My road to $1,000,000 post 4

Nothing special this week. Stagnancy.

I'm at $1215.45, fam. Lost a couple dollars.


On another note, I finally caved and bought my fiancee a new vehicle. She has been in love with Nissan Rogues forever, and we finally found one with AWD that was at a decent price.

Ended up going a loan through State Farm bank, as they were able to get me the quickest information back in order to make my decision about financing. Instant approval on their end, even though I was feeling pretty down about my situation as PNC declined my loan application. We traded in her 2007 Prius, I will be putting down $5,000, and we'll be financing $15k. Not a bad deal for a CPO (certified pre-owned) 2015 AWD crossover.


If you're new to auto loans, feel free to ask me questions. I am familiar both as a consumer and as a banker; I am trained in financing as part of my employment through State Farm and have studied financing of vehicles and mortgages at length.




Best,
Kevin

My road to $1,000,000 post 3

One monthly $100 deposit and 6 or so days of the stock market either taking a dump or stalling, my IRA sits at $1,217.66. Not counting the deposit, it has gained a hefty 37 cents since last week.

While my other brokerage account with Vanguard has seemed to begin to rally today (or perhaps eek out its final positive breath), this past week has been pretty bland, even depressing. The Dow fluctuated around within a 100 or so point range, and many high profile hedge fund managers and stock analysts have all but braced for impact as they anticipate another bubble ready to burst. The permabears of the group point to signs that look eerily similar to what happened before the 09 Recession.

It's difficult, I believe, for many of those who work in finance to NOT be drawn towards cynicism. When someone makes money in the market, after all, someone else loses money. Many a well-constructed argument has been posed for another stock market slide, but there are those, bear and bull alike, who have pitched their arguments to the wind as we witness the recent record highs both of the S&P and the Dow.

Some say that the market is set to drop but then rebound to new heights, while others see a huge foreign bubble that could wreak havoc on the world's economy.

I guess we'll see, though I personally will be as optimistic as possible while simultaneously doing my best to pile a chunk of my portfolio into defensive stocks.



Best,
Kevin

My road to $1,000,000 Post 2

Short post this week, as not a whole lot has changed.

I had one of my checking accounts set up to deposit $200 into my IRA at the end of each month, but I got impatient. Each paycheck I get sends $100 to a separate checking account from where most of my money goes, so I just deposited $100 after my first pay period into the IRA and deleted the recurring $200 each month.

Nothing has been changed in terms of investment.

As it stands right now, after the market's closed for the day, the IRA's balance is $1,117.29.




Best,

Kevin

My road to $1,000,000 - post 1

After months of lackluster production and half-assed attempts at themes, the theme of my blog came to me while on a very aggravating walk with my dog. Aggravating in the sense that I know he's not well trained, but I am both too cheap for dog training, and too susceptible to "giving in" to him when he barks or otherwise acts out. But that is for another time.

The goal: to start with $0 in my IRA and push it to $1mil and track what I learned in order to help others possibly make some better choices.

Set up: one Vanguard Roth IRA with $0

(In addition to the IRA, I've got two brokerage accounts currently; one with Vanguard that was gifted to me by my father from his grandfather, and one through TD Ameritrade. My plan is to not count the value of those accounts and to see what I'm able to produce through my own volition, and from scratch)

For those of you not familiar, Vanguard is a financial entity that offers products such as mutual funds and ETFs (exchange-traded funds)


          - Mutual fund: an investment program funded by shareholders that trades in diversified holdings and is professionally managed


          - Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF): a marketable security that tracks an index, a commodity, bonds, or a basket of assets like an index fund



Vanguard offers a very large selection of funds to choose from; from Long Term Bond Index funds to Energy Sector funds, to the MBS (mortgage backed security) that Ryan Gosling and friends show contributed a great deal to the recession of '08/09. Most of these have a minimum buy-in price, such as $1,000, $3,000, or in the case of one of the larger "Admiral Share" funds, $100,000,000! Admiral Shares are typically just the "better" version of other funds, providing things like lower expense ratios and higher quality asset make-up; more of the Aaa and Aa instead of the lowly B, Bb, and Bbb class securities.


---Also, so as not to assume a certain knowledge level of my non-existent readers, an "expense ratio" refers to the cost of operation of a fund. Most of the funds that Vanguard (and other large financial organizations) offers are managed. People are paid to determine the best stocks to put into mutual/index funds, and they get paid through expense ratios. These expense ratios denote how much money is taken from your fund's value in order to pay for management, among other things. For someone who has $10,000 in a Long Term Bond index fund, their expense ratio is 0.16% and so they will pay $16 for the year that their account is worth $10k. If their account had $20k in the Long Term Bond index fund, they'd pay $32 that year, and so on.


To continue from the above section about minimum buy-ins;

Upon first opening my Roth IRA, I did not have the minimum buy-in amount for the account I wanted to start with ($1,000), so I was only able to invest into the Money Market Settlement fund as there is no minimum buy-in. I invested $100, or $200, or $500 (if I could) into it until I had the minimum $1k buy-in. Since I am 23, I decided to make use of one of the "Target Retirement" funds. These are set up with years noted in the title (for example, 2030, 2045, 2055, etc.) which are supposed to be indicative of the year you plan to retire. I'm 23, I figured I have about 40 years or so until I will retire, so I put my $1,000 into the Target Retirement 2055 fund.


---Separate note on the Target Retirement funds, they reallocate assets as you get closer to retirement. You start out with an aggressive, growth-centric fund (mostly stocks) and ease yourself over to bonds, and then mostly liquid (cash) funds at the end as you age and want to move out of the turbulence of the market.


I put my $1k into the Target Retirement 2055 fund about one week ago and as of right now, it it worth $1,010.14.



Since the market is meant to be utilized as a long-term, many decades long tool, these posts might get tedious. I will try to spice them up with what I've learned from reading business news and economics articles published through various sites.



Best,
Kevin







Some sources:

investopedia.com

vanguard.com

And of course, good ol' wikipedia.com