Hacker News Reader

Good advice. How do you recommend contributing? That's one thing that confuses me. Let's say every month I have excess income, how do I decide when and at what interval to put that money into a given index fund? Do I just set an automatic transfer or do I try to time my investments?

EDIT: And as for as I know, IRA's have a income ceiling of $110k/yr correct?

View on HN

Generally the advice is to not try to time the market; set it up to be automatic and forget about it. You're investing for (presumably) 40-60 years, so a 5% move now shouldn't be that big a deal. The bigger thing is to just keep contributing even in down markets (when you might otherwise be reluctant), because by putting in the same amount every month, you buy a larger number of shares when prices are depressed.

However, I always wait until the end of the tax year to contribute (due to laziness) or do it at the beginning of the year (because I have extra cash then).

Roth IRAs are about $105k/yr limit. (it fades out up to $125k)

You can do a 401k rollover to Roth without any income limit.

You can do a Traditional IRA without income limit, although deductibility DOES have an income limit (56k since you have a 401k). I'm not exactly sure how a non-deductible IRA rolls over into a Roth; I've only ever done 401k to Rollover IRA to Roth. I don't think you get taxed twice on the money.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com