[Help me select a fund for my wife's IRA]

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Milano
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[Help me select a fund for my wife's IRA]

Post by Milano »

[Moved into a stand-alone thread from: If you could hold only one fund, which one would it be? --admin LadyGeek]

When filing our 2013 taxes I opened an IRA for my wife at Vanguard, added the maximum $ 5,500.00. The amount is not invested at this time, for this amount I think it might be good to use one fund, I would like for her to be involved in this, what would be the best fund? She like me has little investing experience.

Thanks
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windhog
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Re: [Help me select a fund for my wife's IRA]

Post by windhog »

Hi and welcome,

Vanguard has a number of all-in-one or balanced funds that would make sense in this situation. The choices include a whole raft of Target Retirement Funds with associated retirement dates in the fund name and several Life Strategy Funds. Since you are both new to investing, I would suggest a Life Strategy Fund somewhere in the middle of the road along the range from conservative to aggressive. (I just did a Google search and it's all laid out in a user-friendly way.)

This choice gives you a start and a point of comparison as your learn more about investing options. Some folks choose such a fund and never change to anything else, so it's hard to go wrong with these. Just my 2 cents.

Paul
Novine
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Re: [Help me select a fund for my wife's IRA]

Post by Novine »

What other retirement funds do you have? You should be selecting a fund in the IRA that is complementary with any other retirement accounts that you and the spouse have.
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Milano
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Re: [Help me select a fund for my wife's IRA]

Post by Milano »

Novine wrote:What other retirement funds do you have? You should be selecting a fund in the IRA that is complementary with any other retirement accounts that you and the spouse have.
I have a 3 fund portfolio in a traditional IRA account.

I opened a spousal traditional IRA to maximaze our IRS deductions. Since the amount is the maximum $ 5,000.00, I expect that a one fund or a fund of fund is the best choice.

Apologies for starting this in the wrong forum.
Last edited by Milano on Sat May 03, 2014 6:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
DSInvestor
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Re: [Help me select a fund for my wife's IRA]

Post by DSInvestor »

If you're investing only in Traditional IRA accounts, maybe you should both consider a Target Retirement of Lifestategy fund that matches your desired asset allocation.

Do you either of you have access to an employer plan like 401k, 403b, 457b? Are you self employed?
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Milano
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Re: [Help me select a fund for my wife's IRA]

Post by Milano »

DSInvestor wrote:If you're investing only in Traditional IRA accounts, maybe you should both consider a Target Retirement of Lifestategy fund that matches your desired asset allocation.

Do you either of you have access to an employer plan like 401k, 403b, 457b? Are you self employed?
Wife does not work (elderly parent care), I do not have a 401K from my employer, it is rare post recession to find a 401K and contributions from employers in my profession. This is why we are using two traditional IRA's, to increase our deductions and save more.

I am now am looking at Life Strategy funds, considering that we are starting with $ 5,000.00 we want one simple fund.
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