How much Money do you have Saved???

[ceemee2203]

Thanks!!

No mortgage. I don't even have a car, I've just been paying on time. It took a lot of work to make up for mistakes made in college (my scores were in the 600s 4 years ago but I never gave up.

[800ficogirl]

Impressive. Thanks for sharing. Can't wait to see major growth in finances & Fico this year. 💃

[ceemee2203]

Good luck. 

Also, the other thing I use is YNAB. I'm pretty good at saving by myself but YNAB is really good at helping me track it. 

[800ficogirl]

How much does ynab cost?

[ceemee2203]

$5 a month or $50 a year.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Sounds like a lot of cash in savings especially as you are debt free. CONGRATS by the way!!! Are you getting a decent return on the savings? If mutual funds and stocks are not your thing have you ever considered owning rental property? I have also read about pretty positive results through lending club and prosper although I have yet to try those. Personally when stocks are getting beaten over the head I feel it is the absolute best time to buy them. 

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0.9 - 0.95% is my return on savings.

I think that rental property is not actually an investment but like second job. Also, with all these taxes and expanses it is not really good in average. You should be good in rental business. So, no investments in rental property.

Lending club and prosper looks too risky for me. Maybe I'm wrong...

I agree, now it is a good time to buy stocks, but it is still risky, some could grow, some could default.

[800ficogirl]

I feel the same way,. I thought about rental properties but quickly realized that it would be more of a job than I want.. I really want my money to work for me. Stocks arent for sure and requires money to be tide up a long time unless you are super luck with a penny stock.. There's always a chance, but not everything will be Google and Netflix. That only leaves CDs, IRAs, and P2P Lending... I have all of them.. Growing the first 2 the most and I'm doing a trial run with P2P via LendingClub... I have funded 3 loans with them @ $25 each.. They are all 36 month terms and so far no one has defaulted within this past 8 months.. I'll consider investing more as I feel comfortable,.. But I try to stick with B-Grade loans..

[Anonymous]

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@800ficogirl wrote:
@I feel the same way,. I thought about rental properties but quickly realized that it would be more of a job than I want.. I really want my money to work for me. Stocks arent for sure and requires money to be tide up a long time unless you are super luck with a penny stock.. There's always a chance, but not everything will be Google and Netflix. That only leaves CDs, IRAs, and P2P Lending... I have all of them.. Growing the first 2 the most and I'm doing a trial run with P2P via LendingClub... I have funded 3 loans with them @ $25 each.. They are all 36 month terms and so far no one has defaulted within this past 8 months.. I'll consider investing more as I feel comfortable,.. But I try to stick with B-Grade loans..

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I fill that CDs are just useless right now. Savings rates are 0.9-1.05. No sense to lock your money for one or several years in CDs for extra 0.05%.

IRAs are like diversified stocks. They are tax free if I not mistaken but still like a gambling.

P2P is unknown land for me. Thanks for sharing. It could be potentially a good way. Just need to understand all the risks.

[800ficogirl]

Its never really locked in my case. NFCU allows you to take out money if you need but forfeit Interest.. I have OK rates compared to what they are nowadays.. 3% $3000 max, and 2% $20,000 max..
Lending club will average me about 8-10% but there is risk of defaults.

[Anonymous]

That is a solid interest rate these days for sure, although with that kind of money in the bank it may be worth it for you to jump through some of the hoops for an ultra-high interest account that some banks offer. Consumer Credit Union is the first one that comes to mind, but others are out there. I have heard from friends that they set up auto reload for .50 multiple times with amazon gift cards to meet the debit card requirements with no effort. (Never tried this myself)

https://www.myconsumers.org/personal/checking/free-rewards-checking.html

Rentals are something I am really interested in so I would love any input from anyone who has been there done that, but from my understanding you can also pay a company around 8-10% of net rent to manage it for you if you do not want the time commitment. They handle repairs, payments, evictions, getting tenants, etc. In some geographic areas rentals may not be profitable, but in my home state people are making big profits doing them.

I was in the same camp of thinking about lending club and prosper, but then I started following Mr. Money Mustache’s experience with lending club. It has led to me at least wanting to dip my toe into it when I build up some spare cash. If you are interested here are his results:

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/the-lending-club-experiment/

Very true assessment of stocks, this is why I buy the entire market instead of individual companies through index funds. I only plan to buy individual stocks with “play” money. I was fortunate enough to have someone purchase some individual stocks for me as a child. The biggest holding by far, was Citigroup (C). Well one financial collapse, a few hundred dollars per share lower later, plus a reverse stock split that gave you one share for every ten you owned has also made me very weary of individual stocks. To put it bluntly I was taken to the woodshed on that one. Index funds just track the market though so in theory over time you should always have gains, plus the fees associated with them are very tiny compared to individual stocks.