Anonymous wrote:If you are investing for long term (5+ years), go for it. If you need cash in the near term (next 2-3 years), save it in bonds.

Won’t bond prices go down if interest rates go up? And aren’t interest rates sure to go up?

My mom in 1995 got 200k pay out and we ended up buying 10k bonds maturing over next 20 years. She was afraid to do stock market all at once as newly retired. Plan was for her to take all interest payments to live off and roll bond maturities into a diversified stock fund.

She died 2005 and her stock broker actually said had highest return over the decade of his clients. Little Luck Locked in bonds when rates were high. And when market crash in 2000 to 2002 she was dollar cost averaging back in.

But BIG difference she could buy 9 percent 10 year IBM and GE bonds back then. Today those bonds pay 3 percent tops!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes it’s a waste not to be in market.

This. It's been so hard not to make make money in 2020. I bought about 25 different stocks and all of them went up 50% or more. Many doubled, tripled- Novavax (10times), Nio (bought at $7), Tesla ($100), Zoom ($170 and I thought it was too high), even Apple (40%) and Amazon (60%) did ok.[b] I just bought another stock based on a "tip I heard on a bus" and even that went up 40% in a month.
Everybody talks about crashes and how we need to diversify and stay away from individual stocks and how market only makes 10% a year if you are lucky. Might be true, but lets also talk about stock stocks doubling, tripling. There are so many more people in the market and buying and selling costs almost nothing. Put a stop loss on it if too scared.

Isn't this classic bubble territory, where everyone starts hyping stock picks that are all rapidly increasing?

They haven’t all rapidly increased over Jan 2020. We had a deep V shaped recovery.

I would not sit with $300k in cash.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes it’s a waste not to be in market.

This. It's been so hard not to make make money in 2020. I bought about 25 different stocks and all of them went up 50% or more. Many doubled, tripled- Novavax (10times), Nio (bought at $7), Tesla ($100), Zoom ($170 and I thought it was too high), even Apple (40%) and Amazon (60%) did ok.[b] I just bought another stock based on a "tip I heard on a bus" and even that went up 40% in a month.
Everybody talks about crashes and how we need to diversify and stay away from individual stocks and how market only makes 10% a year if you are lucky. Might be true, but lets also talk about stock stocks doubling, tripling. There are so many more people in the market and buying and selling costs almost nothing. Put a stop loss on it if too scared.

Isn't this classic bubble territory, where everyone starts hyping stock picks that are all rapidly increasing?

Anonymous wrote:In your boat I would do PE or VC. I wouldn’t plow it into the regular stock market.

We put about $100k into the stock market a year (siphoned off our paycheck regularly - dollar cost averaging) and the rest into VC. We have $30k cash emergency funds.

How does one get into PE/VC investing?

In your boat I would do PE or VC. I wouldn’t plow it into the regular stock market.

We put about $100k into the stock market a year (siphoned off our paycheck regularly - dollar cost averaging) and the rest into VC. We have $30k cash emergency funds.

Anonymous wrote:2019 was already a good year. Where was this $300k all this time? I had $70k from sale of my, condo which I put into the market March and April 2020. It's $250k right now. There are ETF's that went from $25 March to $105 now. Your $300k would be $1 million right now. Etf's are not even that scary.Had you invested in 2019 already, you'd have a lot more. The March "crash" wouldn't been a problem.
I'd definitely invest in - it's going to be another decent year in the market. There is no reason tho think that the money won't be up in 5-10 years. You are saving it for long term, right?
Invest $200k and wait for a crash with the $100k, so both of you can be happy.
Again, 2019 was a good year also. How could anybody with cash around not have noticed it and get in the market.

Any recommendations?

I've bought VOO and VTI and neither has gone up that much.

Of course it's a mistake, unless you are sitting on like a $5 million portfolio. It's basic personal finance - you are losing out on so much money (and have lost out on so much money) and the value of the dollor just gets lower and lower. It's a very riskly position to have that much cash.

Get it in VTSAX and forget about it.

Take the $300 and invest $25-30,000 a month over the next year. You can never time the market perfectly. Buy the S&P index fund and keep it simple.

OP I think my DH and yours are twins. I've gradually just started investing, and then telling him about it. It's been that simple. I started during March/April of last year by moving some of my retirement that was in bonds into large cap stocks. (This was an easy first move because it was "my" retirement after ll, even though we view everything as "our" money.) Then, I dropped a few hundred into the kids 529s during the dip (not knowing if the market would keep going down or start going up). Then last fall I just started buying index funds in a broker age account. I started with a few hundred. Told DH. The world didn't fall apart. Then I did a few thousand, it got easier. I've only put in $15K total now, but DH is seeing the actual increase in our modest account, and he knows when he looks at the market over all of last year that we missed out big time. But it is a risk, you have to be prepared to loose it all, or at least to be patient to get it back. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

If your DH didn't put this money in the market during the dip in March-April 2020, what makes him think he would pull the trigger during the next downturn. Invest it into diversified index funds right away, using dollar cost average if it makes you more comfortable.

You can also try a Betterment account and invest half of that 40k. Keep the rest as your emergency fund.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes it’s a waste not to be in market.

This. It's been so hard not to make make money in 2020. I bought about 25 different stocks and all of them went up 50% or more. Many doubled, tripled- Novavax (10times), Nio (bought at $7), Tesla ($100), Zoom ($170 and I thought it was too high), even Apple (40%) and Amazon (60%) did ok. I just bought another stock based on a "tip I heard on a bus" and even that went up 40% in a month.
Everybody talks about crashes and how we need to diversify and stay away from individual stocks and how market only makes 10% a year if you are lucky. Might be true, but lets also talk about stock stocks doubling, tripling. There are so many more people in the market and buying and selling costs almost nothing. Put a stop loss on it if too scared.

God. Reading this and I feel like I made such a mistake not investing. I have 40k just sitting in the bank earning like a tenth of a percent. I really need to learn how to invest.Do you just open a brokerage account?

If this is your emergency fund, don't invest it. If these are "extra" funds, make sure you've maxed out your (+/- spouse's) Roth IRAs first. Then yes, open a taxable brokerage account for the rest.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes it’s a waste not to be in market.

This. It's been so hard not to make make money in 2020. I bought about 25 different stocks and all of them went up 50% or more. Many doubled, tripled- Novavax (10times), Nio (bought at $7), Tesla ($100), Zoom ($170 and I thought it was too high), even Apple (40%) and Amazon (60%) did ok. I just bought another stock based on a "tip I heard on a bus" and even that went up 40% in a month.
Everybody talks about crashes and how we need to diversify and stay away from individual stocks and how market only makes 10% a year if you are lucky. Might be true, but lets also talk about stock stocks doubling, tripling. There are so many more people in the market and buying and selling costs almost nothing. Put a stop loss on it if too scared.

God. Reading this and I feel like I made such a mistake not investing. I have 40k just sitting in the bank earning like a tenth of a percent. I really need to learn how to invest.Do you just open a brokerage account?

DP but I use e trade.