Is it even worth trying to invest $15K?
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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