i'm 20 and i want to start saving for retirement. Everyone says start early, but i don't know where to start?

Question

I have a good job and i could put aways some money but not alot because of bills and such but every little bit helps right? I would just like some ideas where and how to get started or things i should avoid any advice would help because i don't know anything.

Answer 1

If your job offers a 401K plan contribute to it, ESPECIALLY if they offer a matching contribution. For instance, if they will match up to 5% of what you contribute you should contribute the full 5%. Not only does this help you start now, it also helps lower your taxes, including the amount that is deducted from your check.

If your job doesn't offer a 401K plan, then open a ROTH IRA and contribute the yearly max as allowed by law.

Bills and stuff is a way of life, and so is saving money. But the rule of thumb...you ALWAYS pay yourself first. Think of your retirement as a bill, and make the payments.

Answer 2

You've got some good advice here already, but I'll add my two cents.

If your work has a 401(k), contribute up to the max first before putting anything into a Roth IRA or a regular IRA. Also, if you do have a 401(k), see if the company offers some type of financial counseling/planning by the 401(k) administrators. This is becoming more and more common. You will get the planning free. Besides more financial planners won't work with you because you are young and have little assets. With the 401(k) administrator, they are paid by your company to work with you, so take advantage of it.

Second, if you've hit the max on the 401(k), which I doubt since you said you're only putting a bit away each month and the yearly max on 401(k) is $15,500... but if you do, do a Roth IRA first. However, if you make too much money, then you have no choice but to do a regular IRA because of the phase out rules. If you're completely phased out of both, then just save it in your taxable accounts.

So once you get the accounts set up, what do you do...? If you don't have access to a planner and it's just the 401(k), try to find a Life Cycle Fund. These are funds that have a target date for your retirement... so if you're 20 and you plan to retire at 65, you should find a Fund 2050 or Fund 2055. These take care of figuring out where to put your money. If you don't have these target date type of funds, I would recommend doing some research (someone mentioned Vanguard, this is good. Fidelity or Schwab is also good) on asset allocation.

Make sure you have at least 3 months of expenses saved up for emergencies. Put everything else in mutual funds. Don't put too much into cds since your return over time isn't as good... UNLESS you intend to use the money within the next couple of years to buy a house or whatnot.

Hope that helps.

Answer 3

Open an IRA savings account and put money away into that. If the minimum amount is too much right now, open a separate savings account until you reach that minimum, and then open the IRA account.

Also, if you can get into your company's 401(k), do it. Most employers match upto a certain percent of what you put in. The advantage to the 401(k) is you can have them take the money out before they calculate your federal income tax. When you retire, you'll be taxed on the amount you withdraw.

There's also a new option available. The Roth 401(k). Again, the employer usually matches a certain percentage, but the difference is your federal taxes are withheld before the money is taken for the Roth 401(k). The advantage to this is there are NO taxes on the withdraw at retirement, including the interest earned over the life time.

Answer 4

Good thinking dude. Start by going to your bank and opening up a Roth IRA. It's a way you can start socking returns away in a tax deferred account. You'll be taxed up front, but won't be taxed when you're older and plan on taking the money out.

You'll be able to buy mutual funds and stocks through the Roth IRA account. Avoid the funds the bank tries to push on you. They usually make a fat fee, and will disguise it well through Class B shares or some other trickery. I like the Vice Fund, ticker symbol VICEX.

Obviously get involved with a 401K at work if you can. That's like free money.

Avoid credit cards. You're better off building credit through a school loan, car loan, or mortgage payment (although you probably won't get a house without credit).

That's all I've got. Good luck.

Answer 5

First thing to do is to learn. Read "Investing for Dummies" or "Mutual Funds for Dummies" by Eric Tyson.
Go to www.vanguard.com, click on "go to site>>" Then click on the brown "Planning and Education" tab. Then learn.
Second: Figure out your goals for this money, and risk tolerance. Retirement in 40 years? Then a Target Retirement Fund inside a ROTH IRA or 401k may be a good beginner core holding. Wedding and house in 4 or 5 years? Car in 2 or 3 years? Then maybe a FDIC insured CD maybe best. To blindly say "ROTH IRA" or "equity mutual funds" without knowing anything about your goals and risk tolerance is not the best advice. If the web site and books don't help, the "see a financial planner" advice maybe the best for you.

Answer 6

Many (but not all, unfortunately) employers have a pension or retirement plan that requires some participation effort on the part of the employees (it could also be called an ESOP, Employee Stock Ownership Program). At the place I work, I set aside a maximum of 4 percent of my gross to our retirement plan and the company matches it with an additional 6 percent of free money. Some places simply have a SEP, Simplified Employee Pension, which is a glorified IRA, Individual Retirement Account. All of these are savings and or investment plans where the individual chooses, first whether to participate, and second how much to participate with. In some cases it is merely a bank savings account, but left alone for the many working years you have ahead, will put you miles ahead of an amazingly large number of people who have absolutely nothing set aside for their retirement. Some few companies (my wife works for one) have the old-fashioned, though quite nice for the employee, standard pension. In her case the company sets aside money for her every year and after a certain threshold number of years to retirement, and passing appropriate retirement age benchmarks, they give her a fraction of her salary. If she stays until 65, for instance, she gets something like 2/3 her regular wage.

It doesn't have to be fancy, even buying savings bonds (my wife gets one a month) will sock away a little extra that you can use for retirement--the interest isn't nearly as horrible as it used to be. Go to treasurydirect.gov and get details on that.

Another idea for you is sharebuilder.com. You could pick some stock that you are really interested in and have some amount deducted from your checking account each month. A nice ETF, Exchange Traded Fund (buy or sell them like stocks, no salesmen or sales loads and very low management fees), where you buy a little every month or so can build up to a lot over time. NY is the stock symbol that lets you buy into the biggest 100 companies on the New York Stock Exchange (if the rich do get richer, then you can ride along with them, right?). You've heard of the S&P500, the 500 best bets by Standard & Poors of being a solid and potentially profitable stocks, then SPY buys you into a piece of the whole bunch. There is also ISI which buys into a broader 1500 companies that S&P likes. There was a fellow named Bogle that brought an innovation to mutual fund trading. He said that the individual investor cannot beat the broader market over the long run any more than a gambler could consistently beat the casino in the long run, so he suggested centering in broad baskets of things (market sectors) that were doing better than others. The Ishares link will let you explore a wide variety of choices, or settle on something like IYY, the Dow Jones Total Market fund.

The idea is to get into the habit of setting aside money into something nice and steady, then pretty much forget it. It becomes like a tree, boring to watch every day but growing into something big and strong by the time you are ready to start collecting. A simple, but sound and habitual, savings plan carried on consistently until your retirement, and you will not have to sweat runing out of money when you are no longer making it. Just don't get greedy and rush things, okay? Good luck.

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Answer 7

Open a retirement account, especially a 401(k) if your employer matches contributions. If you don't have access to a 401(k), open a Roth IRA. See the first webpage listed below for more information about retirement accounts. The second webpage listed below explains the importance of the employer match.

You have various investment options for a retirement account. Invest the money in a lifecycle or target date fund, if possible. These are mutual funds that do the money management for you, so they're easy to use. The third webpage listed below explains them in greater detail.

Answer 8

Go visit a financial advisor. It's a good idea to start saving when you're young. They can give you advice on how to save money and gain the most interest, or how to invest with the biggest gain with little risk. With the right kind of savings/investment plans you may even be able to retire early. That's my plan anyway, I truly doubt that social security will exist when I'm old enough to get it, I'm only 25 now, so I've got a looong way to go.

Answer 9

It is never too early to start saving, in fact ‘retirement is one of the greatest cons of all time. What you really want, what everyone really wants is Financial Independence.
Someone has set up a standard game plan for everyone. It basically goes as follows:
Age 0-5: Baby – Grow Up
Age 6-17: Child – Go to School
Age 18-21: Student – Go to College
Age 22-65: Adult – Work
Age 65+: Senior Citizen – Retire and Die
Retirement usually means that we are no longer dependent on work for our income and daily living needs. Our income is independent from our occupation.
So what you really want is ‘Financial Independence’ much earlier than scheduled for us in the standard game plan. In fact maybe the game plan we really want is more like:
Age 0-5: Baby – Grow Up
Age 6-17: Child – Go to School
Age 18-21: Student – Go to College
Age 22-39: Adult – Work towards Financial Independence
Age 40+: Financially Independent – Enjoy Life

So now that we have a goal of Financial Independence, we need to set a timescale to reach that by and a means of reaching that goal.
In this context we are generally talking about a savings and investment plan that will give us a sufficient amount of money to live off for the rest of our lives.
We will need to equip ourselves with the necessary knowledge and tools to make this work now.
To be successful we will need patience, discipline, and wisdom. But most importantly we need a plan.
It may prove expensive to acquire that much needed wisdom on our own. Learn by other peoples mistakes. Learn from other peoples successes. Read some books. Visit our local book store and find books that we like and feel comfortable with. Some of the titles I have on my bookshelf include:
One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch
How to make money in Stocks by William J. O’Neil (Founder of Investor’s Business Daily)
The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J Stanley and William D Danco
Check out web sites like fool.com and yahoo finance.
Investigate trading strategies with a proven track record over 3, 5, 10, and 15 years.
Pick something that we understand, find easy to use and will help us realise our goals. Pick a strategy where we can take responsibility for your investments and be in full control of our capital.
Systems like the Stocks Monthly system (which has generated an average return of 49%p.a. over the past 15 years) are definitely worth investigating once we are up to speed with the nuts and bolts of investing.

Answer 10

Make sure you have taken advantage of any retirement plan set up in the company you work for. 401ks, etc.
Then have money deducted from your paycheck for an IRA. What you don't see is what you won't think you have. So you won't miss it. Just live below your means in that respect.