I initially created this website just to help some friends and family, but would grateful for some feedback from others. I'm especially interested in the ease of comprehension for someone new to PF. However, experienced PF folks' feedback also welcome.

Thanks for checking it out!

Hi, I am a young Italian (I guess the "poste Italiane" gives it away uh) and I plan to make my fist small experiments to understand how buying stoks and ETFs works.

I tried to look around what all those acronyms and big words mean but usually the definition and explanations I found use other acronyms and big words and end up being mentally exhausting to follow.

As far as I understand An ETF is a group of companies that share a market and by shoving money in there (investing in the found is the right phrase I guess)

and when the dividends are paid you can either get some money back or reinvested in the found.

Those ETFs are apparently more secure because they spread your money around multiple companies within multiple fields and I feel like I should invest more in those then in singular companies, is that right?

Also I'm planning to start with 50€ each month but if I feel comfortable enough I plan to rise the investment to maybe 300€ monthly, but I often see people saying that for those amounts of money (which are a fuckton to me) you should just dump in a single ETF and forget about it for like 10 years, but it feels so wrong to put so much money into something with risks attached to it and then ignoring it, is there something else I'm not getting? (As opposed to all the other things I'm understanding perfectly, right?)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49878453

Solo project I've been building this month, wanted to share here. The rules:

You get $10,000 and two secret years of real S&P 500 history, drawn from 1928 to 2019 (daily data, dividends included; your cash earns T-bill rates while you hide). One button: BUY or SELL. Your opponent is a couch. It buys at the start and never moves.

Every finished game is audited by 1,000 monkeys. It's a permutation test 1,000 replays with your same time in the market and same number of trades, on random days. Beat 90% of the monkeys and your win is stamped TIMED THE MARKET. Anything less is stamped LUCKY, in red ink, on your settlement document.

About 84,000 games have been played so far. The couch has won 63% of them. Roughly 1 game in 9 ends in a win that survives the monkey audit.

There's also a daily hand, same secret window for everyone, streaks, and a public ledger of humanity vs the couch.

If you have time, I'd love feedback, and I will answer any methodology questions, thanks!

I can't sleep, so I'm running some numbers in my head. I have a mutual fund that I plan to invest in, and wanted to make some financial goals and projections for the next 10, 20, and 30 years. I turn 30 this year and I'm likely to start a new job that will last for at least 1 year, so long term planning is probably a good idea at this new phase in my life.

My primary goal is to retire as soon as possible by living off of the earned interest. This is how I plan to invest. I have 3 different investment plans, based on various estimates on what my discretionary income will be. The plan is that I will reinvest all interest until I retire. I marked the retirement age, along with the estimate for what the interest income will be. The conservative assumption is the baseline, where my current salary is at roughly $40k per year with $200/mo as discretionary income available to invest. I want to keep my expenses at approximately this level until I retire. The aggressive goal is what I plan to strive for assuming the next 10 years go well, and the middle is a realistic goal I believe I can achieve.

Conservative: $200/mo only 

• 10 yr income: 7,250
• 20 yr income: 21,750
• Retire at 56: 43,450
• 30 yr income: 58,000

Estimated: $1500/mo for 1 yr, $500/mo after

• 10 yr income: 14,700
• 20 yr income: 45,800
• Retire at 48: 41,250
• 30 yr income: 107,300

Aggressive: $1500/mo for 3 yr, $3000/mo after

• 10 yr income: 43,300
• Retire at 40: 50,950
• 20 yr income: 123,000
• 30 yr income: 311,300

Hi, do you feel safe having brokerage app on your phones? I had one installed since my brokerage is mobile 1st and UI is the cleanest but after I put some money in it (not much but significant or me) I don’t really like that someone could steal my phone from my hand while unlocked and potentially access it.. I’m planning to use my tablet for this purpose or computer to log in only at home but market is open during working hours when I’m not home so it would limit my possibility for trades.

Of course I’m not talking about checking account but the long term fund for retirement

Looking for books that are not Dave Ramsey or the Rich Dad, Poor Dad type.

Are there any investment funds (ETFs or mutual funds) which exclusively purchase municipal bonds in “green” cities?

Most mutual funds seem to profit from unethical companies. Genocide (Lockheed, Google), Climate Catastrophe (BP, ExxonMobil), Slavery (Verizon, Walmart). Murder (UnitedHealth, Dow Chemical).

It seems like municipal bonds might be one of the more ethical ways to invest money.

Specifically, I’m looking to invest in cities that are building-out infrastructure that will lead to an elimination on their dependence on fossil fuels. For example:

1. Closing roads and building bicycle lanes.
2. Building electrified trains and dedicated bus lanes.
3. Passing laws to establish a maximum number of parking spots per person.
4. Mixed Zoning (walkable cities)
5. Banning fossil fuel power plants while building hydro/solar/wind/geothermal
6. Passing laws to heavily tax carbon emissions
7. And, of course, cities that invest in education usually get a great ROI.

Cities that come to mind include Paris and New York.

I could try to do all the research myself, and find a bunch of other cities that are on the right path -- but that seems like a full-time job, and it’s probably better to just have a fund manager do this research for us.

Are there already any funds that invest in municipal bonds exclusively in “green” cities?

So here’s an interesting one. I have a car with a 72-month note, that I’m halfway through. The payments are pretty high, around $1,100/mo (luxury sports car). I just checked the Black book value, and the value on other sites and I have almost $20K in equity in it right now. I also have enough saved up to pay it off and still have more than enough money left. The interest rate isn’t too bad, around 5.4%.

So what I’m trying to figure out, do I:

• Pay it off - takes a chunk from my extra money, but no more payments. That extra equity is locked up and could go away if the market changes over the next few years
• Refinance - I could see keeping the car another 4-5 years, and I could put a little extra from savings in to further lower my months costs. I don’t think I’ll end up upside down with how far ahead I am, but again, the equity is locked up
• Trade it in - this is the tricky part. I could get a good chunk off something, but I love my car, and also there’s no way I could get anything nearly as nice as what I have. If I were to lease I could easily cut payments in half, but I have another car on lease and don’t want two of them that way

I can’t make it with one car, otherwise I’d flat out sell it, and I understand the pros/cons of leasing. I’m also not a “something to just get me from point A to B” type of guy, I like my cars, so please don’t lecture on that. I’m basically trying to think about cash flow for the near term and the fact that having a car with $20K equity is something I need to at least figure out if it’s worth accessing that.

I own a house/land outright (as much as a government will let you own anything): I have no mortgage or liens. For the sake of ease, let's use a nice round number and say that the house is worth $100,000.

I'm interesting in buying a different house/land in another area.

One option would be to use the equity I have in my current house towards the purchase of a second house. I'd end up with 2 houses.

Another option would be to sell my current house and then buy the new house. I'd end up with 1 house.

What are financial advantages and disadvantages of those options? Are there other options?

I appreciate your thoughts and insight.

Hi,

I’m planning out my 2026 savings/investing strategy and would love feedback on whether this allocation makes sense or if I should rebalance.

For context:

Both Roth IRAs are already maxed separately (not included below).

I’m aiming for long-term growth, tax efficiency, and some liquidity.

Employer retirement accounts include a mix of Traditional and Roth with matches (2 jobs)

Here is the percentage-only breakdown of my current plan: (50k to play with with 30 years of investment left at a current 22% bracket)

Account Type % Distribution

Employee 401(k) – Traditional 17%

Employee 401(k) – Roth 5%

Employee 403(b) – Traditional 17%

Employee 403(b) – Roth 5%

Employee Stock Purchase Plan

(10% discount sell immediately

add to next year ROTH IRA) 33%

High-Yield Savings Account. 5%

Taxable Brokerage Account 17%

Total: 100%

My main questions:

Should I shift more toward brokerage or retirement accounts?

Would you rebalance Traditional vs Roth differently?

Other that I am missing?

Any feedback is welcome! 🙏🏻

This text description is mine, not from the article. The article linked goes into much more detail.

This is an anti-scam/anti-fraud protection measure. This is apparently a method folks are getting their accounts cleaned out by thieves. They get your SSN, name, and account number from one of the many data breaches that happen today, they open an another account at another brokerage in your name, then transfer your funds out to the new brokerage they control. The system used to do this is called ACATS which is designed to easily let customers transfer funds from other accounts, but it is apparently easy to abuse.

Fidelity makes turning on the block crazy easy just by logging into your account and setting the "Money Transfer Lock" to "on". If you ever do want to use the ACATS to legitimately move your money to another broker, you just need to go back in here and set it to "off", complete your transfer, and turn it back "on" if you still have funds remaining.

Vanguard has this feature too, but its super sketchy to get it turned on. You have to call the vanguard agent, pass an OTP code, try to get them to understand what you're asking for as the agent I talked to did, get transferred around again a few times, do another OTP to a different department and finally they enable it. However they say it takes 5-7 days to take effect. Better than nothing I suppose.

Currently Schwab doesn't have a feature to block ACATS transfers at all in any capacity.

My partner and I currently have enough savings we could comfortably live off of for over two years, if we had no source of income. This amount is also enough to easily get a mortgage — we've been looking to buy for over a year now, but the housing market is awful.

All those savings are just sitting in our bank account and everyone we've talked to says that's stupid with inflation eating it away. That is true, however we don't know what to do with it in the meantime. Several people suggested investing in ETFs, but neither of us knows much about it. On the surface level, to me it sounds like one needs to invest a lot to see any benefit. It also looks suspiciously like gambling, which makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any alternative, except leave the money to slowly rot while we're waiting for a good housing opportunity.

Any thoughts, suggestions?

TIL my bank has a "gambling lock" feature: https://www.commbank.com.au/retail/netbank/gamblinglock

this should be turned on by default for everyone and every account, IMO

Hi,

Couldn't find a good place to post this. Hope it's ok here.

I am working a job where I have discovered I am misclassified as a contractor.

They are (probably) about to fire me - I requested switching over to a W2 and they responded with a curt email and a request for a quick call tomorrow.

I strongly believe they are going to terminate my contract.

I am in CO, but the contract says the laws of CA will apply.

How can I protect myself before and after this call, especially since I am considering reporting them to the IRS?

Thank you

I feel like I’ve tried every single app for financing out there. So far ynab does good but I fall off from time to time. Tracking stuff on my phone seems like it’s great in theory for most but I over complicate it every single time.

One big issue for me is sometimes I’ll do a pending payment and it won’t come out for a few days I might forget about it. I end up paying another bill and I end up over extending myself. Doesn’t happen every week but seems like it happens monthly.

Anyone have a simple system for tracking bills due, ones that are pending being paid?

My parents want to give my new baby some money for a savings account. However, if its just going to sit there for 20 years, I'd prefer for it to gain interest/dividends. Is there any easy way to setup a fund that tracks s&p500 and preferably tax advantaged? Or am I better off just investing in the relevant mutual fund.

Hi all, I’m looking at HYS accounts and I see Sofi and Openbank coming up as some of the higher rate options. It looks like Openbank is based in California and has 4.2% but poor customer service reviews on Trustpilot. Sofi is 4.3% but with a limited time 0.7% “boost,” so 3.60% normally, but appears to have better customer service. I’m more inclined to have better support through Sofi.

I also had many people tell me Ally gave them 3.30% and pretty good customer service and transfer times. Any thoughts?

So I'm considering just using excel to keep track of all my expenses and income, but is there a better solution? What do you use to track how you spend money? I want something from which I can freely export the data if need be so excel is tempting.

I've gone on a Vacation with some Friends recently and one of them was going on and on about how I should go get myself a Trade Republic account for General Payment and savings, Singing its Praises along the way.

The, what was Basically a Sales Pitch, came down to the Points that you'd get 2% Monthly on any Money you saved on that Account... but also, you'd get 1% back on any purchase, no matter what.

To be quite Frankly, this sounds too good to be True. And If something sounds too good, it probably is. So I'm rather a bit cautious here and wanted to ask your Folks Thoughts on Trade Republic?

Now, another reason that I'm cautious is that I could sweaaaar that I've heard thier name involved in some Crypto Scam a while back. I feel that I may just be plain wrong with that however...?