Financial advisor vent

[Ima saver]

Re: Financial advisor vent

Kris, a load is a charge that comes out of every dollar that you give him to invest. Franklin charges a 5.75% load or commission. so every time you invest $100.00 only $94.25 actually goes into your investment.
You can do this on your own. Pick a good fund, I am mostly with Vanguard, one of the biggest. It is no load and very low expenses. You call them, get a prospectus, and send them a check.
The only bad thing is that you NOW have to have a minimum of $3000 to open an account. I don't know if you have that much in your franklin account yet.
The fund I like is Vanguard Index 500 or Vanguard Total Stock Market.

1-800851-4999 is the number. We will be glad to help you. Once you open the acct. you can arrange to have money taken out of checking, or just send them a $100 check every two months. (I have nothing to do with any mutual fund co., I was just a waitress)

[Ima saver]

Re: Financial advisor vent

Find out the rest of the name of the fund, Franklin what? Call him and ask, ok!!

[Kris10Leigh]

Re: Financial advisor vent

I can try. We don't have $3000 right now. We have about $675 in the mutual fund we have set up. $50/mo doesn't go very far. Does that mean I should wait until I do have $3000 in there?

As long as we're discussing it, here's something else we are contemplating. Our current goal is of course to pay down $23,000 in debt. Along with that, we are going to start sending all of DH's payraises to a 401K. So which is more important? Funding the 401K? Or doing more with the mutual fund? Perhaps this payraise starts the 401K and the next pay raise can increase the mutual fund and so on? We are so clueless it's pathetic.

[Hypersion]

Re: Financial advisor vent

Try and focus on doing what will increase your networth the most.

What's the interest rate on your Debt? If it's higher than 10%+ than you shouldn't bother puting money into a mutual fund that MIGHT give you a 10% return.

Try listing your income, buget, debt and saving on this form and maybe we can be your finanical advisors.

[Ima saver]

Re: Financial advisor vent

Funding the 401 is more important. If I were you, I would still look for a mutual fund that took lower opening balances. Does anyone know of a no load fund that will allow you to open for about $500. some will, especially if you agree to have $50 a month put in automatically. I have not kept up with mutual funds like I should. They change so often. I use to have a list of low open balance funds, but that was years ago.
TIAA-CREF use to allow you to open an account with $50, if you agree to put in $50 every month, automatically. I have thir prospectus, but it is dated 2003.

[Ima saver]

Re: Financial advisor vent

TIAA CREF must not be only for school systems. I have a mutual fund there, so does my granddaughter.

[Kris10Leigh]

Re: Financial advisor vent

Hmmmm....so you guys really want to play financial advisor for me huh? How could I say "no" to that?

My salary pays ALL the bills from life insurance to the mortgage and there is little to no wiggle room. So we won't even talk about that. Although one of those "bills" is the mutual fund which is $50/mo.

Savings: $400 at present. It will be $3000 in a few weeks once DH is reimbursed for his trip. I plan to use it as a freedom account.

DH's pay: $1600/mo
Budget:
gas: 200
food: 400 (family of 4-includes dining out)
Freedom account: 600
CC #2: 400 to cover minimum payment (ugh!)

Additional income from DH's partime church job: 600/mo. (All goes to CC #1)

Debts:
CC #1: $5,400
CC #2: $18,300 (realized as I lay in bed last night that that's more than the $23,000 I thought it was.)
I just have to add that the reason the CC's are so high is because we carried two mortgages for 11 months early in our marriage which I will NEVER do again and because DH was out of work for 9 months at one point. We don't go out buying yahts or anything. That'll be the day!

As you can see, there is no retirement plan for DH outside of the $50/mo for mutual funds. State Teachers Retirement takes money from my paycheck so at least we have that. My plan is to start taking DH's payraises and funding....something....probably his 401K.

Ask away! What did I leave out?

[Kris10Leigh]

Re: Financial advisor vent

Oh yes! Just remembered! DH's church job which he JUST started actually pays $700/mo. I told him $600 would go to CC's but the remaining $100 was his to play with. The dear man has agreed to invest it! So...

We have $100/mo to do something with investmentwise. 401K????
Additionally every payraise will be invested.

Or should we wait until that monstrous debt is paid down? It bothers me tremendously that he has no retirement money right now so we would both like to invest something.

[Ima saver]

Re: Financial advisor vent

First of all, find out if the 401 is matched, if so, that is where your savings should start. You are smart to take the $3000 he has coming and put that in an emergency fund, or do you call it a freedom fund. Even tho it is costing you a few dollars every month to invest in Franklin, at least you are doing something.
The smartest thing you can do it take the extra money to pay off your credit cards. What percentage rate are you paying on the smallest one, and on the large one?

[Hypersion]

Re: Financial advisor vent

What's the interest rates on the two CC? What is the freedom account used for?

[Kris10Leigh]

Re: Financial advisor vent

Shoot. You asked what is the interest rate % and I went to look before admitting that I don't know and I can not find it on either website.

The lower amount credit card is approx. 13%
The higher amount credit card was 0% until this month and is now 7%.

My plan is to pay off the high interest/small amount card first. $19,000 is our limit on the other one and we are $700 away from that. Once it reaches a point where our remaining amount matches the amount on the other card, I will transfer the money from the low amount card to the high amount card. I can't explain it, but I know what I mean. Basically, it makes sense to have all the money on the card with the lower interest rate.

What is my freedom account used for?
Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, amusement park pass, childcare, lawn care (fertilizer...just short of a necessity), school expenses, car lisence renewal, professional membership dues (for my job), and medical bills.

I JUST set all that up and am rather proud of us for doing so. I know we have a lot of debt, but we are truly not so hard up that we can't afford gifts. The only real expenditure that we don't need is the amusment park pass. It's right around the corner and we passed on it this season to save a little. Our plan is to purchase it at the end of season 2006 for the 2007 season thereby getting a little extra useage out of it at the end of this season. It's just our way of stretching our membership.

All that divided by 26 pays comes out to $300 per pay or approximately $600 per month. I budget bi-weekly but I used monthly figures early for simplicity sake.

[Ima saver]

Re: Financial advisor vent

Right, You need to throw all the money you can at the card with the 13% rate. I understand what you mean, you are going to transfer what is left on that card, to get the lower rate as soon as you can. You said your husband is earning an extra $600 and you can put it all on the high interest card, right? That should pay it off in less than a year!

[Ima saver]

Re: Financial advisor vent

Kris, now that I know what your freedom fund is, you need to have an emergency fund. That is very important cause you know emergencies do happen. You need to have 3-6 months salary saved up in an emergency fund.

[Kris10Leigh]

Re: Financial advisor vent

Yes, absolutely!! If all goes as planned, I hope to have it paid off by Christmas! I run the numbers obsessively in my head as I go to bed each night, which makes getting to sleep awfully darn hard! I've mentioned we have 2 separate bank accounts. I work bi-weekly with money in DH's account, but "my" account works better monthly. In September I will get 3 pays and the third pay will ALL go to that card! DH has been working overtime and all the overtime over the $800 per pay we budget with will go to the cards. Leftover budgeted gas money will go to the cards. Unexpected checks we get in the mail will go to the cards. Plus, like I said, I plan to transfer some to the other card. With all that, we should be down to one card with $19,000 by Christmas. Then I can worry about that one!

See! Now you guys are giving me much better advise than my "advisor" and you didn't tell me to take on extra work this summer! We are doing the best we can. We really are! The ONLY thing we are not doing is having me work extra.

[Ima saver]

Re: Financial advisor vent

You are thinking ahead and you are doing well. The only thing that worrys me is that you don't have an emergency fund. If something happends, you will have to charge in an emergency!!