Hello, I have 50k just laying around in a HYSA. The new year made me realize I need to be smarter with my money, so I spent a lot of time reading resources and wanted someone to look over my strategy.
I paid off my student debt last year, so I have been able to just accumulate money while living with my parents. I want to start investing to prepare for married adult life with my fiancé (25M). He is not too knowledgeable about investing and finances and neither are my parents, so I wanted to ask here.
I unfortunately started my 401k just last year, so there is only 3k or so in there as a TDF with employer matching. I intend to start and max out my Roth IRA with 7k for 2025. I will keep a good chunk of money in my HYSA for the near future. The rest I hope to put into a brokerage account for growth. The exact amounts I still have to figure out (considering marriage, moving, future kids, etc…)
Let’s say I have 20k to invest. I learned that a common strategy is to just invest in VTI and VXUS. Since I want to auto-invest and you normally can’t do that with ETFs, I looked for the mutual fund equivalent for Vanguard (example since I don’t have an account anywhere yet) which seems to be VTSAX and VTIAX. Would it be a good idea to do a ratio of 80:20, and is it possible to set up my initial lump sum as well as automatic contributions from my HYSA to maintain that ratio and I can just not think about it as it grows hands off? Should I use the same strategy for my Roth IRA? I would look into adding bonds when closer to retirement too.
Also, would I be able to convert my account into a joint account after marriage without issues? My fiancé does not currently have many savings to invest on his end, but he has a 401k with 30k or so (also TDF) which I think is good for his age. We would like to combine our finances where we can assuming it would simplify things (I know you can’t combine IRAs). We would both be contributing to our life together and are both on track to be earning more in the next few years. We have a lot of hobbies and want to prepare for raising a family, so retirement isn’t the only thing we want to save for. We will likely marry in a few months but I wanted to figure it all out first and to get started already.
I still have a lot to learn regarding financial literacy in general, so I really hope to keep things simple but smart. I want to teach my fiancé all of this too, but I will likely be responsible for actually handling our accounts so I would appreciate any help. Please let me know if my assumptions and strategy seem sound! Thank you very much!