Embark on a financial journey with us as we explore financial accounts in the Roth IRAs world of mutual funds and index funds. Discover the importance of investing early and where. Engage with us through social media, suggest topics, and support the podcast for more insightful content.
Embark on a financial journey with us as we explore financial accounts in the Roth IRAs world of mutual funds and index funds. Discover the importance of investing early and where. Engage with us through social media, suggest topics, and support the podcast for more insightful content.
Welcome to Adulting Decrypted. We are your hosts. I'm Gene, and I'm starting my first year of college. I'm Ashton. I'm a music performer, composer, and educator. I'm Gene, a high school senior. I'm Roscoe, the dad. Those are my three sons, and this is Adulting Decrypted, where we discuss ways to become adults and the things we need to know to be successful in life. Today. We're talking about Roth IRA dad. Take it away. Thank you. And one Oh three. What did we talk about? A quick to finance one Oh three, just a quick reminder for the listener. And maybe for you guys, we talked about the different types of accounts. We talked a little bit about checking accounts basic savings accounts. CDs, what our CDs just the locked in interest rate for a set amount of time. We talked about brokerage accounts, brokerage accounts are a way to buy stocks, E trade Robin hood, those kinds of things. But today we're going to talk about and that's what we told the listener we're going to talk about. So part of that is the boys were all. These boys men whatever boys to men without would have been a good theme song for us boys You guys don't know boys to men. No. Oh a little bit of flashback 90s music I would thought you were gonna go for be a man from Milan or like, oh, they come in out of you That's oh, I like that. We could do that. We should do some of those as outros No, but back to the back to opening up an IRA I chose to use Fidelity. Fidelity doesn't sponsor us. We're just going to use Fidelity because that's where I put my Roths. That's where I hold my IRAs, my individual retirement accounts. And so it was easier for me to walk through it and explain to you guys the different things about an IRA. So first off who else got their account set up? I got mine set up. Awesome. I got an account. How did you get yours account? Mom made me one. And why is that Gideon, for the listener? Because I am under the age of 18. That's right, and so do you see what it's called there on the screen? Roth IRA for minor. Gotcha. Yeah, or custodial account is the other thing, but yeah. Roth IRA for minor. Great. Gene. I made a little mistake when I first originally made my account. I was off my social security number by one number. So it. Did not like me and would not allow me to connect an account. The other question is do you have it in there now? Are you ready to go? Yes, it is correctly in there. I am halfway through the setup process. Awesome. So Gene you learned that they will not let you set up a IRA or really fidelity wouldn't validate your account, correct? They kept saying hey, you need three days come back and check and see the status because they're going we don't recognize this social security Number, is that fair? Yeah So Jean, since you're the most recent one setting one up, where are you at now? You went through, what did the listener have to put in? Do you guys remember a couple of key information's a social security number? So you needed that. Anything else name, birthday. Address all your basic information. Awesome. Okay, good. Okay. So gene now you're a few steps in what what's that? You asked me a question. I said, hey, let's hold off. Let's just walk the listener through it. What was the question? Okay, so i'm starting the process of linking a bit And so the question was should I click fake wire or electronic funds transfer? Okay. What did you do ashton? Do you remember? It's an electronic transfer. So try that one gene. Okay, I don't remember. That's why I'm asking So then they're going to ask you to fill out your bank account, probably your routing numbers. That what you said, Ashton, and then your bank account number. Did it require mom was saying something about it required some extra digits than, than just your normal login. Do you remember having to do it multiple times or were you able to do it once? Well, I think I remember having to insert my bank account number more than once. And then having to like specify what I wanted to use the bank account as or something Gotcha Are you to that point yet gene? Yes, i'm currently putting in my bank account number Awesome. Okay, so now you go through and you, you link your account, Gene. So you get through and you link your account, then it's going to ask you to transfer some funds. I assume that they did some verification code and they said make sure that that one penny comes and, and that it's your bank account. It took a couple days. To get that set up? Well, it was just about as simple as every other account set up where it's like, you probably have to confirm a cell phone number. You have to confirm an email address. it didn't have me send a small amount than a large amount. It just was like, make sure you triple check this because once you do it, it's, you're done once you do it, the money's there. So it's like, okay. So I don't remember any extra. Steps or processes. Yeah, I do remember it just kind of the so the website is just fidelity. com I remember it being a little weird They feel like they bury the login Right at the very top of the page and it's kind of confusing it kind of blends in but then also like I remember the setup like if you like to use Mac, you can't use it on Safari. You have to use Chrome I don't know why interesting. Yeah, I just couldn't get it to work on Safari as well, but that's not The only time that that happens for websites. But yeah, so I had to, I had to use Chrome. And then I just remember the first couple of times going in, it was like, Oh, our servers are down or like, try again later sort of stuff. So it just took a little bit of persistence and remembering to do it, to get it done. But once you get it in and you figure out where the login stuff, it's been pretty simple just to like get back into. Gotcha. I don't ever remember the server being done. That's quite interesting. Okay. So once you set this up and you get under your accounts, you're going to see that there's accounts and trades planning and advice news and research product. Did you see that across the top? Yep. It's all there. Perfect. Do you see your accounts? I see my account. Yes. And do you see mom's account Gideon? I assume so. The retirement account. Does she also, it should like a rollover Roth or something in her or Roth IRA or something in hers? Yeah, I think so. Okay. Do you see yours? Can you distinguish which one yours is versus hers? Yes, I can. Okay. Can you click on yours? So you should now be under your Roth IRAI should say like a summary. Is that the first? Yeah, I'm under summary. It'll lead you to positions first. Oh, does it really? It did for me. Just barely. Ours both went to summary get in mine probably'cause we have some set up in there. Do you see a, under your Roth ash? Does it say cash? Like says cash held in, in money market or cash held at Fidelity? I see something that says balance. Okay. Is that what you're seeing as well? Yeah. I see my balance. Yeah. It's funny how different ours, but so if you go back over to positions, yeah. So positions has cash. And then above it. Perfect. Yep. That's what I'm looking at. I have an overview and a dividend view. Gene, are you to that point yet? I can see it, but it's still going to take the one to three business days. Perfect. And so what we're doing is we're all open to Roth account and we're going to fund it. And then what's going to happen is right now initially it comes into cash. And I thought of this because I was reading a Reddit forum. And somebody was pretty frustrated because they said, Well everybody said open up a Roth, so I went and opened up a Roth. But then I never made any money in it. So right now do you see where yours is just sitting in cash, Gideon and Ashton? Yep. So right now that's literally like having it in a checking account. What's nice about a Roth. So this is a us based product. A Roth is a tax paid product, meaning that you've already paid the taxes on this product. So this is after tax money. So there's no real tax benefit of it when you put it in. But there's a benefit when it comes out, because now it'll grow tax free. And when you go to take it out, there'll be no taxes on this money. Does that make sense? so any money that I make no need to pay taxes. Correct. and that's currently who knows how long the federal government will keep. This is why I like Ross so much is because 401k money. When you put it into a 401k, we've talked a little bit about this. You're paying it before you pay taxes and there's an advantage to that too But when you go to take it out all of it's taxed So i've got both roth and 401k money and I think they're both valuable to have So if you have an employer with a 401k sign up, but still max out your roth after you've hit your employer max that they'll match so they normally match So if I put in five dollars, they're going to put in 50 cents for every dollar, you know So if I put in 500, they might put in 250 You know and then say here's your match and I matched it and then you get to take it with you But the Roth is all after tax And so the other advantage of that is let's say you do get in trouble You can take out that cash that you've put in at any point time in or in a Roth I didn't know that till about three years ago Meaning that I was putting money in and I didn't know I could pull it out But there'd be a penalty for taking it out, right? There's no penalty for taking out the cash you invested, only the growth that happened. Oh. So that's why I love the Roth product because, and then there's some other advantages when you go to buy a home, you might be able to take out some of your principal plus your interest. The sad part is once you pull it out of the market, you can't put it back in. And so that's the downside of a Roth. When you pull money out, can't just deposit more money or what you can keep depositing, but you can only go up to that max allowed per year. So right now for me, I can put in 8, 000 into a Roth account sheer into an investment Roth account. I think your guys's is lower. You'd have to look, it should say max somewhere maybe under the Roth initial Roth. It'll tell you how much you can put in. I think it's 6, 500, but you'd have to check. It might be 7, 000 this year. It changes based on the year and federal government. I'm going to throw this in because we've reached. A point where I feel like I can. I was really bothered because I couldn't figure out what Roth meant, but right here it says on kiplinger. com, whatever that means, it says, Roths are the youngsters of the retirement savings world. The Roth IRA is named after the late Delaware Senator William Roth, and it became a savings option in 1998. So I was trying to figure out what R O T H stood for and it was nothing. It was the name. So yeah, it goes back to what a 401k is. It's just a complicated tax revenue code, right? So Roth was probably the Senator who introduced it and said, these are good. Let's put them in to get more people saving would be my guess. So thank you, Ashton. I love that. that actually gives us more context and it's federally mandated how much you can put in. so, as you're watching this, you just want to hit your limit, if possible, because it grows tax free. any more details needed on that? Is everybody kind of bored to death on, on that? It says, the total contributions you can make each year to all of your traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs can't be more than 6, 500. 7,500 if you're 50 or older. Yeah. And I think that might be outdated.'cause this year it went up to 8,000 for me, and I think this one says this to your point, February 30th of 24. Interesting. from the IRS? Yeah. And that would've been for year 23, not necessarily for year 24. So. they're just letting you know, but you can contribute to the 401k in addition to which is kind of cool I mean, you probably know this but this is more of a did you know for the people? It says you cannot contribute to a Roth IRA if your income exceeds 161, 000 for single filers or 240, 000 for joint filers yeah, because they don't want to have the rich utilize this As a way to get richer this is for the middle class free Correct because this growth is for those of us in the middle so that our finances can grow faster great point. So listener if you make more than that probably worth hiring a financial advisor here's where it got complicated for me. So you've got a cash balance So now you got to say, okay, what do I want to do with this? Where do I want to invest it? And I think we talked about this a little bit, but real quick the easiest way to think of it is there's there's mutual funds and there's index funds you And then you can buy an individual stock, right? So there's really three ways to buy, but let's think about this a little bit easier. I heard an analogy the other day that I really liked it. It's like a bowl uh, candy. And let's just think of the stock market as a candy M and M is A type of candy, right? Smarties is a type of candy. Snickers is kind of candy, licorice. So, to think about it this way if you're to buy a stock, let's just call it, you have a big candy bowl for your investment, right? If you were to buy one type of M& M, now you can buy them in individual colors, right? So you're always buying a green, green M& M. If you buy an individual stock, did you guys know you can buy an individual color of M and M you look confused in this world that you have sounds great. No, no, you really can. You have to go to the M and M store in the, in the stock analogy. Yeah, I can. That's I love it. I love this world. Give me all the red M& Ms, please. Yep, the only downside is if you only buy red M& Ms, what happens if the rest of the world starts hating red M& Ms? They come out and they find out red dye kills and poisons you. What happens to the value of all these red M& Ms that you've bought? They drop in value, right? Nope. Yeah, nobody wants them. Nobody wants them. So So I was purchasing to resell my M& Ms. I wasn't purchasing to have my M& Ms. I'm following the analogy. I'm trying to connect it for myself. That's a good point. Yeah, yeah. Good point. So the question is, is the value of this candy jar is so that you can, can have cash or something to live off in the future, right? So if nobody wants your red M and M's, nobody's going to trade you for any additional stock, you're kind of stuck with this red M and M every analogy breaks down when you go too far. Right. I don't think it does. It just, that's fine. So let's say that the whole value of, having a mutual fund is that you can then diversify them by multiple. Types of candy, not just different colors of M& Ms, but different types of candy. So in this world, you're really buying different types of stocks and a mutual fund and an index fund. So in that scenario, they're very correlated mutual fund and index funds are very correlated. They're, tied at the hip, but what's different is a mutual fund will be managed, meaning it's actively managed. That means a human being is looking at it and they're making trades Of this stock based on what they predict is going to happen. And so they carry what's called a higher ratio, an expense ratio. And then an index fund has a lower expense ratio. Why? Because it's managed electronically. Isn't that wild? Okay, so let me see if I've missed the mark where I'm starting to understand. An individual, and I'm not going to use an analogy, but just, I'm just trying to understand. Perfect. An individual can go out and buy stocks. Ashton Allen can go buy stocks. I can go buy stocks and say, I'll look at this right now. I could go buy a oil stock, probably can't it's expensive, but somebody could. Yeah. Okay. So this, okay. Let's look at the NASDAQ. It's 15, 983 per stock, I'm assuming is what that's telling me right here. Sure. And so if I bought that and then the world decides it's less valuable, I lose money really easily. Right? Yeah. I don't know that you can buy a NASDAQ stock. Okay. Okay. Sure. Because NASDAQ is normally it's a mutual fund or an index fund. And they're just trying to match the NASDAQ. The NASDAQ already is a, and the S and P those are the two biggest ones you'll hear thrown. Okay. So type in the word Ford in your quote, right? Ford motor. This was a great example for me when I was in school. Okay. So Ford motor company, a very established company. When I was in school, Ford 40, 50 bucks a share. So I was super excited when I was offered the job at Ford motor company. The problem with Ford motor company is they are tied to a very. Strategic car company, right? They know exactly what it is. The problem becomes is you have these. coms that come out and they're all of a sudden valued and they get hyper growth. You get your Amazons, you get, I mean, stuff that we don't even know Google. I mean, if you had about Google back when I started at Ford, I'd be wealthy, but I didn't. So yes, I can go out and buy an individual share in a company. Gotcha. so Roth was a bad example. in the fidelity, I clicked on just the market movers thing and it just shows you all the ones that have been changing a lot recently. Top one's Tesla and it says a stock is 194 and 5 cents. Okay. Yes, I could go in there buy two or three of those and if tomorrow it goes up by 50 percent I make money But if it goes down by like 30 percent I lose money, correct But since the mutual fund it puts an entire collection of people's money together it's managed by someone who's making stock moves of a bunch of individual stocks, there will be gains and losses. But since you're putting all your money into this composite index, rather than feeling all the individual losses, it's kind of the pain hurts less because you're in a group of people. You got it kind of, you got it. And then, and then when side of that pain, there's two different stack tiles, right? The index. Which is managed. It's just set it and forget about it. And then the other one is the mutual fund, meaning they manage it all the time and they're actively trading that stock is the easier way to look at those two different ones, but your scenario works for either mutual funds or index funds. So Ashton, let's go to a real life example. When will you retire? When, when will you retire is kind of a baited question, right? But let's say that you want to retire at 65. Yeah, that's not realistic. Let's say 70. What's 2025, 2024. How old are you? 26, right? So let's do 26 plus how many years till 70? 42 years to 68 Yeah. So let's look at a 2068 fund. Is that where the estimated interest comes from when it comes to stuff like the NASDAQ? Because like looking at like a five year graph, 10 year graph, it rises steady. Yeah. Well, yes. And no, ask that question again. So I'm looking at the NASDAQ right now. Yep. Okay. Hold on. Does everybody see where Ashton's at? Look under quotes, type in NASDAQ. So if you go, so you're in summary. Yep. So I'm going to, I just did view all markets on the summary page. Actually you can just click on the NASDAQ on the summary page. Yep. And then if you go inside of that, it has this dot I X I C thing where it's just a graph that shows you over time. And I went to the 10 year version of that graph, and over 10 years, it went from 4 grand to 15, or 16 almost. Yeah, but it had dips in it at places, didn't it? Yes, but does the Roth RA always, like, promised that you get. A certain amount of money back by the time you get old. No, it's like the big sell point, right? Yeah, there's no promise of any amount of money, but the this is where you're picking the stock to get it to Anticipate how much money it will make over time So you're absolutely right that 10 year that it's comparing it to Is saying if you invested in this stock I think it says like a thousand dollars off to the left or does it say three thousand? To show that girl to say 14. You said it showed 14. Yeah, so like You 10 years ago today it was 4, 000. Okay. Great. And then today it's roughly 60. Yeah. It's giving you a hypothetical growth of 10 year growth. And yes, that's what you're banking on is that the stock market's always going to go up over time, but you'll see the dips where it drops down. There's times that if you pulled your money out, you would lose that much money at that point in time. an example of this is I put in to some what's called a target date fund. So I put some of my money from my Roth in a target date fund three months ago, and right now it's worth less than what I put in. So the money dropped. But the anticipation in my book is that that's a dip that we're seeing, but we're gonna see the comeback and the growth of that stock. And that's why I want you guys to get exposed to it now so you can start investing and seeing what it's doing, so you start to understand the concepts. Because it was higher, the highest it's ever been was November of 21, and now it's trying to catch back up to that. Correct. Yeah. So, and this is where this paper money, you really haven't lost it until you sell your stocks or your shares or your, you know, whatever you've invested in. That's why these mutual funds and index funds are so valuable. So let's go and Ashton type in target date in your search for a quote. And then type in, I think, what did I say, 2068? There might be, let's see if that comes up with anything. Everybody type in F T Jews and Jean P is in Paul X is in. Sexy. Bruce. Not even make sense. Okay, do you see this one? It's a higher risk. It is a high risk. Why? Because right now, you're not looking towards retirement. You're not close to retirement, so you can let this fund grow. So right now, if you look at this over, look at the Morningstar category rating, target date 2065, fund inception. So this is a fairly new one, right? May. Are you guys seeing that May 11th at 23? expense ratio is 0. 49, net is 0. 49. so on and so forth. But if you look, Ashton, this goes back to what you're saying. Down here at the bottom, you can see that it starts out at year 23 and then the blue line. You see the blue line. The blue line is the S and P 500. So it's going to lag behind the S and P it has been, but it's, rising with this other rate. So right now the life of this one's 1953 If you look at what they hold, if you go down to asset allocation, see how it says that 54 percent in us equity, okay, and now look at Fidelity series. Sustainable US Market Fund. It's gonna open up like a, what's called a portfolio, and it's gonna tell you where it's all located at. Other options, see top 10 holdings in this one is Microsoft and. NVIDA, I don't know who that is. NVIDIA. They're a computer chip company, actually. Apple, Amazon. they're telling you, look, we're investing in these high You okay? What? Oh, I thought you were asking a question. so the top 10 holdings, it says it takes up 25 percent or yeah, 25 percent of the total portfolio. So basically they're in all of these stocks, this holding is and that will determine the average of all of those growth percentage wise is what you can expect to make over time. Correct. in theory though, if you were to go into and invest in all of these individually on your own, could you then in theory make more out of it? Absolutely. Absolutely. But you do it because it's safer. But yeah, cause what happens is you don't have the type of buying power. So when Amazon takes a hit, And apple has a growth month or a growth sector It offsets the amazon loss and the apple growth and so you you don't make as much on either end of that But you don't lose as much on either end of that. So if one of these big companies Let's say nvidia all of a sudden they produce millions of chips that are worthless And they their stock takes a huge hit your growth this year might not be as great But you didn't lose all your money, right? And so the mutual fund then since they have so many people with money going into them. They're able to balance out the hits so you don't make as much but you don't lose nearly as hard because It's all just Wider surface area. I like that. Yeah wider surface area. That's great Okay, Yeah. So what you're trying to do between all these index funds and mutual funds is you're looking for the right fund to put your money in that you feel the most comfortable with action. The nice thing about buying these, it's like buying a car. You can trade it, sell it by more of the same, as long as you don't roll it out of your Roth or your qualifying retirement account, it doesn't have any impact. So the cool thing is you don't have to necessarily pick right today. You just need to pick right more times than you pick wrong and then you leave it in there and you let it grow over time. There's a couple other cool things about this is there's planning and advice up top. You can type in kind of what your goals are. This is like a fancy, remember how we pulled up the quick one on like nerd wallet and we did a quick financial calculator. How much money will I have when I retire? These are a little bit more fancy, So right now my score is good for being able to retire. and I can add in different goals, like at home, a college emergency, saving, get an investment strategy of your goal, you know, and there there's all these different kind of playing tools that you can go in there and figure out where you want to put your money and how you want to make your money grow. So a Roth IRA is built for retirement. This is money that you put in, you leave it alone, and you hope that you win more than you lose. My personal learning that I have done over the last three years is I don't need a financial planner because the problem is they charge you two or 3%. I've paid my financial planner probably over 25, 000 that the problem is my investments haven't grown as much. To offset that expense of paying them. So a couple of things to look for is you should be able to get free financial advice on most of the stuff now in this day and age, So keep that in mind. The other one is avoid front loaded funds or back loaded funds. You should never pay a load on a fund. You should buy index funds, worst case scenario, some mutual funds. So we're going to deep dive. We're going to make a trade Type in actually Getting your young right? Yeah, large cap in your search a quote? Fn ilx That one. Zero large cap index fund. That is a weird The question I asked I'd like to ask you would you like to buy into this fund? The expense ratio is zero I don't understand this fund. I'm a little bit confused It looks pretty cool. But right now it's a 30 percent return this year 11 three years 15 five years and 13 since the life of the fund it has a four star rating Yeah, I mean so it's an index fund fidelity zero no transaction fees You could now see where it says buy this fund. Yes up in the right corner Make sure you're using your money and not mom's money, right? Yep There's all these different things. You could click a compare And try and buy a different one. That's similar. See where it says compare ashton Not anymore. I was in the purchasing phase. That's the one you want to buy as well? I don't know. It's all lines at this point. Yeah, it's fair. It's going up too, so I can only assume that it's good. It's not a bad front. When is your retirement? Did we decide? That's, it's, Let's 65. So the question is, do you want to, do you want to keep looking at your funds or not? That's part of the question. Like things that I could really, you could just find whatever you want, right? Well, yeah. The question is how often do you want to look at your investments? Not often. Yeah. You want to just put in, look, I want a hundred dollars to go in every month and I want to know that it's automatically investing in a certain area. Okay. Then you just want to pick a fund, probably not a, not a large cap fund, maybe, you know, but you can go high risk. Why wouldn't you want to do a large cap fund? good question. So if you look at what large cap is, Domestic large cap is going to be your big companies. Tesla's Microsoft, those companies that we just saw, right? Those are your large ones. This one's in the large cap. I see them. Yep. Apple video. Yep. So the only risk is that, that the economy goes soft and people change their investments over to bonds. And then all of a sudden you're, you lose any growth potential. you're just put at more risk. But if you're okay with that risk, I would be okay with it. If I was you, there's no problem buying that fund. So it's a risk because they're bigger companies or it's a risk because because risk, why? Because it's still a mutual fund, Yes. it's the biggest risk Ashton is if you never change it. Let's say that now your money grows fast. You're making They say about 12 percent is average. So let's say that your money's making 12% And you're like, Hey, cool. I forgot about it. I keep putting money in because I don't want to be just a one and done investor. Right. Let's say you invest 500 every year. You know, you get ready to retire. You're like, Holy cow. I made, I have like 50, 000 in here. This is awesome. And then the day before you go to retire, the stock market takes a hit. Microsoft drops, Amazon drops, everybody drops. You could have 10, 000. But wouldn't that be the same for everything? Not if you've gone in and changed your investment portfolio, because what happens is the money doesn't go away. What happens is people pull out of the large cap companies, and they transition over to the bond companies where they transition to gold or to silver. Something that's consistent on the fall. They're just trying to get some different assets for that brief moment of time. Cause actually everybody's chasing the market, but if you could wait then and say, look, I don't need to retire today. I can retire in three years. Then your money's going to come back and it's going to be huge again. So right now there, no real risk. You're just going to be putting money in that feels like it's wasted. So you asked me right now, what's the downside? There is no downside. Invest, let it ride, especially as long as you've got an index or a mutual fund where the expense is low. The bad thing where I lost so much freaking money is that I didn't know any better. And so I was buying front loaded stocks. Every time I put in a thousand dollars, they were taking, it doesn't seem like a lot, but 57 every time they're taking 57 and I wasn't making that much money back because you were having like financial planner or whatever. Correct. And so that's why I'm saying just start putting money in and watch your expense ratios and your load costs. I'm feel comfortable buying that stock and let's see what it does for six months. Cause it doesn't matter. You could at 27 you're 25, but when you hit 45, 55, you need to start opening that up and changing it. Into something different because what's could happen and it's what a lot of people this is why a lot of people have a bad Taste in their mouth. We are going to have another 08 right where the market just sucks the wind out of everybody A lot of people sold guess what I did. I bought more stocks Not more stocks. I bought more mutual funds. I kept buying. Why did I keep buying? I bought when covid was happening and the stocks were getting hammered. Why because it's gotta go back up I believed it was gonna go back up. And so all the stuff I bought I bought at a discount You But that's the dollar cost averaging. And when you look at a dollar cost averaging model says, I'm buying it cheaper, it's going to go up. I'm going to make more. I'm going to make it all back. And so, yes, actually, you can go in and buy that large cap fund right now and invest it, and then you can see what your money does tomorrow, the next day, two weeks, three weeks, four months, five months, because then you get a chance to try it and you can start trying to figure out how you're comfortable. 500 becoming 200? 100 and then in six months, it's worth more in seven years. It's worth more when I go back and look. We have a different type of fund called an hsa health savings account I just had it in a normal interest bearing account. It was making no money It was about ten thousand dollars that money's now worth thirty seven thousand dollars because I put it in a more aggressive account And that's been over just three years So you have to decide where you're comfortable mr. Investor And decide where you want to put your funds. I don't think I understand it enough right now to buy it, right now, if you just leave it in cash, you might as well left it in your bank account. And so when I called my financial planner today, I just said, Julie, as soon as we see this other money come in, I need to dump it quick into another account. Cause I don't want it sitting in cash. I have enough cash, right? So the trick is just to get it into something to let it start growing. And you can buy two or three different funds with that 500. You can buy five different funds. You're only limited by the cost of the fund. So this was a quick overview. I hope there's some helpful information in here. Mutual funds, index funds, look at your cost ratio, pick one that you're comfortable with, invest your money and reach back out to us on it in where all of our social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, we have a subreddit, all the different places where you want to talk to us, just look up adults and encrypted and DMS. For post and tag us we'd love to hear all of your different experiences Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Adulting Decrypted. We really enjoyed having this week's conversation and we hope you did as well. If you ever want to comment on our topics, you can send us a message through our website adultingdecrypted. com, our email adultingdecrypted at gmail. com, Or, through our Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts at Adulting Decrypted. If you have any topics for the show that you would like us to talk about, or if you are a parent and want us to talk about something your kid should know, send us a message on any of the accounts mentioned. If you would like to be a guest or have an idea for someone you think we should have on our show, feel free to send us an email detailing your thoughts to adultingdecrypted at gmail. com. Adulting is teamwork. We have merch! If you want to show off your Adulting Decrypted pride, check out our website, adultingdecrypted. com, or our partner website, with shop. spreadshirt. com forward slash adulting dash decrypted. Lastly, if you enjoyed the show, please consider supporting us on our Patreon at adulting decrypted. Along with the benefits that come with our Patreon, and trust us, there are some pretty good ones in there, you will not only be helping us continue in the effort to make these videos Great content, but you will be part of a community of individuals all trying their best to adults. We appreciate you listening, enjoying, and leaving your positive reviews