What is your preferred brokerage firm? Searching past topics, I found recommendations for ameritrade and optionshouse. How about Schwab? I am mainly interested in ETFs as a way to put my savings to use without the need to actively manage trades

Essentially, the Obama Budget wants to cap the amount that can be kept in any tax deferred retirement account at at 205k annuity amount. Today that would be about 3mil in an account. In 2006 it would have been only 2.2mil. Obama justifies this by saying that it only effects a very small amount of the population (which is true) but that number is a bit misleading considering that basically anyone under 45 is not going to have that much in a tax deferred account no matter how much they make. So we are essentially just discouraging tax deferred savings in the long run. Anyways, here's the link: http://blogs.marketwatch.com/encore/2013/04/10/oba...

Thoughts?

I am reading an article on how you and your significant other save. http://www.bettertopic.com/2012/08/19/are-you-and-...

It says:
Other people spend it luxuriously and look at spending money as a means to reward themselves for their work. Still, other people are very thrifty that they hardly ever spend a cent of what they have earned.

It got me thinking... Do you and your boyfriend/girlfriend save/manage money the same way, or do one of you have a significantly different approach then the other (ie: I save a lot but my boyfriend tends to spend more).

Folks,

I am heading to business school in a year and sat down tonight to take a serious look at my finances.

I haven't ever put much thought into it, but I've been doing the very basics up to now:
-Maxing out my 401k contributions
-Contributing to a Roth IRA until I hit the salary cap
-Saving a large portion in a checking account

Ultimately, I'm starting to be a little concerned about a few things
1. Sheltering as much income/assets as possible for when I apply for FinAid
2. Earning a better return on a large amount of cash thats just sitting in my checking account at 0.15% APY.

Would be great to hear some advice about the best way to approach saving for B-School and any lessons learned from the more experienced Monkeys.

Thanks.

How are you guys investing your bonuses/ money saved from internships ?
that you wont need for 2-3 years

Are Structured Investments worth it ? or is the risk-reward ratio too in favour of the Bank ?

I prefer having a fixed income at the end so I can plan around it but at the same time dont want to get ripped off.

Okay, so I'm doing some brain stroming about the publics saving habits.
What do you think are some of the ways in which the public are saving their money/capital?
Thanks for help. :DD

maybe I succk at searching for threads on WSO, but does anyone know if there are some suggestions for personal finance & long term investment plans on this website? I think I remember seeing a few in the past but can't really find them now.

I'm in my early 20's, have loads of student debt and have started to realize that if I don't watch my budget carefully and throw $20 for dinner every day (I'm on the trading side so dinner is not offered( then I won't really save anything at the end of the day. Not that I want to save ridiculous amount of $, but I would at least want to save at least 10% of my monthly income and I'm finding it difficult after paying down my loans, rent, etc.

I'm trying to purchase a coin collection from a private party that has severely undervalued his lot. The melt value alone of the gold and silver coins is equal to his asking price. Knowing a lot about this hobby and having made money off of reselling coins I see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with one problem: I don't have enough greenbacks to make the purchase. The amount needed is $10,000 and having consulted my family, which is financially stretched as any family can be, I have no other options that I'm aware of. A sum that big is too big for a payday loan and I drive a car that can't be used as collateral.

Just wondering....

About how long would it take to amass a liquid net worth of 2 million (My magic number) if you followed a strict career path at a BB in IBD, and assume you were internally promoted to associate rather than getting an MBA and losing 2 years of earnings?

Assume NYC taxes as well :(

(Most people assume that working at Goldman is a get rich quick scheme that will put them out the door at 35 with a house in the hamptons and a private jet, but when you do the math about your earnings and assume you can get a nice 8.5% on your investments, your really going to be have to be working for the man for quite some time . )

Just curious to see how long people think it would take?

Fellow monkeys,

I am sure there are many of us on this site with a decent amount of savings, and was wondering where you put your money. It would be interesting to have a running thread of people discussing their portfolio allocations and/or trade ideas.

With such low interest rates, there is no point of putting your money in a savings account and earning 0.25%, especially with the inevitable inflation to come. I don't put my money in a 401(k) cause I don't want to wait until retirement to get all my money. As of now I have approximately $20K in a personal account, and I trade just US equities. However, as my savings increases over time, I want a safer portfolio, and am thinking of purchasing some closed-end funds with an income focus.

Obviously, this differs by location, but how much should first-year analysts be saving from their salaries every month?

If I just started as an analyst and plan on attending b-school in 4 years (Sept 2014) does it make sense for me to put everything in traditional 401k and pull everything out to pay for MBA in 2014-2015 (whatever calendar year where my reported income will only be from summer associate internship)?

That way I get 16.5k pretax for 4 years and get those tax savings, and use it to pay down educational expenses in a significantly lower tax bracket.

Does this make sense? What did other anaylsts thinking they were on the ib-pe-mba track do with savings?

Thanks.

I'm going to be starting as a first year analyst soon and I would like to start planning on how I'm going to save/invest the money I make after my expenses. I want to build my wealth early.

I'm estimating to have about ~$18-20K after-taxes (including signing bonus) before bonuses after my first year. My firm matches my 401k dollar for dollar so I plan on trying to invest the max amount. After that, I'm not sure where to invest the rest of the money. I plan to only keep around $2-3K in my checking account.

Please give me some advice from your personal experiences. Thanks in advance.

First off, I'm not from NYC

I live and work as a first year analyst in a big city, yes, and it isn't cheap; however, it ain't anything like NYC...

Discounting my bonus, I am currently saving approximately 45-52% of my after-tax income, which I think is considerably higher than the average monkey.

My reasons for saving this was:

1. Emergency situations/laid off, etc: you would want some cash to deal with this. Since I don't have a family, debt, or a house, i can easily switch to renting cheaper, living simpler for a while it if calls for it.

2. B-school/car/house (potentially): B-school will prob preclude the latter 2, but since its going to be at least 100,000 for 2 years not counting opp costs, its going to eat in a lot of my savings. I don't hope to save nearly enough for B-school...I know I'll have to borrow at some point. (I don't have undergrad debt, so thats a relief)

So my questions are,

Is there a % you personally target saving discounting any bonuses?

I I have a pretty decent amount of savings built up, and its all kind of just sitting around. Wanted to know what other people are doing with their savings, where they are investing it, how aggressive they are being in terms of investing it. I am not allowed to invest in individual stocks/bonds due to firm requirements so I am limited to mutual funds, ETF's, treasuries, etc. I would like something that is liquid and not too risky.

Thoughts?

Can anyone recommend a decent savings account? Looking to park the cash from my internship but Wachovia give F all interest. I've heard of Shorebank who are giving 2.04% any others?

My goal (as of now) is to go to bschool in about 5 years. What would be the best way to save for it? Roth IRA? regular savings acct? any special account for grad school? What are you guys doing?