Is it even worth trying to invest $15K?
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20% of the price is typical and horribly out of reach with how expensive housing is
I put 3.5% down.
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No sense paying off debts early if their interest rate is lower than the profit you would get by investing. This is dependent on timescale though.
Right, so if this 19 year old has a government-backed loan for his furnace at 3%, he should leave it alone.
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as long as there is a functioning economy, the line will inevitably go up.
That gets to be a bigger if every month forward
Very true, however, 15k sitting in a bank account will be equally as worthless as a valueless security if the economy completely imploded.
I've also noticed that the economy is pretty robust in it's ability to weather storms that should theoretically cripple it. It would take an event so catastrophic that all sectors of business are heavily impacted. Barring all-out civil war, I can't see that happening. Even a global pandemic saw certain businesses do better than ever - companies that made PPE, hand sanitizer and toilet paper mostly.
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Absolutely. Invest it in VTI or VOO, and leave it there (and reinvesting dividends) until you are ready to buy a home in your 30's.
Or, spend $5K, and invest the rest. You'll thank yourself later.
This.
Investing in VTI or VOO is basically just investing in capitalism, and you'll likely do better in these ETF's or an index fund than trying to pick winners and day trade yourself.
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these are unpredictable times we live in. lots of uncertainty and volatile market swings.
nobody that has experience from the last 40 years in the markets could tell you it's a good or bad idea right now, and anyone telling you otherwise is a fool.
you must identify if it's a good idea to invest right now based on information that you have vetted.
personally, if I had 15k to spare right now I would wait for the next big crash and buy in at bottom dollar. until then I would have a 15k buffer on top of my emergency fund.
personally, if I had 15k to spare right now I would wait for the next big crash and buy in at bottom dollar.
This could be a good way to go. I was lucky to have a few thou in March 2020 to invest in oil stocks at a 90% discount. I waited two years, sold them at a huge profit, and paid off my student loans and put a down payment on a home.
But generally, if you don't know what you're doing, it's not the worst idea to just stash it in an index fund and forget about it.
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Still, 15k invested now while OP is 19 could be helpful in a decade.
Oh yeah, absolutely
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40 years ago, in 1985, $15,000 was worth $5,000. The S&P 500 was valued at about $185/share. 5000/185 = 27 shares. SP500 today is about $6,664. 27*6664 = $179,928.
Go ahead and ask every 59 year old in your life if they'd feel better about their retirement with another $180k sitting in an S&P 500 ETF.
Open an account on Vanguard or Fidelity or Schwab or whatever, buy an S&P 500 ETF, and leave it the fuck alone.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Don't forget to include reinvested dividends.
That makes it just under $400k, big difference.
I used this calculator. I took the deinflated $5k starting figure so just use the nominal results, not infusion adjusted.
If the next 40 years performs the same, with reinvested dividends, $15k will get you almost $1.2mm. That's nominal, I wouldn't want to guess about inflation adjusted.
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So the house would be 1 million USD??????
wrote last edited by [email protected]That would be 0.5 million USD (20% down payment), which is about how much a house costs in many parts of the US. In the most popular areas, 1 million USD is how much a modest house costs, and you’d need at least 200k for the down payment.
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So the house would be 1 million USD??????
wrote last edited by [email protected]Take a look around https://www.zillow.com/us/
You can probably get a small house for 200k-300k in “middle of nowhere” parts of the US, but if you want to be in the vicinity of a big city (which is typically where most of the best paying jobs are) you will need more like 500k for a small house, and in the most popular areas (like the areas around Sam Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington DC, Boston, or New York City) you might need more than 1 million.
By “small house” I mean like at most 3 bed 2 bath.
Even if you are going for a 200k house, you’ll need at least 40k for the down payment.
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Absolutely. Invest it in VTI or VOO, and leave it there (and reinvesting dividends) until you are ready to buy a home in your 30's.
Or, spend $5K, and invest the rest. You'll thank yourself later.
Best advice right here
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Invest it in VTI or VOO
Some of us don't know what those acronyms stand for
Both are Exchange Traded Funds from Vanguard. VTI is "the whole US stock market, and VOO is "just the S&P 500".
- Open a brokerage account, I usually recommend Fidelity as I find them easy to get newcomers onto.
- Put the money you want to invest in there.
- Use that money to buy either fund
- Forget about it for 10 years
- Now you have your house down payment, probably