Retirement Advice

[1CavHog]

I wanted to tap into the advice from those older and wiser than me in this forum, and I think there are a lot of people on this board that can benefit from retirement advice from those who make a living in the financial sector. I am doing pretty good investing for retirement but I have used what I have learned from books and those around me and know I have room for improvement. My current outlook is as follows:

Age 29 (Spouse 25)
We have just over 70k in tax deferred accounts (TSP for mine, 403B for her)
Have 30k in a preferred savings account (USAA) for emergency fund
3k in stocks (GE, CHK, IFN, HD, BP)
6k in ROTH IRA

My TSP account is distributed between a 2040 lifecycle fund and a common stock index. My wife's 403B is in a 2040 lifecycle fund through Vanguard.

I dabble in stocks with my main goal being to study and understand the markets. I am up about 5% since I started investing stocks, I put in 1k a year and don't plan on putting more until I develop a better understanding of market trends and the entire wall street animal. I spent my stock money this year on Chesepeake because they seem like a sound company and I think that natural gas is going to boom in the future as we continue to compete with the growing demand for oil in India and China.

I wish I had invested in a ROTH earlier, we will max out our ROTH contributions from here out even if it means contributing less to our tax deferred accounts.

Besides overall advice I have two major questions:

- Should I use the services of a financial adviser and if so who have you guys used and had success / failure with?

- I will have a pension from the Army, should I invest more of my money in stocks?

Thanks in advance, I follow this forum as much as MMQB and seems like there are some real "in the know" guys out there.

[HognotinMemphis]

At your age, all of your $ should be in equity mutual funds other than your $30K emergency cash. It doesn't matter which funds. Pick 2 small caps, 2 mid caps and 2 large caps with one of each being growth, and the other being value. Keep them 25 years and add to each every year and see how wealthy you are at age 54. If you spread your existing $79K among them and add $6K per year to them ($1K per fund) and earn an average of 7% per year, you'll have over $800K in 25 years. And by 65, you'll have about $1.8 million.

If you do better than 7%, you'll have a ton more than that. If you add more than $6K per year, you'll have a ton more than that.

Equities and equity based investments are the ONLY way to keep up with inflation. You will likely run out of money before you die (especially given the massive inflation we will almost certainly experience in the near future) if you don't put all of your investible assets in equities at your age.

[1CavHog]

HiM thanks. I'm pretty naive on equity based investing, I'll go do some research and I might hit you up with a PM tomorrow.

[Old Tusk]

Cav, I started with TSP in 86. Over that time the G Fund has out performed the C Fund.

[1CavHog]

Cav, I started with TSP in 86. Over that time the G Fund has out performed the C Fund.

Interesting. I had started with some money in the F and G funds but switched that to the C fund because it seemed like higher risk / higher reward.

Also with high inflation looming what do the gurus on here think of investing in land / real estate?

[Old Tusk]

You can look at the numbers. The tortoise often beats the hare.