401k

FREE MONEY!!!!

Sound good to you?

If your company does a matching contribution then that is exactly what you will be getting... Free money. Put at least as much as you need to get the maximum company contribution.

I worked for a company for 4 years and thats what I did. In that 4 years I got enough money for the down payment on my house.

 

Most important factor is And everyone will tell you this is time!!!so start contributing as early as possible even if it’s 25$ a check till you get things figured out you are miles ahead of the game right now at 21… a life lesson I was taught and learned the hard way is that you don’t want to be doing things in your 30s that you should’ve taken care of in your 20s, and you for da$$ sure don’t want to be doing things in your 40s that you should’ve done in your thirties… I just turned 30 last month and though I’m doing well, I know I’m not where I need to be/should be.
I know you’re young and everybody in your age bracket is either partying or starting families… but if you treat it like college and just grind til you’re 24-25 you’d be so far ahead there’d be no catching up…idk what your monthly expenses are but in that time you should be able to put enough money in your bank account to cover atleast a full years salary. You do that world would be yours.I’m not saying to make trucking your life you still need to have fun here and there, but you could come out at 25 and pay for college out of pocket if you so chose… if you did everything right daily the owner op pathway may be appealing to you… or you may want to idk buy a house with a nice downpayment .. I wish you well

 

At a 7% return your money doubles every 10 years. You have roughly 40 years until you can withdraw the money. At that rate $1,000 this year would be $16,000 in 40 years.
If you have an option for a Roth 401 it's better to pay taxes on $1k now than $16k later.

 

JP Morgan is one company, no? Generally, if you are asking about which mutual fund inside of your 401k are best it comes down to how much the fund charges you to invest your money. Any fund that doesn't start with Vanguard... or Fidelity... is likely charging you a lot of money to invest with them. If you want to tell me the names of your choices I can tell you what I can find out about them.

You'll have some stock funds (words like total market, growth, etc), some bond funds (words like stable, long-term, tax-free, municipal), and "cash" funds (with words like money market). Raymond James is an investment company that is relatively lower in expense. Company names like JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, or other huge banking/investment firms are really expensive to invest in. They may take 2%, or more, of your money each year, at the time to invest, or the time you leave the investment. The same type of investment from Vanguard or Fidelity might only charge you 0.01% - 0.02% per year. Much of the value in putting your money into the 401k or IRA is that you are going to leave it for a long time. If the investment fund is eating 2% of your investment every year, instead of 0.02% that expense is sucking away a lot of your accumulated wealth. 2% doesn't sound like highway robbery, but if the market average growth is 8% then the 2% expense is 25% of your yearly increase. As a general rule big banks charge big fees/expenses. The exceptions are Vanguard and Fidelity. They invented mutual funds and low cost investing.

 

This is always something to consider, but also ask about fees with your benefits rep at your company.

Ours is through Fidelity, and the employees see no fees. There is a graduated vesting period of 20% each year for the first 5 years. Every time a driver, office employee, or mechanic leaves in under 5 years, those non-vested funds are set aside in a separate account to pay the fees for the drivers' accounts who stayed with the company. Its a win-win, as everyone gets at least some of the free money from the company and everyone enjoys zero administration fees on their 401(k) accounts.

 

Post what is available here if not too big and who is it through?