Ask Me Anything: How I Actually Invest (IRAs, Index Funds & Crypto)

Foreign. This is Busy Getting Better, the podcast for women who are committed to prioritizing their own personal growth. I'm your host, Madison J. A mindset and money coach, a first generation wealth builder and a woman on a mission to help you master your finances and live your best life. Money is not all we are covering though, because in order to live your best life, you have to become your best self. So we are diving deep into all things personal development and bringing you the mindset. Mindset shifts, money, tips and inspiration. You need to go out there, be bold and build the life you can't stop daydreaming about. It's time to get busy, babe. Busy getting better. All right everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I would like you to physically raise your hand if you were ever personally victimized by an Ask me anything. Y' all know what I'm talking about. My millennials, right? Ask me anything. I feel like they took over the Internet back in the day and I don't know about you, but I feel like that was a time to be alive. Yes, they were rough and I think that maybe that was like where we started to take a turn with the Internet where things maybe got a little bit out of control, but we're going to bring back ask Me any things in a new way because I get asked a lot of questions about money, obviously in my line of work, and I thought that it would be fun to just compile some of those questions that I've been asked in the last couple of weeks about money. Specifically, we're going to do an AMA investment style today and I'm gonna answer questions that I've been asked about investing that I think that would be fun to share with you guys. Obviously these are questions that I feel like I get kind of often. I thought it would be fun to just kind of break it down for you and go little question answer. So let's start from the top. First is been a hot topic of conversation in my world lately, all about investing, investing for retirement, and specifically investing leveraging in ira. So, so an IRA is an individual retirement account. The reason that people love an IRA, they've got Roth IRAs, which are a really great way for you to grow money tax free. And then there is a traditional ira, which allows you to save money on your taxes now and grow that money and then you would withdraw it and pay taxes then. So kind of two different routes. Roth IRAs, I think are a very common tool people utilize and it's really great to start to focus on tax free growth and so we've been talking a lot about how to leverage them. And one of the questions that I got was, where do I keep my ira? So personally, I keep my IRA at Charles Schwab, but you can also keep yours at places like Fidelity, places like Vanguard. Those are kind of the top three most people leverage. Are there other places to open up IRAs? Absolutely. But those are gonna be the most common ones. And so if you do not have an ira, then I would say those three would be a really great place to start. There's not really a whole lot of difference between them, if I'm being frank. It's really just like preference at this point. Right. They all offer very styles of support. They both allow. They all allow you to invest in your retirement accounts. They all. There's just. There's not really a whole lot of difference. So pick one and move forward with it. Right. So like I said, mine's at Charles Schwab. I have a traditional IRA and a Roth ira. When I was investing, I was contributing to both. So both of mine are there. And then from there. One thing I always make sure to talk about when I talk about IRAs is the fact that they. They differ from a 401k, which is the other retirement tool that people use. 1k is something that is sponsored by your employer. So you've got to be employed and they've got to offer your 401k. And if they. They might also offer like a 401k match. When you invest in a 401k, what happens is you will put your money in and it's auto invested for you. Meaning that they pick what you're invested in and that's it. Right. You can go in there and make changes, but you don't have to stress about initially setting that up. An IRA is different because remember, it's an individual retirement account, meaning that you are setting up by yourself, you are funding it, and then you are investing it yourself. And so this is probably the biggest mistake people make when it comes to starting their IRA is they'll move CA into it, but they won't invest in it. And so then the question is, okay, well, what do you buy in your ira? And so I was asked what I personally invest in. So when it comes to investing in the stock market, I really believe that a very simple index fund strategy is going to be the best for most people. Index funds are essentially a way to own a lot of stocks in one. In one bucket, one basket. Easiest way to think about it. You get to Own a little bit of a bunch of companies at once. The benefit of investing in index funds or ETFs. ETFs is that you are not talking into one company, right? A lot of times people think about investing in the stock market, there might be this like, oh, it's like day trading, or it's like you got to pick the stock and I got to do like all this analysis and you don't. So if that's what's been holding you up, I got good news for you, right? You can invest in index funds or ETFs that track large parts of the market, right? So a common one that we talk about is the s and P500, which is essentially the largest 500 companies in the market. You can go and buy little pieces and become a little shareholder in all of those companies with one. And the beauty of investing in these is that if one company tanks, if one company sucks, then you don't like, you don't lose your money. Like, it's not like that one company goes down and you're screwed because you're invested in this index fund. And if that company shits the bed and goes bankrupt or something, it just gets booted out and it gets replaced with the next company. So now there's always just the top 500, which is really great. So personally, I invest in index funds and ETFs that track the S&P 500, that track the broad market. So that's essentially just like the total market. So instead of just the top 500, there's, I don't know, a couple thousand companies in there. And then also growth stocks. There's index funds and ETFs that are like large cap or growth, you'll see in the name. And these are essentially ones that just track. There's essentially more technology companies in them. It's the best way to think about it. Technology is really driving a lot of the growth in our economy right now. And I don't really see that slowing down. I don't know about you, but the way AI is coming in and taking over, it's really interesting. We're in a market that we've never seen before. And I don't know about you, but I'm also kind of sick here. Like, unprecedented times, but we really are. And we're at this new boom of AI and technology that the boom could go on forever. The boom could crash tomorrow, who really knows? But, like, technology is absolutely going to continue to propel us forward. And so I focus on investing in growth Stocks and those have done really well over the last couple years. Again, there's a lot of speculation is to like is the market going to crash? Is the bubble going to pop? Like we don't really know short term, but long term we're pretty confident that it's going to continue to rise, it's going to continue to go up because that's just how things happen, right? That's just what goes on. So that's it. I'm super simple, you guys. In my Roth IRAs, it's literally S&P 500, it's broad market, it's growth stocks. I think that's it. It's literally just that. So it's super simple when we're thinking about what to invest in index funds. I mean there's so many studies out there, you guys, about how index funds and ETFs, you can invest in these yourself, you can self manage, you can save the money on all of the fees of working with a financial advisor and you oftentimes will outperform majority of index funds and ETFs outperform what you would do if you had this like super complicated portfolio. And also the benefit is this, it's just automatically diversified, right? And so thinking about that, and again, none of this is financial advice. This is just what I currently invest in that might change it. Actually it will change, right? Because the closer you get to retirement, the older that I get, I'll want more dividends in there, I'll want more bonds in there. I want to protect it. But right now I am young, I have decades left. We're talking about retirement. It's 30 years until I'm going to touch this money. I want to be invested in things that have the highest potential for growth. Right now I'm not necessarily concerned about like mitigating the risk. Now that might not be the case for you. So again, do not take this advice. If you want a more conservative portfolio, you could factor in bonds, all that stuff. But that was the question. The question was Madison, what are you invested in? So that is it from a stock market perspective. And I'm also invested in cryptocurrency. We do not know what the future of money looks like. We. But if it is crypto, I'm going to make sure I'm capitalizing on that. So I am invested in Bitcoin, I'm invested in Ethereum and I'm invested in xrp. So those are the three cryptocurrencies that I invest in. Those are the three that I feel the most confident in those are the three that I feel like are most stable. So bitcoin, I feel like is like the og, right? Everybody understands Bitcoin. Ethereum is one that is a little bit newer and then XRP is one that actually just got picked up and is backed by banks. Right. So there's a lot of potential for growth here. And if we think about the inception of the stock market and now like the inception of this crypto world, right, this, these digital assets, this blockchain technology, we are really still just at the beginning of it. And so it's incredibly volatile. Right. When we look at investing in the stock market, there's a lot of proven track record, there's a lot of history there for us to base our assumptions off of. Absolutely nobody has a crystal ball, nobody knows what's going to happen. But crypto, it is the unknown right now, right? It is the sexy thing I feel like to start investing in. There's a lot of volatility and there's a lot of things behind just the word crypto that you could be investing in. So make sure that you're doing your due diligence here if you want to invest in this. And also crypto is not my main thing I'm invested in, right? Like I still am very much going to take the tried and true approach of 100 plus years in the stock market and also have some stuff over here on the crypto world. And as I continue to learn more about it, as things start to come to light, like who knows, like how it all operates, will I transfer more into that? I don't know right now, but right now I've got a small part of my portfolio invested in crypto, Exp and Ethereum. That is where I'm at. So that's really it, you guys. For my portfolio, it's investing in low cost, simple index funds and ETFs and then investing in crypto. Now crypto ETFs are becoming a thing. It's definitely on my list to personally learn more about how that's structured. What I want to buy some within my accounts right now. I originally purchased all of them on what is it like Coinbase, Blockfi. Fun fact. I got wrapped up in like the whole block by bankruptcy. If you are in crypto, that happened and lost some bitcoin. But it's okay, we won't talk about that, but we still have some and, or, and then we moved it off of the chain into something called the cold storage. So essentially it is just housed in Something that's not on platforms. So that's it. That's all I have. Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP and then some low cost index funds in my Roth ira. In my traditional ira, those are really the main places. And then similar thing in my, my brokerage account is another account that I have. And it's just heavy stocks. It's like I'm in like 90% stocks there. I think maybe 10% in bonds. So I guess maybe I do own a little bit of bonds, but I don't really focus on that. It's primarily just invested in some of these growth stocks and tracking the overall market. That's it. That's what I invest in, you guys. Okay, next question on investing was essentially like losing money, right? Like, am I gonna lose all my money if I start investing? And it's such an important question. Obviously we know people don't want to put their money in something that they could lose it, all, right? And with investing, there is absolutely always risks. No matter what you invest in, there's always going to be risks. The shorter term that you were looking at your money, the higher volatility, the higher risk, right? The further out that you're going to need that money, the more volatility that you can take. Because if you don't need that money right now, right? So can we lose all of our money? Like, let's talk about this, right? If we were to think about like let's say back in the day. Back in, back in the day, who remembers Blockbuster, right? Blockbuster was like the shit. It was so cool. I don't know about you, but like peak core childhood memory is like a Friday night, you and your girlfriend are going to go to Blockbuster and you're looking around at all the cool movies and you're picking out candy and like you're stoked and you're like, this place is so cool. We all know Blockbuster did not hang around, right? She gone, she bankrupt, okay? Back in the day, early 2000, you invest all your money into a company like Blockbuster and you're like, this is going to the moon and I'm putting all my money behind it. And then a company like, and then they go bankrupt. Like, did you lose your money? Yeah, you did. Because that company is no longer there now. Now, right? Because when you're investing in a company, you are becoming part owner in that company. If that company goes bankrupt and there's no money there, then there's nothing for you to own. You see what I'm saying? Another really great perk of choosing an index fund ETF investing style strategy is that that like the stock market absolutely could go down 100%, but that one company is not necessarily going to go bankrupt, right? So in that way, all you need to do is ride the wave. So you don't actually realize a gain or realize a loss until you sell. What do I mean by that? So if you say you invested $10,000 in Blockbuster and they went bankrupt, now you're at zero. There's no way to recap that you're out $10,000. You did just lose your investment. Now let's say you're invested in, you have $10,000. You invested in the S&P 500. So you're tracking the market. Let's say we go through something crazy and the market takes a dip, which by the way, is expected. The market will go up, the market will go down. That's a hundred percent expected, it's a hundred percent normal. And so let's say you put in at $10,000 and then something happens and then the market takes a crash and now you are down, right now you're down to $5,000. If you sell when the value is now 5,000, you have now essentially agreed to a $5,000 loss. So now you've lost $5,000 if you do not sell when it goes down, right? Don't panic. Sell when the market goes down. And you're like, I don't really care, not gonna look at it, because it doesn't matter to me because I'm a long term investor and I focus on buy and hold. I don't care necessarily about the short term. Right now the market goes back up. Now your $10,000 is worth $20,000 again. You only realize that gain if you cash out. So let's say you do. Let's say you say, cool, I'm going to accept this now I'm going to cash out for $20,000, who now just made $10,000, right? But if you're never selling, then you're not actually recognizing that loss or that gain, right? So that's kind of the beauty of this style of investing is that you just need to stay in the market and ride the wave until the funds are where you want them to be and you need the money and now it's time to cash out. But no, you're not. Essentially, you won't lose the money until you decide like, okay, I'm cashing out now, or if your company that you invest in goes bankrupt, which is why individual stock picking is not recommended. Right? Yes. You'll see a lot of people be like, ooh, back in the day, like, if you would have invested all your money in Amazon or Nvidia or something like that, that is now through the roof, you would be doing really, really well. But how would you have known that those companies were going to be the ones that today in 2025, are thriving? You wouldn't have. Unless you're from the future, which, if you are hmu, is. Give me the tea, Give me the tea. What's the next companies? Right, so that's what everyone's trying to do. Like all this analysis of, like, figuring out what companies are going to be the next. Right now everyone's trying to figure out, like, ooh, how can I hitch my bandwagon to, like, the next up and coming AI companies across all these different sectors? And if you want to go down that path of like, doing all that research and figuring that out, love that for you. And also, it's just more risk. Right. I'm going to take a simpler, tried and true approach and just focus on simple index funds because, like, I don't, I don't want to pick the next company. Now, can you put some in these, in these companies and, like, have mostly index funds and then have some companies and can that do a lot of growth for your portfolio? Absolutely. Maybe that's something I'll do in the future. I don't know. But right now, simple. Simple, Right? So that is, that is to answer the question of, like, will you lose all of your money? But again, always risk. We never know. We never know. Next question I was asked, and I love this question so much, is how and where do I start investing if I am somebody who is trying to get out of debt? First off, if you're thinking that thought already, love you. You're already my type of person. Because that means you see a future for yourself where you are investing and you're just trying to figure out what's the order of importance here. And I know that that can be. What's the word? Just kind of like disheartening. If you're like, oh, my gosh, I know I want to get into investing, but I'm just kind of stuck in debt. And so it's incredibly important to recognize where you're at with your debt and what the order of importance is. Right. So I'll kind of go through what I told this person and what, like a. Recommended approaches. Obviously, the beauty of personal finance is that you can throw all this advice out the window. You do whatever you want, baby doll. You do what you want, right? Personal finance is personal for a reason. But if you want to be strategic and you want your money to work as hard as possible for you, which my goal for you and your money, I know how hard you're working. I know you're working hard for your money. I know, I know you are. I want your money working as hard as possible for you. That's my objective. So through that lens, I'm going to tell you the recommended approach here. So if you are in credit card debt, right, we consider kind of high interest debt, low interest debt. Those are going to be the two, the two kind of ways I'm talking about it. I would consider 10% and higher, high interest. Anything below that, we'll call it low interest debt. Low interest debt is typically things like student loans, our loans, high interest debt, traditionally credit cards, right? The worst kind of die. I'm gonna be real. The worst because the interest is just crazy, right? Listen, we've been there. I've been there. I've been in credit card debt. I've needed it to survive. I'm not saying that it's like a bad thing, but like if we're talking about through the lens of how the heck these banks are charging us so much freaking interest on these credit cards, you guys, 25, 28%. Criminal. It's criminal. But anyway, that's not what this conversation is about. It's about you and how to invest when you're getting out of debt. So if you have high interest debt, that should be the first thing that you're tackling. Because when we're thinking about your working as hard as possible for you, we have to consider interest rates, right? So when we're thinking about taking your dollars and you want to go invest, but you've got interest rates that are working against you at 28%, there's not going to be anything that you can put your money into that is going to generate a 30% return guaranteed. So when we're thinking about that, if you're going to put your money into an investment, like we want the interest to outweigh the interest that's pulling against you, right? Like we need, we need your money to be working hard for you. So if you've got 28% interest, you're not going to be able to find something to put that money into that's going to out be how hard your money is working against you. That makes sense. So we want to make sure we're getting out of high interest debt. That's it. Like once we get out of high interest debt, we get to start talking about now how does all this other debt play into the investment strategy that you have? Right? Because if you can get 10, 15% invested in something and your interest on your home loan or your car loan or your student loan is 5 to 7%, well, now we're working with some wiggle room right now. We're like, okay, this could compound faster than this is working against me. It's the best way I think about it. The caveat here that I will say is if you are employed at a W2 job and you have access to a 4K and your company offers a 401K match, that is essentially free money, ladies and gentlemen. Probably just ladies. But if you a gentleman too. Hello. That is free money, right? When we think about how an employer match works. So let's say you go in and your employer is going to match your 401k up to $3,000 a year. That means you invest $3,000 into that 401k. Your employer also puts in $3,000. You see what I'm saying? 100% return on your money. You can't find that anywhere else. You really can't. And so investing up to your employer match while getting out of high interest credit card debt would kind of be like my combo here for you to be able to do both. So we want to think about where you're at, what you have access to. If you don't have access to, to a 401k match, I would really just focus on that high interest debt and get that down as fast as possible. Once we get through that high interest debt now you can start looking at your investment vehicles. And again, that's going to be a 401k, that's going to be an IRA, that's going to be a brokerage account or a health savings account. Those are primarily the four that we would look at. And from there there's kind of a recommended order of importance, right? So we've got the employer match at the top. Then I would say high interest debt. And then you really want to beef up your savings, I would say. And then from there you really, then you can go into putting all extra money into your investments. And again, where you have access to is going to differ for so many people. And then we already talked about what to do once you're in there. But that would be my advice to you. If you are someone that is trying to get out of debt and also wants to invest. And also, I say this all the time, but gosh, I hope that you hear this. If you're this person being in debt and having this chapter of your life, it can either be a negative or it can be a positive. It can be the thing that propels you into wealth building. Because what you are blessed with right now is an opportunity to learn a whole hell of a lot about yourself, about money, about. About what motivates you about money management, about what you really want in life. And it sounds like if you're asking me this question, you want to invest. And so all the skills that you're learning right now about yourself and about money management will be the catapult to you being an incredible investor. I want you to hear that because you are already figuring out how to carve money away and how to put it towards your debt. And now you are going to be able to carve that money away and put it towards your investments. So just know it's a chapter. Just a chapter doesn't mean anything about you. And you will absolutely get to the investments. Okay, those are my four questions that I received in the last week about investments, specifically with IRAs, getting out of debt. If this is something that you want to talk more about, or if you have questions yourself, DM me on Instagram, let me know what your questions are. Give me a little ama. So I, I know, and I'll answer your question in a future episode. So shoot me what your questions are about money. And I got, every time I say this, I'm like, literally, whatever your question is, I have Googled everything under the moon, you guys. There's not a silly question, a stupid question, a thought I haven't thought, a question I haven't typed into Google. Like, if you've thought it, I've had it. And I love to give you my answer from all of my years of deep diving and research, like, let me help make your money journey a little bit easier. Save you some time, save you some money, and save you some energy on answering your burning money questions. So shoot me a DM and let me know what it is. And also if you were like, I'm ready to lock in. Like, I know I want to prioritize my debt. I know I'm ready to invest, or I want to, you know, accelerate my investments or really understand what's going on. The, the amount of times I work with women and they're like, yeah, I have a 401k, no idea what's going in it. Don't even know what I'm contributing. Don't know what I'm invested in. Don't know if it's enough. Don't know if I need to do more. Should I open up an ira? Should I look at a brokerage? All this stuff, right? Like, what are the pros and cons to all of this? And you want to go deeper and you're ready for a financial transformation. You're like, I'm ready to be that bitch with my money. I want to invite you to work together. I want to invite you into one on one. If you are listening to this live time and it's around Black Friday, I'll have an incredible offer going on to share with you. If you are not in Black Friday mode, that's chill too. There is always a good opportunity for us to work together. That's my type of people. This is the stuff. Stuff I love. Helping women piece together, right, is like what makes sense for you. How much do you want to be investing? What is your financial freedom number? Like, let me just take all of the years of struggles and just confusion and overwhelm and like, let's get you there faster. Let's get you to be a savvy investor. Let's get you to understand what you're investing in, why you're investing it, where your money is going. How important is all of these things that we're talking about and just making sure that you are a competent, savvy, badass bitch when it comes to your money. Me. That's my goal for you. So if that's you, let me know and I'd love to help you and send me all your questions. Send me your burning questions and I cannot wait to answer them on the next little AMA episode. And I will see you guys all so soon. I hope you have a great day.