XYZ's of Money - Lesson 4: How to Build Stock Market Wealth

In this live financial‑education session, Alan Akina walks viewers through the fundamentals of building wealth with paper assets, especially stocks. He explains why stocks are a powerful, passive, and diversifying component of a portfolio, emphasizing the long‑term, marathon‑style approach and the compounding effect of returns. The lesson covers three primary retirement‑account vehicles—Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, and SEP IRA—detailing how each works, contribution limits, tax treatment, and suitability for different earners (employees, self‑employed, high‑income). Akina stresses the importance of maximizing employer 401(k) matches, choosing low‑cost index funds (e.g., S&P 500), and minimizing fees by comparing brokerage options. He provides practical steps for opening accounts (online brokers, robo‑advisors, banks), setting up automatic contributions, and using dollar‑cost averaging. The session includes a Q&A addressing common misconceptions about Roth vs. Traditional IRAs, the role of individual brokerage accounts, fee transparency, and eligibility for Roth contributions. Finally, participants receive a homework assignment to open and fund an IRA, document it, and share a screenshot on social media for a $25 Stockpile gift‑card, reinforcing action‑oriented learning. The next lesson will focus on “bullet‑proofing” wealth across assets.
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And we're off. So everyone, welcome back to another edition of the XYZs of Money. My name is Alan Akina, and for those of you that have been here for the last 3 going on 4 weeks now, welcome back. We have also an announcement for the winner that did their homework assignment. The winner for our $25 gift card from Stockpile, because we buy stock, not stuff, is Mr. Dustin Earl from Idaho. So he is going to be emailing me his email so we can send you the gift card. All right, now let's, let's jump in. To lesson number four, okay? I want to talk about why paper assets. Why should we have paper assets in our portfolio? Number one is it's one of the greatest wealth generators that we can participate in over our lifetime. Number two, it's passive. So remember what passive was? Passive means we don't need to work in it. We're not buying these companies and working at those companies. We're buying stock. We don't have to do anything really except choose good companies and let it ride. The next thing is it diversifies our portfolio. Remember, remember this. Now, most advisors tell you to diversify your portfolio, but they're only talking about paper assets. Okay, they're not talking about your total assets. And so we, we think that having assets is good in paper, real estate, and business, and this is one aspect of that. Okay, uh, the next is that stocks typically outperform real estate over the long haul, which means they have a higher return than than real estate. Another great reason why paper assets— you can start small, start with a dollar, you start with $5 or $50. And it's, it's not difficult. There's, there's not a huge barrier to entry into investing in stocks like there is for property, right? You got to qualify for a loan, you got money, you got to do research and all this. So it's much easier to get in the game. Now I'm going to talk to you about 3 different types of accounts that you can have, not investment. These are accounts. We're going to talk about a traditional IRA, a Roth IRA, and then for those of you that are self-employed or sole proprietors, business owners, we're going to talk about a SEP IRA, simplified employee pension plan. Okay. Now, I, I like to explain stock market investing as if you were on a track team and your, your race was the marathon. Okay, we have all these different races. Stocks is like a marathon because this is the long game. So to invest in stocks, you have to have a long-term vision for the future. It's not like you invest today for tomorrow or even for next year or in, in a few years. This is like decades. Okay, this is where you can generate the best returns is when you let it grow. Okay, so think, think long and think like a marathon runner. Now the next reason why we like stocks is because the, the power of compound interest. Okay, and what this is, is very simply put, is where your interest can help you earn more interest. So the— so basically the money that you earned or made from your investment can help you now go to work for you and make you more money. Let me give an example. Let's say in 2020 you invested $100 into stocks. Okay. And over the year it, it grew by 10%. So at the end of 2020, start of 2021, you'd have $100 that you invested plus the $10 that you earned in interest or returns. So now you have $110 going into the year 2021. Now you got your $100 plus the $10 you made, making you more money in 2021 as opposed to just your $100. And so this is the game, and this is why it's great to start early, which we're going to talk about. And this is why Albert Einstein mentioned this, that compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world. He who understands it earns it. He who doesn't pays it. Okay, now this is why we do what we do at One on One, is because we want to help people to get out of debt. We've helped 40,000 people to get out of debt quick, right? So they're getting out of paying compound or amortized interest, and then they— we flip that around and put them in a position to now earn Compound interest and the power of this. Now here's one of the greatest investors in the world, and I love this guy. His name's Warren Buffett. He earned the majority of his wealth after he turned 50 because it started to compound, right? It was growing, growing, growing. But as it gets bigger, it doubles bigger, right? It gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It's like a snowball. So here's an example. of compounding. Okay, so we have one investor again. So let's say this investor— I'm going to call this investor Julia. Okay, so Julia's on. If Julia started investing and she put in $3,600 a year into her stocks at the age of 25, and she did this for 15 years, and let's assume that she earned 8% a year. On her investment, and then she stopped after 15 years. By the time she reached age 70, she would have over a million dollars sitting in her account. But let's take another investor, Shone. Okay, so Shone is an investor, and he does the same thing: $3,600 a year, same interest rate, 8% a year that he's earning. But he starts at 40. So it starts a little bit earlier— I mean, later— but he invests for twice as long as Julia did. So he invested for 30 years. He would have less than half by the time he gets to 70 invested. Why? Because of compounding over time. Okay, compounding over time is a huge factor in building your stock market wealth. Okay, now let's start with— let's start with traditional IRAs. Okay, so take a screenshot of this or write this down. A traditional IRA is a type of retirement account that lets you invest pre-tax income. Okay, and those earnings can grow tax-deferred. Now you only have to pay taxes on the gains when you make withdrawals in your retirement. So what this means is you can put money in today, and that money that you put in today will reduce your tax liability this current year. And when you retire and you pull funds out, then you'll have to pay taxes then. So that's sort of the, the general rule of thumb for a traditional IRA. Now here's some of the benefits. Number one, it lowers your current year's tax bill. Number 2, there's no tax on the earnings while it's growing over the 10, 20, 30 years or more. Also, there's no income limits to open and contribute. You can make $1 million a year and still be eligible for a traditional IRA. You also— it allows you to be part of your retirement. This builds up part of your retirement, and there's a ton of investment options like You know, mutual funds and ETFs and index funds and things like that. Now, contribution limits for the year 2020 is $6,000 a year. If you are 50 years or older, you can invest up to $7,000 during the year. Now, this is what's been around for a long time. And let me, let me talk to you about some of the concepts behind a traditional IRA. And part of it is true. I don't believe a lot of it, you know, the old school ways of thinking for the traditional IRA, but some of it is true. Depends on your situation. Again, I'm not, I'm not a registered advisor, stock trader. I'm not licensed for this, so I'm not giving you investment advice. I'm just giving you Education and knowledge on the different types of accounts that you can use. So here's what the advisor would say. Let's invest in your traditional IRA so you reduce your taxes today and let your money grow, because when you retire, you'll be making less money, and so you'll pay less taxes. That was sort of the general rule of thumb. But as you and I discussed on our first lesson, we talked about building the ultimate retirement plan. Who wants to retire on less money, on 60%, 70% of what we make today? It doesn't make sense. We want to live it up. We want to have fun. We want to party. We want to travel and do big things. And so remember our first lesson, we talked about doubling up. Let's double up the retirement, what we think we need, and double it so we can really enjoy it. Let's work hard right now today while we can. Let's be smart about our investment choices. Let's not spend. Let's invest. So we can double up that retirement. So that was the general thumb, and you know they probably thought taxes would be lower when you retire. Who knows? But most likely it's probably going to go up, and so that was the the thinking of having a traditional IRA to combat this. They they came up with a new type of IRA, and. This is probably, I think, 20 or 30 years old now. A Roth IRA. So Roth IRA, same thing, it's individual retirement account, but this allows you to invest after-tax dollars. Okay, the money in this Roth IRA will grow tax-free, and then when you retire, you can withdraw it tax-free no matter what income level you're at. You know, no matter, you know, how much you earn or whatever, what— when you retire, you can pull that out tax-free. So here's the difference. Whatever money you invest today in a Roth, you can't lower your tax bill today. The benefit, though— here's, here's the benefits— is that after you hit 59 and a half and your account has been in operation for at least 5 years, You can withdraw those funds tax-free. Okay, another benefit is you can invest in a Roth and your company's 401 at the same time. You can withdraw your contributions at any time without taxes or penalties before 59 and a half. So for example, let's say that you have $50,000 in there, you've been investing for the last 5 years. And you needed some money, some for some, you know, emergency purposes. Well, you can go in and you can withdraw the $50,000 or a part of the $50,000 with no taxes, which usually would be if you pulled it out, 10% penalty, and you got to pay taxes on that. So the contributions that you put in can be taken out anytime. Not that you'd want to do that, it'd be only for extreme emergency cases because you want it to continue to grow. Also, a benefit is there's no age limit. You can open this when you're 70 and have one. No RMDs, your required minimum distributions, so you don't have to, you know, pull out a certain amount every year after 59 and a half. Another reason that this is, you know, a benefit is you can pull out some of those funds for qualified educational expenses. If you remember from my lesson on how to fund your kids' college education, the Roth IRA was one of those choices. Now, same limits, same contribution limits of $6,000 or $7,000 if you're 50 years and older during a year, calendar year. Now, the question I get is, can, you know, can I have both? Can I have a traditional and a Roth? Yeah, sure you can, but it's still going to be subject to the limitations, the contribution limitations. But you can have your, your Roth and your, your corporate or your company 401. All right, so I guess the, the, the difference here between a Roth and, and a traditional is this. I mean, I got some notes here. For, for those of you that want an immediate tax break like this year, then, then the traditional IRA, you know, something that you should, you should consider. But if you are more comfortable with the idea of having tax-free retirement income, then the Roth is for you. Another thing is, if you're young, if you're young, then I totally recommend having a Roth IRA. Why? Because you are— you're young, so you haven't hit your peak earning years. So today you're going to pay less taxes than you are later on in life. And so contributing to that now is huge. Or even if you're, you know, a little bit older but you still want to have the tax-free retirement, then a Roth would be Something for you to, to consider. Okay. Um, now there is such a thing, and this is for those of you, especially those of you that are at work today, or you have a 401 at work, you may want to consider asking your HR department if there is an option for you to have a Roth 401. So very similar, right? Very similar to the Roth, but it's in your 401. So you'll be able to pull out tax-free. Money goes in, doesn't reduce your tax liability today, but it does on your withdrawals. So that's, that's something that you might want to consider. Okay. Any questions before I go into the SEP IRA? So go ahead, if you have questions, go ahead and type those in the box and I'll try to get to those while we're going along. Okay. So a SEP IRA is a simplified employee pension plan. This is best for sole proprietors, you're self-employed, or you are a small business owner. Okay. And if you're a single— if you're the only employee of your company, this is good. You know, the downside is that if you have a bunch of employees, you have to contribute the same to them. But for a lot of business owners that are small, don't have any employees, this is a great place to put it. It's very similar to a traditional IRA where the funds that you can put in, that you put in now, will be able to reduce your tax liability now. But when you withdraw it, then there's going to be a tax consequence then. So here's some of the benefits. benefits. And why a lot of business owners get this is because you can actually contribute not $6,000 or $7,000, but in 2020 you can contribute up to $57,000 in your, your SEP IRA. Another thing that people like is that it's easy to set up, very easy to set up with a brokerage firm, very easy to administer, not a lot of paperwork or things to worry about, low cost, right? All your contributions are tax-deductible. Deductible right now. There's no— it's flexible, which means you don't have to put the same amount every year. Some pension plans require you to— okay, you're going to put in $5,000 a year, you got to put in $5,000. Well, with this, if business is great, you can put in the $57,000. If business is not so great in 2021, you don't have to put anything in. So a lot of flexibility here. And again, with all the other Roths and this traditional IRAs, There's a ton of great investment options. So mutual funds, ETFs, there's index funds. Okay, those are all great things. All right, so that's the— again, this is for business owners. Now I had a question earlier, which, which I thought was a great question. Can you set up a Roth IRA for your kids? Right, because they're young. Yes, you can if they have earned income. So they need to be employed. So you can't just set up this fund without them working. So typically for your older kids, especially if you have a business, you can employ them. I make my kids work. They do various things for me. So as you know, my daughter works behind the scenes, behind the camera. She gets everything set up. I got her doing everything on the board. She's filming. So I make her work and we pay her for that, right? We pay her, you know, a fair compensation for the time she puts in. And my older son working, right? He's doing research on this and this for college-age kids and financial education. So we can put them to work. And because they have an earned income, they're on payroll. We can actually take that and up to, you know, a certain amount and Put that into a Roth IRA, which lowers the tax liability for, for us from a company standpoint and sets up— sets them up in a Roth. So, so again, they need to be working, but it is a great idea if you can do that. Okay, so if you have teenagers that are working, have them set up a Roth, a low-cost Roth, put a little bit of money in. All right, now. Where can you open up an IRA? So there's 3 main places you can go. There's a ton of online brokerage houses. You, you can just do a quick Google search for it. There's a lot of robo-advisors. So these are same like online investment houses that use technology, use artificial intelligence, machine learning to create these portfolios and these opportunities for you To invest in, in stocks and paper assets in an IRA. And then you can also call your local bank. Local banks may offer an IRA, traditional IRA, Roth IRA. So those are 3 areas that you can look at. But to get you started, got to get you started moving down the path of being able to get your stock market wealth going, here is my number one suggestion, is if your employer offers a match on your 401 or your pension plan, do it. Max out to the match. That's a general rule of thumb investment strategy for almost all financial advisors. So you'll see this. Why? Because that is free money. You have an automatic return. As soon as you put your money in, you've already earned money, which now puts it in that bucket to make it work for you. And the way I look at it is that every dollar is like a soldier, right? And the soldier is working hard every day. So we want to have more soldiers in these accounts that can continue to work for us. Okay, so number 1, max out your 401. 401 employer match. Step number 2 is set up a Roth, which is probably my first pick, or a traditional IRA, and, and then get, get those going along with your 401 from your employer. And then for those of you that are business owners, consider a SEP IRA, or there's a simple IRA, there's a solo 401, there's a handful of different options for you to set up your retirement plan so you, so you can invest these funds that can grow without taxes messing them up. Why? Because we want more money, which is more soldiers in the account working for you every single day. Okay, so, um, here's, um, what I would suggest, okay, is when you set up these accounts— now these are just accounts, these aren't investments. Again, like I said, you're not investing in your Roth. That is the account, that's a vehicle that will tell the government how to tax your funds. In those accounts, you're going to need to pick stocks, mutual funds, index funds, bonds, right? And so these companies— this is just a handful, there's a ton. Like I said, if you do Google search, you can find a bunch of companies on there, or your local bank. These companies can help you to set up the IRA. And they provide you the investments. That you can choose from. So I have Charles Schwab, I have E-Trade, I have a few different accounts. I have Vanguard, but, but this is just my personal, my personal SEP IRA and traditional IRA is, is with, with Vanguard. Love Vanguard. They're the largest low-cost investment brokerage firms that is known for low Fees on their investments. That's one thing that I like. It's hard for a broker, a stockbroker, to beat an index fund or beat the market, if you will. So I, I would suggest picking a few mutual funds or index funds that you can start with, and you can start small. Some require like a $50 minimum, some may have a little bit higher or lower. Okay, so if you, you know, you have these different funds, right, you might have some US large-cap index funds, you may have a mix of international funds or bond funds or ETFs. So you start to diversify, which is what we talked about earlier, diversifying your portfolio. And now we're going to diversify our stock mix, our stockholding, because when you diversify, you lower your Risk. Okay, so, um, that's what you're going to do to fund it. Now you can set up your IRA to do a monthly automatic investment from your checking account. So every month you can put $100 or $200 or whatever it is into your Roth, and it just automatically goes— or into your SEP— and that will get you what we call dollar cost averaging. So over time you'll buy stocks at a higher point, lower point, and it'll start to average out because we're not going to be able to time the market. It's, again, it's almost an impossible task. And so we want to be simple. We want to set up a system that automatically does this for us as opposed to trying to figure it out every month and making the change. So I suggest finding a good company. You can use some of their tools. They have online tools and, and ways to search for good funds. So you might want to look at a fund. One of my favorite that I use is the S&P— it's a Vanguard S&P 500 index fund, one of the lowest fees out there. Charles Schwab has the same thing. Others have the same thing. But what the S&P 500 index fund is, is it mirrors the S&P 500 index, right? The, the top 500 fastest— 500 largest companies in the US. They have their criteria of how they put them in there. So the S&P 500 would include companies like Microsoft, Apple, Facebook. IBM. I mean, the big, big companies, right? They're, they're in the S&P 500. And the reason I like that is just because, number one, I believe in the US. I believe in US companies, American companies, and it'll be very hard to beat the top 500 companies out there. These are very good, very smart companies for the most part. So that's sort of like an anchor for me in my My portfolio. I'm not saying that would be for you, but that's just sort of what I do. And again, there's tools you can use. You can use age-based projections. So in some of these accounts, you can say, okay, I'm 39 today, I'm going to retire at 65. And so there's a set of funds. Like, if you're 39, here's the funds that you need. Just click on this and we'll do it for you. And so those are simple ways that you can get invested. Okay. Um, all right, now any questions? Let me see. Sean, so if it mirrors S&P 500 index and charges the fee, then you'll never beat the market. You always, you always stay with the market. Yeah, you'll always be with that index. So if you invest in the S&P 500 Fund you'll always be with. Yeah, you won't beat it. So, and the reason I say that is because it is very hard to beat the market. Professionals have tried to do this. If you go on Google, research this challenge that Warren Buffett did. So he challenged every hedge fund, any investor that thought they could beat the market. Okay. These are some smart dudes, right? So okay, I'm going to put— I think it was $1 million or $10 million. He said, okay, I'm going to challenge you. Any of you beat that market, you can pick any fund, you can, you can pick any manager you want. I'm going to invest in like an index fund, kind of like the S&P 500. And they did it for 10 years. And guess who won? Yeah, Warren Buffett. Just very simple, very simple, and and it's something that we don't need to worry about. So again, hard to beat the market. Yeah, check that out. Check that research out. Google that. It was it was kind of cool. Okay, Kala. What's up, Kala? What about using an individual brokerage account along with an IRA? Absolutely. So you can have an individual brokerage account to invest in your stocks. Now. That doesn't have any tax preferred treatment, right? That's just going to get taxed at whatever your rate is at the end of the year. You get your, your, your, your thing. So, so I have those. So like, like, for example, okay, Carla, you might want to use like Robinhood or Stockpile, right? These are— you can have individual brokerage accounts where you're just trading stocks and buying companies. Absolutely love it. And you can have your IRA. That's completely separate, right? The IRA. Is something that's taxed, what we call tax advantage, right? There's tax advantages going in or out, and but there's restrictions that come with it. So it has to sit in there for a certain period of time. Your your regular stock brokerage account, you can you can move it money in and out no problem. Okay. Good question though, Kekaula. Aaron, yep, that's I think that's the ticker symbols. For the different ones. My company matches 401 up to 3%. I put in 15%. If they don't offer a Roth 401, should I do an IRA? Yeah, so depending on how old you are— I don't know how old you are, but max the 3% out. That's number one. Okay, then because you are investing, and congratulations, you're doing more than the 10%. I respect that, and eventually you probably want to get that to 20% unless you're going to do real estate. So now talk to them about the Roth 401. That'd be interesting. They may have it, but they just don't offer it because it's so different, right? They don't know these things. So it may be beneficial for you if you're younger. If they don't, then look at number one, a Roth or a traditional IRA outside of what they do. So go to one of these companies here. And then you can move your money into that. Okay, Bobby Fidelity zero-cost funds are new and very similar to S&P. Yeah, yeah. So what's happened, guys, with the the investing world? Because all these robo advisors, right, like Betterment, like Capital, like Robinhood, these new fintechs. have come into the market, it really changed the status quo of like, you know, JP Morgan Chase, Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, right, where they would charge fees to trade. These companies came in and said, no fees, everybody, there's no fees on trading, and we're going to charge you a quarter of a percent to manage your funds as opposed to 1%. That's the difference with these brokerage houses. They would charge 1% Assets under management, okay, AUM. And then, and then these robo-advisors came in and did it for a quarter of that, which changed the game. So they all had to lower their fees. So what, what's the result of that? We all get access to lower fees and trading funds. Vanguard lowered their funds. Charles Schwab came out with no fees on their funds, like Everybody's competing. So right now, great time, great time to be an investor. Chosen Family, you are young, man. 37, you're just a little puppy. Great job, get started. Roth IRA is probably it, probably the one. Okay, Carla, with the individual account, would you still recommend investing in index funds or more individual companies? So, um, it depends. I kind of— my— in my, um, In my individual account that's not a retirement account, I mostly have individual stocks that I like. I do have some mutual funds, index funds in there, but it's mostly made up of individual companies now. And my personal— I have 2 different accounts where I do my personal trading. That really is more for fun. The big stuff is in my retirement, my SEP and my other, my traditional areas where I put more money in there. I set it up automatic. It's just automatic every month. It's just going, right? And I have a mix of mutual funds. My, my regular non-taxable, my taxable investment account, I just Do it for fun. So yeah, good question. Does anyone know if the Fed jobs offer Roth 401? Good question, Jenna. I don't know, but this, this is a great conversation to have with your HR department. So I would look in your paperwork or send them an email and then find out what your— the Roth IRA will do for you. So now you understand And I hope— I mean, go ahead and comment in there if this helped to clarify the difference between a traditional IRA and a Roth IRA. You know, having that clarity can make a huge difference in your retirement. Like, you know, you could be working all these years and putting it away in a 401, and then now you're going to be having this massive tax bill in your retirement. So All right, Sherry. I have a Roth and a traditional in a TSP and can't choose. And can't choose. Should I open outside of TSP Roth too? So now you can have a Roth and a traditional, but it can only— you can only contribute up to the max. So if you're under 50, you can You can only put like $3,000 in Roth, $3,000 in traditional. Now, now the benefit of that could be when you're pulling money out and you're withdrawing in your retirement years, you can withdraw and have a lower tax consequence because you have to take— you only have to take out a lower amount from your traditional, and then you can take out from your Roth, which has no tax consequences. So in your retirement years, that could be the difference of bumping you to a higher tax bracket. If you know what I mean. So there's that ability to, to move around, but depends how old you are too, Sherry. You may want to consider the Roth. How would I assess a company and what is good for me? What kind of questions would I ask myself or a broker? I have a 403 with Ameriprise and have no idea. Yeah, so So what, uh, so here's the thing. Your company's 401, this is a hidden problem, is that there are a lot of them are typically with these older brokerage, you know, so your company have these old-school brokerage houses and the fees are really high. The fee— the fees could be really high on your 401. You never know because they hide it in all the paperwork and all the numbers. You don't really know. So I would ask your company, like, hey, who's our 401 with and what are the fees like? And is there any ways to lower the amount of fees? Because the fees is like the top killer of your investment fund. So check it out, ask them all the questions you need To know, like, what are the fees? What, what is the consequences of when I retire and pull the money out? How will I be taxed? Do you offer a Roth 401? What types of investment options do I have access to within my 401? Do you choose for us, or can we choose our own? What, what, what are my options? Okay. And so What are good fees to pay? I mean, the least amount as possible. So what I would do is go to— and I'm just going to recommend it just because I know this— so I will look at the fees. You can compare this against the industry leader, which is Vanguard. So go to Vanguard and look up their funds. So their mutual funds, their fees, they disclose them, and every fund has to disclose their fees. So I would take Vanguard's. And compare that to your 401 and have whoever's, you know, your HR director send you everything you can for your investment in those funds and including those fees. Compare that to the industry leader Vanguard and see where you're at, the difference. And then that will give you a much better idea. So I think Vanguard, even Charles Schwab would Probably be a good place to look online. They disclose all of the fees, and then you have to sort of match fund for fund. It won't be the same exact fund. So let's say your 401 at work has like sort of like S&P 500 fund that you're in, compare that to the Vanguard. So you got to match apples to apples when you're comparing the fees, because otherwise they'll be off. Okay, so yeah, don't be afraid to ask questions, gang. Get as much information as you possibly can and you'll be in a good place. Now, if your company doesn't match 401, would it be better to just pick your own funds and purchase directly rather than paying the 401 fees? Yes. So again, like I said, a lot of these companies, they, they have these fees that they are charged because they're bigger companies, right? They've been around longer. So Again, ask what the fees are and then compare that to setting up your own Roth IRA with Vanguard. And if the fees are a big difference, the investments are going to be— you can find almost the same type of investment with any firm. They all have similar funds. It just comes down to the fees, right? They all will have their S&P 500 index fund. They all have a NASDAQ 1000 fund, right? So you want to compare the fees because the investments, the stocks, will generally be the same. And then if you can minimize the fees, again, you have more money working for you. Okay, now very good questions, and keep them coming. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go to your homework for, for this week. Okay, here's your homework. Take a screenshot of this. Number 1, I want you to pick a Roth, a traditional, or a SEP. Just pick one for now. I just want you to get started. Okay. Open up the account. For most of those online companies, it'll be free to open up. There will be paperwork that you need to send and all this, but it's not that difficult. Okay, so we want you to open it up and get it started within this next week before you Come see me next week Wednesday. And I say fund it with a little bit of money, right, just to get started. If you have a few hundred dollars, put it in, right? It might be— there might be a minimum of $50 to get it set up. No problem. Just, just go ahead and get it started. And, and the key thing again, what we're trying to do here is get you enough information because there's so much. There's, there's, there's other things to consider with like a Roth, you can earn out. Your income might be too high. So I think if you're married filing jointly, if you make over $200,000 or so, you can't even open up a Roth, right? So it's good to get it started now. Otherwise, you get up there like me, I can't even get a Roth. It's just, it's, it's, it's too high up. I can't qualify. So you want to be able to get those things now. Take action on, on these things that we're sharing. Okay. And then what I want you to do is take a picture of your account, but make sure your, your account number is not, not in there. But let's say you opened up a Vanguard, like take a, like a little, little shot where no one— no private information. Okay, I got it. I got my Roth IRA set up and I funded it. You don't even need to say how much you funded it with. Just, just put a little shot and then post it on your social media like your Instagram or Facebook and tag me. Okay, then my assistants, my daughter and I have another assistant that will be searching all of the entries. And again, I'll send you a gift card for, for stock from Stockpile. You can use this for yourself or for your kid. Get your kid, you know, $25 to get started. Okay, so make sure you do that sometime soon within the next week, before next week, and then, and then tagging my My Instagram is Alan_Akina, or my Facebook is just Alan Akina. Okay. Now, couple questions here. Sean, but isn't the whole point of putting money into your 401 that you can put into your IRA? Yeah, I mean, the 401 and IRA, same thing, right? But a Roth is different. Right, a Roth allows you to pull out that money tax-free. That's why I said my number one thing, Sean, is max out your 401. And then you know what, some of you don't even have a 401. Some of you don't have an employer that offers that, or you don't have a job, you're self-employed. So this is where you set up your own Roth, your own, your own SEP. All right, Sean, hope that helps you out, buddy. Uh, Sherry, which would be better Opening up a Roth TSP or company like Vanguard or TD Ameritrade. So I think you, I think you put your age up there. I can't see it, but I personally like the online Vanguard experience. Very easy. I don't have to look at it. I I just let it ride. I just make sure I contribute. So very easy, very low cost. And the key to finance is keeping it simple and reducing fees. So that's my personal preference. Not sure if that helps you, but that's, that's sort of my personal preference. Okay. What if you're retired and on low Social Security? Should you open up an account? Which one? So if you're retired already Then you probably don't need this. Now the only one you could open up if you wanted to open up one would be a Roth IRA. There's— excuse me. Yeah, I think, I think it was a Roth. There were— there's no age limit. That was it. Okay, so you can open the Roth in your 70s if you wanted to. So that would probably be the one that you You want to, but you don't necessarily have to do it because you're already retired. Um, okay, where do you do the homework? Just post it on social media, on your social media, and tag me. Yes, you don't need to send it anywhere. There's nowhere to send. Just post it and tag me, and, uh, and then we'll— that's how my assistants will find you. Uh, Jana, can you give us some names of the newer investment companies again? Robinhood. So Robinhood, I don't think they have an IRA, but there's companies like Betterment. There's— Betterment is probably the newer robo-advisor. There is— and then of course the Charles Schwabs, they have their new tech stuff out there, which is kind of cool. Vanguard, a little bit old school but super easy to use. What is a suggested amount to contribute to your Roth? It's, it's what you can put in. You can only max out at $6,000 to $7,000. So if you are in a position to do that, do it. If not, just put in what you feel is comfortable. So general rule of thumb, Right, general thumb, chosen family is at 15%. General thumb is 10% into your retirement, but typically that doesn't build up to enough. So that's where it's 10% there, but you're also doing real estate, buying houses. So it really depends. So message me on, uh, or email me, alan@101financial.com. I can help you with that. Is there a limit to how many Roths you can open? Yeah, you can only contribute Up to that max amount of six to seven thousand. So yeah, that so you should just have one again. Keep everything simple, easy, and and you'll be in good shape. Okay, looks like we got through a lot of questions here. I I hope this was was helpful to you. gang. If it was, let me know. Give me a thumbs up. I want to see if this is the type of information that you're looking for on the paper asset side. If it's helping you to make better decisions and clarifying some things, that'd be great to know. And as always, I'm always here. And of course, my instructors, they're, they're great. My instructors know You know, as much as I do. So be sure to reach out to them. Now, a couple things before we end. Next week we're going to go over lesson number 5. Okay, so lesson number 5 is our last lesson of the, of the system, of the current scheduled. Okay, which is going to be talking about how to bulletproof your wealth. Which is going to protect all the things that we've been talking about— your stocks, your real estate, your business, all of your different investing things, investments that you're making. We're going to talk about simple strategies that you can use to bulletproof your wealth and be able to put yourself in a position to be able to pass it on. So, alright gang, with that being said, I wish you well. God bless you all. Thank you for being with me today and be safe out there. Okay, continue to be safe. It's not— we're not 100% in the clear. We're still— we're getting better, but we're not 100% in the clear. But your finances will be okay. We're going to take your finances to the next level. God bless you all. Take care.
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