I hate selling stocks, but basically I am trading one investment for another. My wife goes back to school next month for post graduate stuff to get her teaching credentials. She was unhappy in her previous job for years. Now she will become a teacher. But the college tuition will cost about $30,000! Ouch! I had over $17,000 in my regular brokerage account. I also have over $4,000 in company stock, and some stock options which will need to be exercised in the next year or two. I don’t want to borrow money to pay for the school. So I sold some stocks. I had been considering selling some of the stocks, and buying more of the ETFs. So I will keep the ETFs for last, and sell the stocks first. I sold my shares of Cabela’s, Carnival, Lowes, and Target. Each of these is a good company, but they also have strong competitors such as Bass Pro Shops, Royal Caribbean, Home Depot, and Walmart. I still need to sell something else to cover her first semester’s tuition.
But once she becomes a teacher, she will be getting good benefits, and a fairly good salary. Hopefully she will be happier. And then we can start building up our savings again. I am still contributing the max to my 401k, and she still has a couple 401ks with some good money in them.
My wife is going back to school in the fal to get her teaching credentials. I am guessing it will cost us about $30,000 over the year or longer that she is going to school. The holdings I have in my regular brokerage account are worth a little over $17,000. I also own about $4000 worth of my company stock. I will probably sell much of these to pay for her school. Then when she is done with school and gets a job as a teacher, we can start building our portfolio again. I am still stuffing money into my 401k (which passed $320,000 the other day). And my Roth IRA is worth over $15,000, and she has a small IRA, and a couple 401k plans with money in them.
I will probably sell some of the indivdual company stocks in my portfolio first.
I don’t want to borrow money. I gotta get my credit card balance back down again. Thankfully, I only owe about 4-5 more months worth of payments on my car till it’s paid off!
My wife and I stopped for lunch at a drive in restaurant in Seattle. As we were eating our lunch, my wife was reading the bag about the employee benefits that the resturant offered. The benefits seemed very good for a fast food restaurant. But one thing that caught my eye was that employees could contribute to a 401k after they had worked there for one year (pretty common), and were of the age 21 or older. Now this made me scratch my head. Why limit the 401k plans based on age? My wife said that when she managed fast food restaurants that had 401k plans, they also had the age limit. Why restrict to 401k plans to people 21 and older? I can see limiting things like alcohol to people under the age of 21 since mosy of them haven’t learned to be responsible yet. But contributing to a 401k is being responsible, so why not allow 18 years olds to contribute to a retirement plan if they want to? Or a 16 year old? With drinking, a 16 year old might drink and hurt themselves or somebody else. But what harm would contributing to a 401k plan cause?
I am trying to find out if this is a legal requirement, or decided by the individual companies. To me, it just doesn’t make sense.
Using the proceeds from my sale of Advance Auto Parts, I invested another almost $1300 in iShares Latin America Index ETF (ILF). ILF has been doing very well over the last 5 years. I believe that there is a ton of growth going on in Latin America. I have visited several countries in Central America, and the growth of the economy there is very evident.
In my regular brokerage account, and my Roth IRA, I try to invest in things that I don’t have access to in my 401k. In my 401k I have part of my money invested in an international fund. But in my Roth IRA, and my regualr acount, and I have money invested in an emerging markets fund (EEM), and just started investing in the Latin America Fund. ILF has outperformed even EEM which has done quite well for me. So I am excited to see what the ILF ETF will do.
I have been thinkibg aout it for a while now. I have been switch from buying individual stocks to buying funds. My funds have done better than my individual stocks. I just am not great at picking stocks. I do plan on holding onto some of them. The ones that I think are industry leaders and will be around for a long time. While I like Advance Auto Parts, they are not unique in their field. The are a several auto parts stores around here AutoZone, and Parts Plus. Of the auto parts places around here, I do like Advance Auto Parts the best.
I remember hearing a question about whether you thought a comapny would be around in 10 years. AAP Will probably be around, but who knows. I don’t have the faith in them that I might Target or eBay.
So I decided to sell the AAP stock today, and move the money into a fund. Maybe ILF?
I will be looking through my other stocks. I want to simplify my portfolio a bit.