Should I Invest Aggressively If I Am Behind In My 50’s? – Money Q&A

Transcript:

On this episode of money Q and a, should I invest aggressively? If I am behind in my fifties,

welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of master money. co and today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to be answering your questions in this episode of money Q and a, if you guys have any questions, make sure to hit us up on the master money newsletter by going to master money.

co slash. Newsletter and you can respond to any of those newsletters there and we will answer your question and follow this podcast on Spotify, Apple podcast or whatever podcast player you love. Listen to this podcast on it. If you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player.

Can I thank you guys enough for leaving those five star ratings and reviews? reviews. Now, before we dive into some of the questions today, I want to take note for you guys to make sure that you stay tuned for next episode. Next episode, we have an episode coming out called the 10 laws of investing. In the episode, I'm going to dive into some really deep frameworks on exactly what we think most people should have as their parameters for investing.

So really excited about that episode. Uh, stay tuned and make sure you check that out. Make sure you're following this podcast to make sure you can see that as well. Now the questions we're going to be diving into on today's money. Q and a is we have three of them today. So the first one is, should I invest aggressively if I am behind in my 50s?

So that is the first question. The second question is, should I invest money? I am saving for a car. If I'm buying that car within the next eight months, 8 to 10 years. And so we're going to talk through that scenario because they're looking to buy two different cars, one within the next couple of years, and then one within 8 to 10 years.

And they want to think through how they can save up that money in addition to being able to pay off those cars in cash and buy them in cash up front. And then question three is, should I put my rental property in an LLC? And the question actually goes way deeper than this. Uh, and we'll dive into that as we go through this process.

So these are the three questions today. So without further ado, let's. Get into it. All right. So this first question before we dive into it is a very important topic. And I think most people, if you started to invest late, I want you to hear what I say in this question, because this is going to be something that most people need to hear.

We have an episode talking about what to do if you started investing late. And it is an episode we recorded a long time ago. We probably need to re record that episode to add some additional things that we want to talk through here. But I want you guys to hear this first question because this is a really cool thing where it is never too late to start investing.

And we're going to talk through that right now. So question one, Hi, Andrew, I was late, really late to the investing world. I have become a 57 year old student in the past 12 months. Here is a snapshot of my situation. I would like to know if there's anything I am missing or could be doing better. I currently make about 55, 000 a year.

And my wife, a retired school teacher, brings in an additional 38, 000. We have no credit card debt, car loans or student loans. Fantastic. We still have a mortgage at about 2. 75 percent rate, and we owe about 168, 000. We still have two high school age kids at home. Now for our investments. I have a 401k through work, and I am contributing about 20 percent each paycheck, with an employer match of 50 percent of the first 6 percent that I contribute.

This year, I am maxing out my HSA at over 9, 000 a year, and just started investing that money as well. I have recently opened a Roth IRA. And when my CD matures, I plan on maxing out next year's allotment when my next CD matures in January. I have an emergency fund of 20, 000 in a Fidelity money market account earning 4.

75%. I still have another CD with 21, 000 more due to mature in March 2025. Here are a few questions I have for you. Once the 21, 000 CD matures, should I deposit it into my Fidelity Cash account and use it to counter a rise in my 401k withholdings? I am thinking about raising my contribution rate to 25 percent to 30 percent and taking advantage of the pre tax benefits and saving on taxes.

Number two, do I keep paying on my mortgage, considering it has such a low rate, or do I pay it off quickly? And then number three, I realize I'm older in years and late to the game, but I am currently investing in an aggressive rate. Most of my investments are in the S and P 500 with little to no bonds.

Should I take a more cautious approach to keep this aggressive rate since I am so far behind? So first of all, Absolutely amazing the progress you are making over the course of the last 12 months and most people would not Stand up and they would not try to fight for their retirement. I am so excited to see you do this.

This is Absolutely amazing what you are doing here just over the course of the last 12 months And I love to just see the progress that you are making over this time frame. It is absolutely Incredible what you are doing and you put yourself actually in a strong financial path whether you know it or not You have a strong financial path ahead of you you that you can really make some cool decisions going forward.

Now, the first one is increasing your 401k contributions after your CD matures. So the first thing I would do is definitely consider increasing those 401k contributions. You know, if that is the tax strategy that you want to go for, you also have the Roth IRA contributions to consider if you wanted to go that route as well based on your income here that I see.

So if you are looking through those two options, you know, if you have a CPA or anybody in your corner, I would talk through those. Two processes to see which one you should raise, but that is absolutely a fantastic option for you, especially as that CD matures. Now, if you can live a lifestyle where you don't have to utilize that CD money in order to supplement your income based on the increase going into your 401k more power to you.

But I see what you're doing here. You're just kind of washing the CD contributions and you're trying to put those into the 401k instead. said, and making sure that works. So in that scenario, I think that is a great idea and probably something that I would personally do is increase some of those retirement contributions because that is a really, really important thing to do.

And then over time, as you see this progress going forward, you're going to see that these accounts are going to save you on those upfront taxes. But if you want to save on the tax free growth as well, then the Roth IRA is another great option, which I know you have opened up. Up front there. Now your second question is about your mortgage.

And when it comes to your mortgage, uh, you have a 2. 75 percent interest rate. Now because of that, I am in the same scenario. So my personal mortgage right now is like right above 2. 5%. And for me, personally, there is no way I am paying that thing off any faster than it needs to be paid off. The reason for this is I could put the money in a high yield savings account at current market interest rates.

Now, if you're listening to this way in the future and rates have dropped, it may be very different. But currently, right now, I could put that money into a high yield savings account and get a 4 percent rate of return on that money. So there is no way I'm going to pay off my mortgage faster. But in your scenario, you're approaching retirement age, which is probably why you're asking this question.

Because a lot of times we talk about, Hey, it's great to have your mortgage paid off in retirement. So you don't have those additional liabilities. about. And in addition, you do not have to have as much money to retire if your mortgage is paid off because you don't have those mortgage payments coming up.

Now you're still gonna have taxes. You're still gonna have insurance. You're still gonna have maintenance costs, so it's still expensive to own a home. Even when your mortgage is paid off, I think a lot of people think that their home expenses go way, way down, which they go down to whatever the amount of mortgages minus your insurance.

And minus your taxes. And so your principal and interest balance is what goes away. Everything else is still there and you're still going to have costs to incur when you pay off your mortgage. And so in this scenario, because you are trying to catch up and you're trying to get your investments to catch up, I would more than likely not be paying off the mortgage early because your interest rate is so low.

That is a fact. Fantastic rate. I would try to keep that rate as long as possible, and instead, I would take those extra dollars and put them towards your investments. If you're gonna put them towards your 401k, or if you're gonna put them towards your Roth IRA or a taxable brokerage, or your HSA, which it sounds like you are maxing out that HSA, which is amazing.

But I would take those extra dollars. I would not pay off this mortgage faster at this point in time, and I would take those and put it into the market and invest those dollars instead. Now, that's how personally I would look at it. Now, if you need psychological peace of mind, meaning. Some people just don't like having debt on hand.

That is a different story. And that would be something that I would definitely reconsider possibly. But for the most part, the math kind of guides us on this one. And we definitely want to make sure that we are just moving forward with getting those dollars in investments instead of paying off that mortgage early.

Now the third question is kind of thinking through your investment approach. So you are at age 57 and you are trying to think through, Hey, should I just continue this aggressive investment approach where I have minimal bonds? Most people my age might have more bond exposure than I do right now. And that is a fantastic question, but because you want this money to grow, I think.

If I was in your scenario, I would kind of continue on your path that you're currently on, meaning that I would look at something like this and say to myself, Hey, I want this money to grow as fast as possible because I maybe started investing late. And so because I started investing late, I'm going to continue investing heavily in the S and P 500.

Knowing that it may be more volatile. It may go up and down, but I'm okay with that because I want a higher rate of return over the course of the next couple of years. Now, if the volatility bothers you, if you think that in any scenario, if the market dropped at 30 percent that you would really panic, then I would change my investment criteria, but it all really comes down to one thing, which is your risk tolerance.

If your risk tolerance is okay, handling this. Um, then I think it's something that you definitely want to make sure that you just continue on the path because historically the stock market has outperformed the bond market. And so this is something where, you know, having an allocation of bond is great, but in continuing in stocks is also something that you can aggressively move forward with.

And you know, just continuing on that path, I think is going to be beneficial. Now you can gradually over time shift the bonds. If you feel that you are, uh, Um, as you approach retirement age, you can gradually start to shift the bonds. If you want to decrease that volatility. I know people who have been retired for a very long time and all they own is VTSAX.

And I know people who have been retired for a very long time that all they own is VOO, which is the S& P 500 ETF. Those folks are completely happy with just having some of these large cap stocks because they believe in the U. S. economy long term. And so they believe that this is something that long term is going to have a higher rate of return than would a larger bond allocation.

And so because of that, those people are comfortable with it. And so it really comes down to your risk tolerance. Are you comfortable with that risk tolerance and or do you think you need some more bond allocation In that portfolio, then that would change drastically where you kind of land on that. For me, I'd be comfortable with the S and P 500 personally.

Like I'd be comfortable investing in VTI or something like that longterm and just having only that in my portfolio only because I have a higher risk tolerance than maybe some other people do. Even in my current portfolio, I have minimal bonds. I'm probably closer to like a Warren Buffett portfolio when it comes to my stock and bond allocation.

And really, I am very, very comfortable with that. In fact, I would be comfortable with 100 percent stocks in my portfolio as well. So, um, a lot of options there, but I think if your risk tolerance is high, I don't think there's any issue there. So and then I would continue maxing out the HSA like you're doing as you've probably heard me talk about the health care costs are rising and they're rising rapidly at a rate of about 7 percent per year.

Uh, and so continuing to max out that HSA is gonna be really, really helpful and you're gonna be able to probably reimburse yourself pretty nicely there. Now, if your wife is a retired school teacher, not sure if she gets a pension or anything like that, that could probably help you guys out a lot as well.

Uh, and then moving forward, uh, focusing on tax efficiency. So using that 401k using that Roth IRA is going to be very, very helpful. And then increasing those 401k contributions would be something that I definitely would consider when that CE matures, I would not pay off the mortgage early. And then I would stay aggressive with my investments.

If I were in your shoes and you know, you can do whatever, whatever your risk tolerance suits. But if I were in your shoes, I would say aggressive with those investments. I think that is probably, uh, the better path for me, at least, uh, in my risk tolerance. So thinking through those options, we'll do an episode coming up, by the way, for everybody.

Uh, on how to assess your risk tolerance, because I think it is something that is very important. We've had it on our list for a while. Uh, we just want to make sure that we are simplifying it as much as possible for people, uh, so that it's easy to understand. And so that is one of the main goals for that.

And we will have that episode coming soon, uh, so that you can kind of figure out what your risk tolerance is and assess that in a simple way. So. That is coming up as well. Thank you so much for the question and congratulations on focusing on this stuff is absolutely amazing. What you are doing here and can't wait to hear more about your progress.

Please keep me updated. All right. The next question is an awesome one. We're going to talk through kind of phases of saving for cars and how to kind of think through that process. So. Here is the question. Hi, Andrew, just want to start off by saying I love the podcast and I listen all the time and I've learned so much about what to do with my finances.

Because of you, I have taken control of my finances and investing and feel more confident and secure now that I know where every dollar is going. Well, thank you so much for the compliment there and I truly appreciate you listening and it's amazing kind of what you're doing as people will see here in a second.

So my question comes with replacing cars and the best way to invest money to pay for those. I have an old Buick that I will need to be replaced in the next two to four years. Bye. Bye. You So I plan to put that money into our high yield savings account. Great. And I'm the type of guy who does not need a fancy car.

So listening to what you have to say about getting a Toyota or a Honda anywhere under 10, 000 is a goal. I am confident we can accomplish. My fiance's parents got her a newer car recently that will most likely need to be replaced in the next 8 to 10 years. So my question is what to do with the dollars we want to invest to pay cash for that car.

She has a little bit higher tasting car, so I'm guessing we will be spending around 30 to 40, 000 in today's dollars on the next car for her. We are fine with doing that as long as we pay cash for it. Is this time frame something we should invest some of it in a high yield savings account and index some of it in an ETF?

Or what is your best system for investing money that you will need 10 years down the road? Thank you for your time and all that you do to help people. So I truly, truly appreciate this question. This is an Awesome question that I think that is really, really I commend to you for even thinking through this process because what you are doing and most people I want to kind of look at this example, what you are doing is you are planning ahead for big purchases and this is what we want you to do.

We want you to save small amounts of money over time and plan ahead for big purchases because you could do that and get to this goal of paying in cash with 30, 000 with about 100 bucks a month to 200 bucks a month depending on the system that you put into place here. Until So let's just think through this process as we want to go through this.

So first you want to buy a car within the next two to four years and where you are putting it is a high yield savings account. That is absolutely where that money should go. So anybody listening to this podcast, if you have a goal to purchase something within the next five years or less, that money needs to be in cash.

Why does that money need to be in cash? Because if we go into a recession, for example, and all of a sudden that you are trying to pay cash for a car and that money gets cut in half. Then all of a sudden you can't buy that car. And so we need to make sure that short term savings goals always go in a high yield savings account and they stay in cash.

We do not want that money being risk and investments because the market, you know, month to month, week to week, and even year to year will be very volatile. Long term, the market goes in one direction, but short term, the market goes in a bunch of different directions. Mr. Market changes day to day, and so we want to make sure that we keep those dollars safe by putting them in a high yield savings account.

What changes this equation, though, is that if we are looking to save up for something over the course of the next 10 years, now what happens here is this will now come down to your risk tolerance because short term, five years or less, always in a high yield savings account. Now, don't even. Second guess that okay long term though.

We need to think through. Well, what are we going to do long term with this money? And so I like to think about Having that money saved in a specific way And so the way I typically will do it is I will do the first five years So within the next five years the first five years of savings will typically be in a high yield savings account And I will hybrid the second half into either conservative ETFs or index funds or something that I am more comfortable with with my risk tolerance.

So for me, I'm fine with like an S and P 500 fund. I'll throw it in there and let that thing grow for the next five or seven years. And if there's a recession, you have a couple of years for that money to recover within that time frame. Then gradually, as you get closer to that time frame, then you can take those extra dollars and start to funnel them into a high yield savings account as you get closer to the time frame.

And so as I'm talking through this, I'm going to actually throw this in a compound interest calculator to show you the differential of what would happen here. So if you had 10, 000, and you wanted to utilize that 10, 000 for a brand new car in the next eight years, for example. So if you took 10, 000 with a 10 percent rate of return over the course of the next eight years, what would happen?

That 10, 000 if you didn't add another dollar would turn into 22, 181. So investing that money if you had those returns, which you may not, you may have to get conservative here. Let's put a 6 percent in there. It would still be 16, 141. So maybe the first couple of years, the market was up in the next couple of years, it went down drastically.

And then, you know, we averaged out to about 6 percent for that year. You still have 16, 000. That's more than your 10, 000 that you would have in there. Um, based on, you know, wherever else you'd have it. If you put in a high yield savings account, you'd have 13, 000. 14, 763. So if you're okay with that risk, if you're okay with taking a risk, you have the potential to have over 20, 000 per 10, 000 that you save and invest as long as you're looking at it that way.

Now, let's see what happens if you put an additional 100 into that investment account over the course of the next eight years, 10, 000. at an 8 percent rate of return would be 32, 000 if you added that 100 per month. So you're looking at being able to pay for that car in cash. You know, if you put 10, 000 up front and then just had those small additions.

Now you can cut that balance in half and let's say you had 5, 000. and you added 200 per month, you'd have 36, 236. So the, the periodic additions, meaning the amount that you add monthly does make a big difference. And, uh, so if you want to start with the smaller amount you can, um, and then start to build that up inside of index funds and ETFs, you're just going to get to your goal faster if that happens, as long as the market is continuing to uprise.

But the risk is, You hit a recession, you know, a couple of years before you have to buy the car and then you lose 30 to 40 percent of your portfolio. Now you have to figure out is that loss of 30 to 40 percent going to still be about the same as it would be in a high yield savings account because high yield savings accounts will not stay at 4 percent forever.

Uh, this is a golden time for us in high yield savings accounts, but then they'll probably if interest rates drop, then they will go back down over time. Uh, and we will be in a scenario where we still have to go back to, you know, having those low rate savings accounts, which absolutely stinks and cash is harder to hold on to in those scenarios.

But at the same time, it is still something. Hey, we all got to deal with it. It is part of protecting our wealth is to have cash on hand. And so making sure we have that is really important. So I like the balance approach. I like to split it into high yield savings and into investments. So the investment portion will start to grow.

Um, and as you see that investment portion start to grow, then I would start to tailor it back to more. So high yield savings counts is how I look at that. Now, If you want to stay 100 percent cash and you want to keep it in a high yield savings account, all of it, you do not have to invest this money at all.

So do not think through that because it is riskier to invest those dollars. So if your risk tolerance is like, I just want to save this as cash for the purpose of what it is for and put it in my high yield savings account for the car, then that is absolutely fine. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, that is the safer route that guarantees your money is going to be there, and so there's nothing wrong with that at all.

But if you're trying to optimize this a little bit and you're trying to see, hey, can I squeeze a few extra dollars out? Possibly it's not guaranteed whatsoever, but can I squeeze a few extra dollars out so I don't have to pay so much out of pocket and my dollars can help work harder than I can? Then moving into possibly investing a portion of that is definitely a great option.

So listen, thank you so much for listening. Thank you for your feedback here. And in addition, this is a great question and I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions. Hey, Andrew, I really enjoyed a recent money Q and a. That got me thinking about some questions that I have. Now that I actually have some money and some assets to lose, should I put my rental properties into an LLC?

What about my primary residence and how does that work? Can you talk about the advantages and disadvantages of putting a property into an LLC and does that property have to be paid off before you can do that? All my properties are being financed. Lastly, is it possible to put your retirement and other accounts into an LLC and how do you protect that money from potential lawsuits or liabilities?

I googled it and it looks like employer 401ks are typically protected, but Roth IRAs are not. Please elaborate. All right, so these are fantastic questions. And this is from a longtime listener. And this is just a wonderful, wonderful thought process here on how you're actually asking these. And so what we're going to do is first, I'll talk about rental properties, then I'll talk about your personal residence.

And then lastly, I'll talk about those retirement accounts as we go through this. So Rental properties, in my opinion, should be in an LLC. And the reason why is because of liability protection. So I, my rental properties, I put all of them in an LLC, um, because of liability protection. And what this does is it helps protect your personal assets from liability in that rental property.

So if someone sues you over something related to the property, maybe they fell over and got hurt, they fell into a pothole, they were having a party and somebody else fell on your property, all of these different things, they can only sue the assets within the LLC. This is why you'll see a lot of property owners have a bunch of different LLCs for all their different properties.

Because if they put all their properties under one LLC, you can try to sue and go after all of the value of those properties. Whereas if they separate them in LLC, you'll see something like 123 street number one, for example, they're really generic names. Typically, the reason why they do that is because they can spread the liability out where Each LLC only has the liability of either that property or maybe it's two or three properties, depending on how many they have.

Some of them try to simplify and put, you know, two or three under one LLC. Some put like up to five. Some put all of them and it's just, you know, the risk they take, but it definitely should be in an LLC. If you have a rental property, that is one thing that I truly believe. And that's for a number of reasons.

It protects your liability, protects your privacy. There's a lot of different things involved with that, but it also helps separate your assets so that you can keep your rental properties in a separate legal entity that helps clearly distinguish what your business is in comparison to what your personal residence is.

Now the disadvantages to this is you have to kind of work with your lenders to make sure that you are doing this in the proper way. So what I would do is I would call up my lender and say, Hey, I want to transfer my property into an LLC. Uh, how would this possibly work? Because sometimes if you just transfer it to an LLC, it could trigger that loans.

Do you want sale clause and you don't want that to happen whatsoever. So you got to make sure you're communicating with your lenders first on the process that they have within that bank to make sure that you have that available. Most lenders will allow you to property transfers into an LLC with their permission, as long as they see that you're the, you know, the primary owner of that LLC.

And so it's not a huge, huge issue. And also having that LLC open, allows you to have business expenses properly documented for those specific properties so that when you keep, you know, if you have a couple of properties, I would just have one LLC, but you can properly document them and it makes accounting a little easier to, to separate those two things.

Now, if you want to put your primary residence in an LLC, that is something where I'm not as interested in doing it. Now, people do it for privacy reasons, really, really wealthy people will do it because they want to be Stay anonymous and they want to stay private. So it can be done. It's not something that cannot be done, but I would be much less likely to do it one because homestead exemption.

So many states offer a homestead exemption. My state included Florida offers one which protects a portion of your primary residence value from creditors and bankruptcy and lawsuits. It also can help reduce your tax liability significantly. Um, so like in Florida, for example, if we homestead our properties, we pay a lot less taxes than we would on a rental property.

And so that's something you definitely want to. do if it's your primary residence, but you also don't have on your personal residence. If you put it under an LLC, you don't really have that liability shielding. Meaning the main reason is on a rental property is to protect your liability. You don't have that as much if it's your primary residence and they don't apply the same way as do rental properties.

So your personal actions could still lead to liability issues, regardless if it's an LLC or not. So if you're looking for liability shielding, that's probably not the way to go either when it comes to putting your primary residence in an LLC. So the only reason why I'd really do it is if you're trying to really hide where you live, which I You know, many people have different reasons to do that.

So there's, that's not something that, you know, is out of the ordinary whatsoever. A lot of people do do that. And so that's one thing. But if you're trying to do it for financial reasons, there's not really any financial reasons to do that because of Homestead and you don't get the liability protection like you wouldn't a rental property.

Now protecting your retirement accounts. That is something that you have to plan more so within trusts. And so that is going to be a much more complicated subject because asset protection trusts will be something that would help you do that process. There's no way to put it in like an LLC or anything like that.

Um, at least that I'm aware of. I may be wrong if You know, if you're an attorney and you're listening to this podcast, please correct me if I'm wrong, but it's really trusts are the way you're going to want to go. If you're going to do something like that. Now, employer sponsored for one case, you are correct.

Those are protected from lawsuits. While IRAs, they have varying levels of protection based on state laws. And, you know, you could do something like umbrella insurance for your IRA, but that's just might be an added protection cost that you may not want to incur on a monthly basis. And so really just protecting those possibly in a trust would be the best route to go.

And so you could kind of talk through that process with an attorney or trust and will, or there's a bunch of different ways to do that. So yes, your 401k, if that's greater is protected your Roth IRA, that is going to be one that you may want to put in a trust if you are really worried about that protection level.

Um, because that is going to be a very different animal. Uh, when it comes to doing some of this stuff. So that is one for sure to talk to someone if you want to go through that process because it is worth diving into, especially if you have a bunch of assets that you're worried about. Um, then it is worth looking into more so to put it into a trust and then protecting your assets that way.

Anybody who has a net worth of a million dollars or more should be looking in at least considering trust and it may not be for you, but just weighing out those pros and cons. Are definitely something I would consider, uh, absolutely for sure. So fantastic question. Thank you so much for asking it just to sum it up.

Yes. Rental properties in an LLC, probably not personal residence in an LLC, unless you're trying to just get some privacy stuff going on and then a trust for like your retirement accounts and those types of things. So that's at least how I would do it and consider it. Moving forward on this one. So listen, thank you guys so much for listening to this podcast episode.

Can I thank you guys enough, uh, for being part of this show. And if you guys are getting value out of the show, again, consider sharing this with a friend or a family member. Our entire goal is to bring you as much value as possible. If there's an episode you want to hear, shoot me an email by joining the master money newsletter by going to master money.

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