How did you get up the courage to invest? I max out the annual allowable contribution amount for my 401K, but otherwise I’ve got everything in savings. I have no debt, just a bunch of excess cash I’m too scared to do anything with. I know this is irrational - I’m above the FDIC-insured amount and I’m also losing value to inflation. I’d like to get to a position where I have maybe 14 months’ expenses in cash and the rest in investments (probably low-fee index funds).

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DCA helped me build up courage. Now I’m comfortable investing immediately when I see a good opportunity with a large amount of money.

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You are already investing. Look at the performance of your 401k over time and get upset about missing those gains on your cash.

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Thanks - good point!

It is a psychological hump you need to get over. You should definitely keep an emergency fund in a safe spot. HYSA are about the best you can do now. If you have a long time horizon before needing the money you are losing by having everything in cash. Maybe invest a little at a time or use a blended fund that has fixed income as well as equity. It will be more stable but can still go down. You should not invest if you will be losing sleep over it but should try to take small steps.

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It is really more of a booklet. It is like 25 or 20 pages and he is a highly respected financial advisor

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It's a mental game, as others have pointed out and you're probably aware of. One way to *trick* yourself is to invest it and forget about it. Don't look at how your investment is doing.

Currently, the standard insurance amount is $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category. As per your admission you have more than $250k in savings. You cannot possibly have more than $250k expenses in 14 months. So you're covered on that front.

I'd suggest do this: On Monday, Jan 4, open a regular taxable brokerage account, and dump anything over $250k into a broad stock market index fund (VTSAX/VTI/SCHB/FSKAX). Will yourself to not look at that account for a year. Then next year, do the same with the excess cash again. It's as if you separating the existence of this account from your life.

Came and thank me in 10 years 😄

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Thanks, this is really helpful!

I felt the same way until earlier this year. I finally mustered up the courage, kept my emergency funds plus some in my savings and made the leap, dumping everything else in an index fund. Was nervous at first, but watching the balance go up in my brokerage acct while knowing it would have stayed the same in my savings account has made it much easier to swallow. Now I can’t wait to put more in

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Thanks!

Start regularly using a compound interest calculator (just Google for this - I usually just use the one on from moneychimp).

When you apply a conservative rate of 6 to 7 percent (which is net of inflation) you will see how much it's generally costing you to NOT invest. Time is against you. Time really is money.

The 7% return is what the US stock market has historically returned net of inflation. This includes very good and very bad years, so not smooth road to that average.

You are severely hurting your wealth without investing. It's fine to set aside 1 year of living expenses, but even then, that could be a missed opportunity, depending on your service line.

I'm in tax. Even if lost my job, I'm pretty sure certain that I would not have any issue finding a new job, even if lower paying.

I've been diligent enough with saving that I'm at a point where I could likely retire well before 60 even with just a 70K salary (I'm making 112K)

Apart from what I said before, you should invest for the following reasons:

1) if you want an earlier retirement to even be a possibility, you'll need a taxable account

2) with interest rates so low, at certain brokerage firms, they allow you borrow against the balance of your securities. I have M1 finance and can borrow up to 35% of my invested balance at 2%. I can pay this back on my own terms. Between this and my ROTH IRA contributions, I could cover well over 12 months.

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Thank you!

Just start, it’ll get easier. I created my account in 2009 when I had just gotten laid off from my first job a year out of college due to the recession. Scary but the gains were worth it. I started with ETFs and added a bit each month with automatic investment. I didn’t check the balance unless markets were on the rise just for motivation.

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I started out with a small amount of money in college which helped me get my feet wet. You can start investing slowly and at your comfort level.

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Search for “personal finance club” and look at the article that shows how different investors did even when investing at market tops vs those who had perfect timing. The way to go is regular investing, generally, even though I completely get, and struggle with, plowing in money when a million things say the market is overinflated and set for poor forward returns.

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Thanks!

Do you have major expenses coming up?

Yolo on penny stocks and set your self up for retirement.

I would recommend finding a financial advisor. I found this to be really helpful as I had not previously invested and have seen great returns. Not all advisors are equal so I would recommend you ask friends for recommendations.

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