things difficult for a lot of people. That year run from 1970 to 2016 of the S&P 500 where you got 10% gains every year was during a time when we did not have woke fanaticism. So if that’s an issue going forward but I think more people are waking up, and realizing that wokeness is a disaster for the economy and society.

When my oldest son graduated and got his first job we started a dividend reinvestment program for him in Exxon Mobil. After just a few years it has grown well into 5 figures.