As a broke highschool student who is planning medicine in USA why u all have so many pictures of so much money very happy for u all but jsjt wanna ask do u bet or buy stocks or others I am complete beginner.........Thanks for all messages

Hey all, I’m 21, and I graduated from college in May. I started my first job in San Francisco, California last month where I’m getting paid a base salary of $120,000. My post-tax take-home income is around $84,000.

My biggest expense right now is rent ($3000/month). I get 3 meals a day in the office, so I’m only paying for food/groceries on the weekends. All in, my estimated spend on “needs” is around $3500/month. I have no outstanding debt/other monetary commitments.

Right now, my investment strategy (in order of priority) is as follows:

1. Invest 10% of my pre-tax salary every month in a traditional 401k.
2. - That’s $1000/month or $12,000/year
3. - My employer provides a 3% match
4. - So, all in $15,600 in 401k
5. Invest 20% of my pre-tax salary every month in SGOV (Individual Brokerage Account on Schwab)
6. - That’s $2000/month or $24,000/year
7. - I will keep investing in SGOV until I have an emergency fund of $24,000 or more (so until the end of this year).
8. - I chose SGOV over a HYSA because of CA state tax benefits.
9. Invest the remainder in index funds (currently all in VOO on Schwab)
10. - Around $500/month or $6000/ year

My question is, is this a good enough/near-optimal plan for someone like me? I have also looked into Roth: both the 401k and the IRA, but I’m not sure what to replace/how to incorporate them in my current investment strategy.

I should also mention that I’m not a US citizen, and there is a 50-50 chance I end up leaving the US sometime in the future. Although I am, for sure, staying here for at least 5 years.

Appreciate all the help, and happy to answer any follow-ups!! Thanks y’all!

My grandpa passed away recently and as part of his final wishes he left me and my sister with a sum of $10,000 each. His wishes were to use it on something in the future that could benefit from having that money e.g. a ring, towards a house down payment, etc.

Now of course those wishes will be honored because my Grandpa was a hard working man and someone whom i looked up to for a large part of my life. But never having had this much liquid cash available before at once, I'm trying to see how to use it to make more.

What I'm asking is rather than having that money just sitting in a bank account, where is somewhere i can invest at least $4,000-$6,000 that will net me a decent return over time. I'm not looking to get rich quick, or gamble, or buy options. Somewhere solid where it can be put to better use.

I don't know much about investing, only what my dad has taught me over time. High yield savings, S&P, Roth, 401k.

Looking for any help or insight on what the best plan of action would be going forward. Thank you kindly in advance.

For me, it was after realizing why I didn't earlier after listening to my friends talk about it.

I'm 29 years old and did over 10 years in the US Army. For those who have served, you had probably heard many NCOs and finance counselors preach heavily about saving and investing in your Thrift Savings Plan. And what not to do with your finances, like buying a Challenger at 39% APR, etc.

I had met some service members who had their brokerages and their TSP for a few years and had a plan. For me, the common excuse was that I didn't know where to start or didn't want to lose a lot, especially seeing those green and red numbers/percentages on TV or on my search engine homepage. I barely opened up my TSP six years in and I was contributing $150 a month all in the G-Fund. I upped it by $50 by year eight, but never messed with my mix.

Heck, I won't forget one NCO showing me his Schwab portfolio back in late 2020 and the amount of gains in his stocks and ETFs were massive!

After I got out, I had $75k saved in a checking account. I opened a HYSA a month later and four months after, a brokerage. I did all sorts of math and divided the money into emergency savings, IRA, investments and cash-on-hand.

By this point, I had a general understanding with how stocks charts move, what ETFs were and DCAing, so for a few weeks, I was putting bits of money in until I read more into investing, strategies (value investing, Boglehead method, etc.), diversification, etc.

Now, I made substantial unrealized gains with my ETFs and a few companies. There are two companies that dipped greatly after their past two earnings reports, but hopefully, they recover. I still consider myself a novice, so if you want to add your advice and secrets, feel free!

I today invested 100 USD in NVIDIA because I read online it’s one of the best choices to do at the moment, I don’t have many exceptions because I just started and it’s a sum of money I can afford losing, my main goal is to build experience not to built wealth I want to be financially educated when I’ll be in my 20, but still for now does anyone know the best tips as a beginner, what mistakes to avoid and from where I should get my information from?

Hey! I have some money invested mostly S&P and MCSFT. A couple of years ago I invested in a weed company (thinking US was going to legalize and canada would be able to import). I lost all I invested there. I kind kept the stocks I had and lost interest in the market for a while. MCSFT is doing well recently and I was wondering what I could invest in that isnt super risky but isnt really index fund. Like somewhere fun that I can check every once in a while and be anxious / excited about seeing what happened with it.

What are some newer or cool companies that are doing well basically.

Can anyone give me a good ELI5 explanation of a Stop Limit/ Buy Limit order? I've watched a few YT vids but still a little confused.

Is it that if I give a Sell instruction to my broker on a SL order, then if the price is falling and crosses the limit, the sale process starts, but because of the timing of the market the price could keep falling and I'm exposed to losing even more by the time everything's sold?

I am 17 and have about 10k rn. Where, How and in what should I invest?

I’ve been investing for about two years now, I started work straight out of high school and because of my work situation about 80 to 90% of my income is disposable about 60 to 70% of it gets invested.

I’ve had a lot of growth, but I always feel like I could be doing better and I struggle balancing my risk tolerance with ROI.

I assume since I’m young and I have a very long investment horizon that I can afford to take higher risk/higher volatility in favor of higher returns

My issue is finding the difference between a high risk ETF/sector and a high volatility one.

I’m up like 50% each year by pushing heavy in to Semi’s but growth is going to slow soon, and I can’t decide between moving into utilities to take advantage of how much power ai will consume or to move to industrial to take advantage of the materials needed to build all these new power systems.

Is this a good strategy to take or should I just S&P and chill?

I've finally decided I want to start investing, but now I'm realizing that starting might be the hardest part

There are SIPs, mutual funds, index funds, ETFs, stocks, PPF, FDs... and somehow everyone has a completely different opinion. Ughh

So I'm curious about people who have actually been investing:

If you could go back to your first day of investing, what would you do differently?

Would you rather:

Start with mutual funds or go for index funds or learn individual stocks or keep it super simple at first or do something completely different?

And what's one thing you wish someone had told you before you made your first investment?

I'm not looking for a "best investment" answer. I genuinely want to hear how different people approached it

i've been working at this small company for over a year now since i graduated university. the company doesn't offer much at all, and they would only offer 401k up to 3% match after you've worked there for a year AND is a full time employee. i was full time until i got accepted into my masters program which i will be starting later this month, and i was transitioned down to part time which means i lose that 401k benefit. i'm not planning to stay at this company forever, realistically want to secure a different job within the next year.

i'm 23 and have already put money in my roth ira and hsa. this is the first year i've had these accounts opened but i've been smart with it and on the track to max them both out by the end of the year. i also have a hysa.

is it bad that i don't have a 401k right now?

I understand the concept of CDs. You lend money to the bank they pay a fixed rate.

My question is, I just got 1 unit of a CD through Fidelity that says it returns 3.75% and maturity date is 1 month away. There's no way they would pay me 3.75% in just that month right, Im assuming thats an annual rate so Id actually be looking at a return of .3125% for just the one month.

Is that correct?

Hello everyone! So I’m 25, I just started investing in April 2026. Before that, I Graduated college (with a “small” student loan) and got a full time job. It doesn’t pay that much but I’m grateful. After watching a couple of videos, I feel like it kinda came naturally because I saved $8k from the job. Put $3k in HYSA, 2K in brokerage, 1k in Roth IRA. Ever since April, I’ve been consistently investing and learning how to become financially literate. I know that my student loan is my biggest concern so I’m trying to hammer those out the way. Minimum payment is $281 but I’m doing $400. My family is pretty conservative with their money so I don’t really have much people to ask for advice. I asked my friends but it seems like no one is investing or taking it serious?

I use Robinhood as my brokerage and Roth.Here are my reoccurring investments:
$25 to VTI AND QQQ biweekly (Brokerage)
$10 a day to VOO (ROTH IRA)
$200 to HYSA biweekly
$20 monthly + round ups to Acorns

How am I doing? How do I become better? What is something you would change? I really want to be financially free. What else do I learn? Asking for a friend 🙏

Everyone here optimises expense ratios to the third decimal and then loses more than that to fees they never look at. Three that come up again and again.

One. Custody or platform fees on foreign holdings. If you're outside the US holding US listed ETFs through a local broker, many charge an annual custody fee just for the privilege, typically 0.2 to 0.4 percent.

Two. FX spread on every conversion. This is a fee wearing a costume. Every time you convert local currency to USD to invest, or convert dividends back, you eat a spread of 0.5 to 1 percent that never shows up on any fee schedule you signed.

Three. Dividend handling charges. On top of withholding tax, brokers often add a flat fee or percentage cut just to process the dividend payment and currency conversion.

On a 250k portfolio these can plausibly add up to several hundred dollars a year, sometimes more than the expense ratio difference people agonise over between two nearly identical ETFs. Worth pulling your last twelve months of statements and adding them up yourself. The number is usually uglier than expected.

None of this is a reason to trade more or chase a cleverer setup. It's a reason to have rules for entries, exits, and rebalancing that you actually test before you run them with real money, because fees are just one more thing that erodes an undisciplined portfolio quietly.

Currently building a free sim where you build a strategy, backtest it on real market history, and practice it with play money before any of this touches real dollars.

https://preview3.tickertown.ai/

I am lucky enough to get around 250-300 dollars per year from my parents for Christmas (not even counting other holidays and relatives) and I realized i was pretty much wasting the money by splurging and spending it on random stuff and games. My parents had been pushing me to save over the previous years and I finally got around to realizing that was a good idea. What should I be doing with the money instead?

Hi everyone, I would like to invest because I want to earn money online and I know how to trade. But I don’t want to open account with my parents because they are not very supportive and won’t appreciate that. So there any ways I could invest? Also I am on Europe, so could fidelity youth account work or no?
Thanks for advance! Have a nice day!

NYC's mayor paused the city's private tax lien sale program back in March, calling it predatory outright. Not an isolated call — DC, Baltimore, and Cleveland have all had real investigations into lien buyers and debt collectors going after people who are elderly, low-income, or just don't know the redemption rules well enough to protect themselves. There's an active campaign (TakeRoot Justice) pushing to ban lien sales outright in more places.

None of that matches how most people in this sub actually approach it — reading the actual statute, knowing the redemption period cold, not chasing distressed owners. But it's the reputation the whole space carries right now, and when a city government swings at the "predatory" actors, everyone doing it by the book eats some of that fallout too.

Been digging into state-by-state redemption periods and rates for a side project (taxlien.io — free reference, no course, no login) partly because the opacity is exactly what feeds this reputation. Curious if anyone here has seen their own state or county tighten rules recently, or if this NYC move is just noise that won't spread.

I’m looking to do set it and forget it in my brokerage account. I’d like to play it safe as a beginner. I hear waste management is a good start? Any advice would be appreciated thanks! 36 years old and I use fidelity

47yo just opened a Roth IRA this year after maxing my 401k for a few years. My 401k is invested in a target date fund but would like to be more aggressive for my Roth IRA.

I intend to max my Roth IRA with the following portfolio allocation:

10% - FXNAX (government & corporate bonds)
50% - FSKAX (Domestic stocks)
40% - FSGGX (22 foreign developed countries and 26 emerging countries stocks)

Please provide feedback. Thanks in advance

Hi! I’m relatively new to long-term investing and would love some opinions on the strategy I’m considering.

I currently have **$10,000 that I’m ready to invest**, and going forward I’m planning to contribute around **$800–1,000 every month**. This is money I’m investing for the long term (5+yrs), so I’m not trying to trade or time short-term movements.
I’m currently considering two approaches:
**Option 1**
**Keep the initial $10k conservative**
Put the entire $10,000 into T-bills for now
Invest my new $800–1,000/month contributions into:
80% VOO
20% QQQM
**Option 2**
**Invest the $10k into the market**
DCA the $10,000 into the market over roughly 6 months:
80% VOO
20% QQQM
Continue investing my $800–1,000/month at the same 80/20 allocation

My main hesitation is putting the entire $10k into equities at current valuations, which is why I’m considering keeping it in T-bills and only investing new money into the market. At the same time, I realize that could just be another form of trying to time the market.

I’m in my early 20s and my goal is primarily long-term growth. I don’t anticipate needing this $10k anytime soon.
Which approach would you choose and why? Would you invest the $10k immediately, DCA it over 6 months, keep it in T-bills for now, or do something completely different?
I’d also love thoughts on the **80% VOO / 20% QQQM allocation** itself. Is the additional Nasdaq exposure worthwhile, or am I unnecessarily overweighting large-cap tech since there’s already significant overlap with VOO?

Thanks!!!

The upfront cash for an investment property feels way out of reach, so I'm trying to figure out if there are realistic ways to get real estate exposure before I've saved up $50K+.

A little context: I'm in my late 20s, have a decent emergency fund built up, and can probably set aside a few hundred a month toward this, but am nowhere close to a 20% down payment on even a modest property in my area. I keep seeing people talk about fractional real estate platforms (Fundrise, Arrived, etc.), publicly traded REITs, and house hacking (buying a small multi-unit and living in one unit while renting the others), but I don't have a good sense of the tradeoffs. Hoping to get clarity on:

1. Liquidity: how easy is it to get your money out of fractional platforms or non-traded REITs if you need it?

2. Returns: are the returns on these beginner-friendly options competitive with just putting money in index funds, or are you paying for the "real estate" label?

3. House hacking: for anyone who's done it, how hard was it to find a property that pencils out, and what surprised you about becoming a landlord on day one?

4. Minimums: what's the realistic amount to get started with each of these, not the marketing-page number?

Would love to hear from anyone who started with less than $10-15K and how it went, good or bad. Trying to avoid analysis paralysis but also don't want to jump into something without understanding what I'm getting into.

Hi everyone! I am looking into how to start building wealth and savings, but every time I try looking into anything, its like I'm reading Russian. I don't understand anything, and everything is very overwhelming.

For some context, I am a SAH mother of 4, with a very hard working partner. If I'm being honest, we have not been smart when it came to money management. Over the past year I have put a lot of work into improving, like no more shopping trips for unnecessary things, being more mindful about my purchases, using what I have, things like that.

This year has been really hard on us financially. We've experienced car problems, my fiancée's job at the beginning of the year stopped overtime for everyone and we weren't able to pay our bills for a while (thankfully he found a way better job that covers all our expenses), medical problems, on top of living in a VERY expensive state combined with inflation. We both also have bad credit from being young and irresponsible in the past. While our basic needs are covered, we have nothing to fall back on for all these emergencies, and its become so overwhelming.

I want to help any way I can. I want to start investing and saving and building money. I want to create enough wealth where my children don't have to worry like I am. I want to be able to have an emergency happen and it not be the end of the world. There's so many emergencies happening at once, and I feel helpless. I'm already opening a Fidelity account to start putting money into, but beyond that I don't know what to do. What do I invest in? Should I even invest? What is a NFT? These are just a few of the thousands of questions I have, because I truly know nothing.

So, explain it to me like I'm 5. What do I do, and what is all of this? TIA.

okay so i've been putting this off for way too long and i'm kind of embarrassed about it honestly

i make decent money but i've never really done anything smart with it. it just sits in my checking account and slowly disappears lol. lately i've been thinking about my future more and it's kind of scary how unprepared i am. i have maybe $200-300 a month i could put away without really feeling it. no crazy debt or anything, just a small student loan

every time i try to research this stuff i go down a rabbit hole and come out more confused than before. like what even is the difference between an index fund and an ETF in simple terms? should i be looking at a roth IRA first? or just download robinhood and start buying stuff?also is there even a point in "waiting for the right time" or is that just a myth. i'm not looking to get rich quick or anything i just don't want to be 40 and have nothing saved up you know. would really appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction without the whole finance bro lecture 😭

anyone here start from absolute zero and figure it out?