Investing with/for the spouse

[jeepcj258]

My wife is a homemaker (age 30, we have three kids under 5yrs old), we are looking for a good investment vehicle for her. She has an IRA that she has not contributed to for several years. Have thought about rolling this over to a Scottrade account to start investing in this for her and have also looked at opening her a brokerage account. Not sure what the all the options are, or what the best option is? I do know the account needs to be self-directed, she will likely buy slow growth, good track record stocks along with limited trading of these.

Any advice in this direction is appreciated.

Warm Regards
Seth

 

[KevinD]

Mr Tree will be along soon. Good luck!

 

[burrocrat]

My wife is a homemaker (age 30, we have three kids under 5yrs old) ... Any advice in this direction is appreciated.

1) get her out of the house.

2) watch the kids one night a week while she gets out of the house.

3) tell her you love her, that she does a great job with the kids and home, supper was delicious, then suggest she take a night off and get out of the house.

or) ignore advice, hire an attorney, hope the pics from chippendales don't make the church newsletter, and curse God about your luck.

 

[jeepcj258]

1) get her out of the house.

2) watch the kids one night a week while she gets out of the house.

3) tell her you love her, that she does a great job with the kids and home, supper was delicious, then suggest she take a night off and get out of the house.

4) ignore advice, hire an attorney, hope the pics from chippendales don't make the church newsletter, and curse God about your luck.

1-2 - Happens occasionally....not nearly enough
3 - Done.
4 -

 

[jeepcj258]

Bump, any advice is appreciated.

 

[Frixxxx]

Bump, any advice is appreciated.

If you want to have the trading and direct the account, I think that's a good path. I'd double check all the other trading houses and see if you can get a better deal. But it looks like you've thought about this! Good Luck!

 

[Scout333]

If you want to have the trading and direct the account, I think that's a good path. I'd double check all the other trading houses and see if you can get a better deal. But it looks like you've thought about this! Good Luck!

Just one tip from personal experience, keep your spouse fully informed about all moves BEFORE you act. Best if she shows any interest to discuss reasons for any moves also in advance! A happy spouse is a happy house!

 

[Birchtree]

You might think about Sharebuilder as an investing program for the long term - most plans will do dividend reinvestments for free. You could convert her traditional IRA to a Roth IRA while the balance is moderate. Don't bother with mutual funds if possible - buy dividend paying stocks - they DCA every three months. My wife has a defined contribution employer plan that is totally invested in a S&P 500 index fund that has been an underperformer compared to R2K for the last 11 years and that's the way we like it - it has allowed her to accumulate more shares with lower pricing. When large cap becomes popular again she'll score big time. You need to keep in mind tax strategies for the future - anytime you can control your income via adjusted gross income you have more flexability with your taxes. As an example capital gains can be deferred until the time is right.

 

[PessOptimist]

Poking around on the MB this morning, I found this thread and think it is the best place to post this.

There was a voicemail when we returned from vacation about one of my wife's old and mostly forgotten IRAs. It's in a money market account currently paying 0% so fees are reducing the balance. (interesting they can do that but whatever) Between the two of us we have several small IRAs that are paying either nothing or less than 1% that we opened over the years. This might be a good time to stop ignoring them and move them. It is only a few k$ but retirement time is coming up in six or seven years.

The question is, where to invest this money. Turning them in to Roth's is not out of the question (though I haven't kept up on what the tax rules are this year) but the main thing is where to invest them so they earn something.

PO

 

[burrocrat]

Poking around on the MB this morning, I found this thread and think it is the best place to post this.

There was a voicemail when we returned from vacation about one of my wife's old and mostly forgotten IRAs. It's in a money market account currently paying 0% so fees are reducing the balance. (interesting they can do that but whatever) Between the two of us we have several small IRAs that are paying either nothing or less than 1% that we opened over the years. This might be a good time to stop ignoring them and move them. It is only a few k$ but retirement time is coming up in six or seven years.

The question is, where to invest this money. Turning them in to Roth's is not out of the question (though I haven't kept up on what the tax rules are this year) but the main thing is where to invest them so they earn something.

PO

Commodities, buy tea, it's the next big thing.

 

[PessOptimist]

Thanks Donkey, would that be party or baggers?

 

[burrocrat]

Thanks Donkey, would that be party or baggers?

Well that part's up to you, baggers can't be juicers, but you got to watch out at parties too. Just get your hands on something of real value. And don't forget to share it with the spouse, half of it is hers.

 

[Birchtree]

You really can't go wrong buying a few well diversified large cap stocks that have nice yields - then sit back and let dividend reinvestments do the work. It's the slow and lazy way I like to invest but it's profitable.

 

[PessOptimist]

Thanks BT. Thought that would be your answer. First step is to find out if the money can be rolled without some "service charge" It is attached to a life insurance policy she doesn't know if she still has.

Not dissing her, many of us are in the same boat. Got an IRA in the 80s, contributed to it when we could for a while, forgot about it and never got any statements. I would like to get away from the insurance company. Any suggestions from anyone welcome. Keep in mind this is not a huge amount of money.

 

[burrocrat]

Any suggestions from anyone welcome. Keep in mind this is not a huge amount of money.

My friend (I'll go check my friends list and add you if you're not already right after this post),

I'm going to say it real slow this time... If you can get your hands on the money then take it and run, no matter the penalty, put it in an online brokerage and buy whatever you want, whenever you want, for as long as digital ones and zeros continue to make sense in our global market. I recommend commodities, it goes like this:

1) take $100 and go to the otologist, apparently you don't hear too good,
2) buy something, like wheat, if you haven't noticed there's not enough bread going around to keep everybody happy,

chow.

 

[burrocrat]

I don't like lawyers, but if I had one she'd probably say something about disclosure,

I'm long beef and bread.

 

[burrocrat]

I don't like lawyers, but if I had one she'd probably say something about disclosure,

I'm long beef and bread.

Oh, and just got this note, I'm long oil too,

But in a tightly held personal investment industry services kind of way, price per barrel any given day doesn't matter, them boys round here is going to be working for a while.

ca ching.