I'm 29 years old. I currently have ~$250,000 in the stock market: mostly in index-tracking mutual funds/ETFs (VOO/VTSAX as major examples), but also a few large-cap individual stocks (MCD, MMM, RTN, etc). 85% of this money is in a traditional brokerage account with no tax benefits and 15% is in a Roth IRA.
Going forward, I am only putting additional money into index funds (mainly VTSAX and ~5% into an international fund) and no longer buying individual stocks. I am not contributing too heavily right now towards my retirement, adding only ~$2,000 a year to my investments and re-investing every dividend/capital gain that I earn.
The question is, if I want to retire at roughly age 65, am I making a mistake by not investing more right now? Should I move my individual stocks into index funds (and is there a way to do this that would legally minimize my tax burden)? It sounds naive I'm sure, but one hope I have is that with Republicans holding the White House and Congress, we might see a cut to capital gains taxes for a few years - it might be an opportunity to sell my non-tax advantaged individual stocks and then try to find tax-advantaged options, or at least move those riskier individual stocks into index funds.
Any thoughts or input?
Submitted August 03, 2017 at 09:12AM by ChiShortLease http://ift.tt/2woXPuC
