Automatic investment schedule?

[cypher1]

This is more of an add-on discussion from my "Too much cash in EF" thread. But for those that setup automatic investments for index funds, how frequent are your purchases each month (daily, weekly, or once a month, etc.) set for?

Over the last year I've been dumping more cash into settlement in advance just to have for extra purchases. Do you prefer withdrawing directly from checking/saving account, or moving to settlement account ahead of schedule?

I mentioned having an extra 6K in cash aside for next year's Roth. Is there a more ideal place to keep it besides my EF account with Ally?

[disneysteve]

I don’t have any automatic investments but when I did it was monthly. I do it manually now also on a monthly basis.

[kork13]

My normal schedule is twice monthly (I get paid on the 1st & 15th every month). It always draws straight from checking into my MFs... But as part of that transaction, I do also send a small amount into the settlement account to serve as "dry powder" to have on hand for jumping on dips, buying random securities of interest, or simply to have available for occasional AA rebalancing.

I like keeping cash specifically intended for future investing in the settlement account (in spite of the incrementally lower interest returns), because it's more readily accessible when I want to make a trade. When I keep trading money in my savings account, it takes an extra 3 days for the ACH transfer to settle before I can use it at will. But if you're just storing cash ahead of next January for your IRA contribution (defined timeframe), go ahead & just keep it wherever you'll get the best interest/ROI on it.

[Jluke]

Once a month for my taxable investment into Wellington (not tax efficient). Random additions of VTI using limit orders.

as for the 6k, can you save another 6k before next year? I’ll assume yes so why not invest the 6k now and start saving again for the Roth?

[cypher1]

Once a month for my taxable investment into Wellington (not tax efficient). Random additions of VTI using limit orders.

as for the 6k, can you save another 6k before next year? I’ll assume yes so why not invest the 6k now and start saving again for the Roth?

I definitely could save throughout the year for the next Roth, which kind of goes back to my original too much cash thread. Maybe I'll just do that, since I already have a higher EF in place.

As for the scheduling options, I was more curious of what you all did. Not that one strategy is better than the others. In the meantime I simply do it all manually about once a month. But if there is a dip in the market, I'll buy extra from my settlement account. I may just setup for auto purchases twice a month based on each pay period.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

So we tend to not save monthly because we max out our 401k and our after tax 401k. Or at least we did. So that was $47k we saved/year from DH's paycheck. Then we lived off of what his base. Then we tended to just save whatever bonuses came our way both cash and stock. So we didn't have a monthly saving. It would have been really difficult because with saving that much out of his base paycheck we sometimes had to tap savings. It was easier to just save bulk 4x year stock bonus and 2x year cash bonus.

[terri77]

Monthly investments for my Roth, thought since I just got a large cash gift I may just do a lump buy for the year.

[bjl584]

The first business day of every month I fund my ROTH and my taxable account.
My 401K gets contributions bi-weekly when I get paid.
I move money to a cash account manually twice per month