Starting to Invest in Stocks [EU]

[Pete the European]

Hi guys!
I have decided that this year I will start investing some of my salary in stocks. My relevant knowledge is rather basic, so I would be quite grateful for your advice!
I am an EU citizen - Croatian national, living and working in Luxembourg (if this matters for tax reasons) for an EU company. So far invested in real estate, mandatory and voluntary pension, life insurance, and I am eager to set up the SP500 investment account. My questions pertain to the latter:

How much to invest vis-à-vis other investments (Is an initial payment of 2-3k with another 100-200/month that I planned the best option...)?
Which app to use (given the running costs, fees, etc.)?
Whether USA will tax me too much (upon buying/selling), and is SP500 optimal for investments of Europeans?
How can it be inherited, if a car hits me and destroys my phone on which the app is? Is it registered somewhere, or I need to give instructions to my family?
How to schedule payments (I know that spreading them ensures that I minimise the adverse effects of market volatility)?
How much to pay in bulk in the beginning and how to schedule this (to spread the amount over few months, once per month, once every 2 weeks)?

Warm thanks!

[galeno]

Open an account at IBKR (Interactive Brokers).

The UCITS ETF that corrosponds to the SP500 is VUSD.

[jg12345]

Hi guys!
I have decided that this year I will start investing some of my salary in stocks. My relevant knowledge is rather basic, so I would be quite grateful for your advice!
I am an EU citizen - Croatian national, living and working in Luxembourg (if this matters for tax reasons) for an EU company. So far invested in real estate, mandatory and voluntary pension, life insurance, and I am eager to set up the SP500 investment account. My questions pertain to the latter:

How much to invest vis-à-vis other investments (Is an initial payment of 2-3k with another 100-200/month that I planned the best option...)?
Which app to use (given the running costs, fees, etc.)?
Whether USA will tax me too much (upon buying/selling), and is SP500 optimal for investments of Europeans?
How can it be inherited, if a car hits me and destroys my phone on which the app is? Is it registered somewhere, or I need to give instructions to my family?
How to schedule payments (I know that spreading them ensures that I minimise the adverse effects of market volatility)?
How much to pay in bulk in the beginning and how to schedule this (to spread the amount over few months, once per month, once every 2 weeks)?

Warm thanks!

Hi
Read boglewiki, probably most of the info there

many of the questions you ask cannot be answered without more info

and no, if your phone disintegrates nothing happens to your money, just like any other banking app

[HKexpat]

Welcome to the forum! Starting to invest is a good New Year's resolution.

How much to invest vis-à-vis other investments (Is an initial payment of 2-3k with another 100-200/month that I planned the best option...)?

This depends on your desired asset allocation. You should set some target (e.g., 80% stocks, 20% bonds; or 100% stocks, particularly if you are still young), then stick to that target. An initial investment of 2-3k and monthly contributions is how people would generally go about it. Whether the amount is reasonable depends on your desired asset allocation. If you're saving 200/month and invest all of it, that's different from investing 200/month and putting 800/month into a savings account.

Which app to use (given the running costs, fees, etc.)?

I would go with IBKR (Interactive Brokers).

Whether USA will tax me too much (upon buying/selling), and is SP500 optimal for investments of Europeans?

You should never invest in a US-based fund for tax reasons and inheritance reasons (the US has a punitively high tax for non-residents, which will apply to you even if you don't live there and your account is based in Europe). Instead, there are funds based in Ireland that hold US stocks, which solves that problem. A good pick is VWRA, which is a globally diversified index fund (US, Europe, rest of the world). If you only want to invest in the US, there are also Ireland-based funds that track the S&P 500 at low cost.

How can it be inherited, if a car hits me and destroys my phone on which the app is? Is it registered somewhere, or I need to give instructions to my family?

You designate a beneficiary, like any other bank account. In general, it's probably good practice to print all your statements once a year and keep them somewhere. Just to make it easy for whoever is managing the estate to know what accounts you have.

How to schedule payments (I know that spreading them ensures that I minimise the adverse effects of market volatility)?
How much to pay in bulk in the beginning and how to schedule this (to spread the amount over few months, once per month, once every 2 weeks)?

Lump sum investment initially, because "time in the market beats timing the market." You simply don't know if the stock market will be higher or lower one month from now, but in the long run (over some years) it just doesn't matter a whole lot. Invest when you have money to invest, which might be once a month when you get paid.

[Tellurius]

How much to invest vis-à-vis other investments (Is an initial payment of 2-3k with another 100-200/month that I planned the best option...)?
Which app to use (given the running costs, fees, etc.)?
Whether USA will tax me too much (upon buying/selling), and is SP500 optimal for investments of Europeans?
How can it be inherited, if a car hits me and destroys my phone on which the app is? Is it registered somewhere, or I need to give instructions to my family?
How to schedule payments (I know that spreading them ensures that I minimise the adverse effects of market volatility)?
How much to pay in bulk in the beginning and how to schedule this (to spread the amount over few months, once per month, once every 2 weeks)?

Warm thanks!

Hi!
Can you give us info on the conditions of the voluntary pension and life insurance, to evaluate them with regard to stock investment?

Plus, when spending the money ie “drawing down” your wealth in retirement, the capital gains tax regime differs by country, so where you intend to retire plays a part on that. But this is advanced, so let’s start with the basics.

The company itself will not give your family notification - you need to check what procedures they have in case of death. Best to leave both physical and digital copies of a list of your accounts with the necessary details for your family to recover them, in a location that they know about.

[Pete the European]

Welcome to the forum! Starting to invest is a good New Year's resolution.

How much to invest vis-à-vis other investments (Is an initial payment of 2-3k with another 100-200/month that I planned the best option...)?

This depends on your desired asset allocation. You should set some target (e.g., 80% stocks, 20% bonds; or 100% stocks, particularly if you are still young), then stick to that target. An initial investment of 2-3k and monthly contributions is how people would generally go about it. Whether the amount is reasonable depends on your desired asset allocation. If you're saving 200/month and invest all of it, that's different from investing 200/month and putting 800/month into a savings account.

Which app to use (given the running costs, fees, etc.)?

I would go with IBKR (Interactive Brokers).

Whether USA will tax me too much (upon buying/selling), and is SP500 optimal for investments of Europeans?

You should never invest in a US-based fund for tax reasons and inheritance reasons (the US has a punitively high tax for non-residents, which will apply to you even if you don't live there and your account is based in Europe). Instead, there are funds based in Ireland that hold US stocks, which solves that problem. A good pick is VWRA, which is a globally diversified index fund (US, Europe, rest of the world). If you only want to invest in the US, there are also Ireland-based funds that track the S&P 500 at low cost.

How can it be inherited, if a car hits me and destroys my phone on which the app is? Is it registered somewhere, or I need to give instructions to my family?

You designate a beneficiary, like any other bank account. In general, it's probably good practice to print all your statements once a year and keep them somewhere. Just to make it easy for whoever is managing the estate to know what accounts you have.

How to schedule payments (I know that spreading them ensures that I minimise the adverse effects of market volatility)?
How much to pay in bulk in the beginning and how to schedule this (to spread the amount over few months, once per month, once every 2 weeks)?

Lump sum investment initially, because "time in the market beats timing the market." You simply don't know if the stock market will be higher or lower one month from now, but in the long run (over some years) it just doesn't matter a whole lot. Invest when you have money to invest, which might be once a month when you get paid.

Thanks so much HKexpat!