Do you have a 401k or Roth 401k? Nice your employer matches, it must be a 401k.
You could open an IRA (and get a tax deduction) or a Roth IRA (after tax $, no tax when you withdraw after 56.5 yo) - I recommend Vanguard, and investing in a whole market or S&P 500 Index fund (I’ve had both for 9+ years and they perform almost exactly the same so far)
It’s really simple, you can do it all online.
I would NOT sign up for their personal advisors - you can easily do this on your own.
Some places (Vanguard, TIAA) now have savings / mutual fund yielding about 5%
It says it’s a Simple IRA. I don’t think I care about whether I pay taxes pre or post, I guess I feel like I should try to do something with my money rather than let it just sit in a savings account or a cd…
I think a Simple IRA is a plan that a small business can provide.
Yes, you can contribute to a traditional and/or Roth IRA even if you participate in an employer-sponsored retirement plan (including a SEP or SIMPLE IRA plan).
I think you’ve gotten this answer already, but yes, a Simple IRA is a retirement account that can be done through a small enough workplace (<100ish employees, I think)–it can be either pre or post-tax, and for 2024 maxes out at 16000/19500 (under/over 50). From an IRS standpoint, anyway, I think individual workplaces can have lower limits.
You can open your own Roth IRA separately and contribute up to 7000/8000 (under/over 50) post-tax if your income is under the limit (which gets its own table because the IRS doesn’t do simple: Amount of Roth IRA contributions that you can make for 2024 | Internal Revenue Service). If you’re over the income limit you can also do a traditional IRA and then backdoor it into a Roth, but that assumes no balance in an existing Traditional IRA and adds some limitations on when you can remove even the contributions that may/may not be worth it to you.
Ah, I forgot about Simple IRAs! I agree with JRA about being able to contribute to your own IRA in addition to the simple IRA. (at 8k since you’re over 50 which I missed the first time around).
Thank you. I’m definitely under the income limit. I’ll call my advisor on Monday and see about getting a Roth set up. If I fully fund it this month for 2024 that helps lower the amount of money that I don’t really need sitting around. Then I assume I’ll be able to fully fund it in January for 2025 and lessen my stash by 16k total which sounds like a good amount. And after I do these things, I can decide what else to do after my cd matures in the spring. Maybe a HYSA or a new cd. I’ve just never had “too much” extra money to figure out what to do with so I’ve never thought about it before. It’s a good problem to have, I just don’t really want to deal with money stuff.
Does this all sound good to you all who helped me?
What’s a search engine that doesn’t put unasked for and often wrong AI responses at the top of each search page? I tried to turn this off but Google doesn’t have that toggle in the settings.
I should switch too - I was googling long term effects of pre-eclampsia at 2am on a magnesium sulfate drop and those AI summaries were all like “ye shall die young of a ruined body” and all of my doctors were, of course, like “oh we pretty much never see long term effects, we just need to make sure you don’t seize.” I trust the doctors at our local baby factory over the AI.
I don’t think I care about whether I pay taxes pre or post, I guess I feel like I should try to do something with my money rather than let it just sit in a savings account or a cd…