I moved in to my grandmother’s basement a little over a year ago and it has allowed me to save a good chunk in my savings account. As time goes on I am starting to really hate being here more and more and I want to move out and get my own place as soon as possible. She lives in a small town about 20 minutes away from a larger city where I commute to work. Another factor to consider in this problem is that I am currently unhappy with my place of employment and I am currently looking for a new job. I am job searching in that city along with 2 other nearby larger cities (hour or so apart). I am the type of person that tries takes advantage of every financially smart decision I come across. I originally saved up my savings account with intent for a down payment for a house in the city. (I did this believing paying a mortgage would be better than renting because I would have equity. Also I wanted to avoid paying PMI at all costs.) But now that my future is hazy with my current job I am afraid to lock myself down anywhere knowing that I might have a better opportunity elsewhere. This also applies to getting a 1 year lease for an apartment as well. I know a lot of my problems rely on getting myself straightened out with a new job. But in the mean time I want to know what to do with the money that I have saved to take advantage of any potential gains with it. I have around 30,000 in a high yield savings account gaining 1.8% interest. I just recently opened up a vanguard account and rolled over a childhood mutual fund of about 7,000 into a vanguard fund. I also just opened up a Fidelity account because I am very interested in investing in stocks and basically investing in my future (The fidelity account would be purely for stock trading myself. Vanguard's website is not the most user friendly or informative about stock news and plus their commission is a little higher so I figured it wouldn't hurt to just use them for mutual funds and use fidelity for stocks only.) I follow the FIRE community and believe in the overall goal of FIRE. But my concern is I do not want to lose the liquidity of my savings. I want to be a homeowner one day, I know that it will make me happy being able to have my own place to do whatever I want with. I know the general consensus I get from people in a lot of these financial subs is to max out your 401k or Roth IRA (I have a 401k that I max the match from my current employer), and then invest and hold for the long run in the market. But like I said, I want to be able to have a down payment if need be. Am I over thinking this or being too concerned with that? I really just want advice in whether I should care about having that much money accessible. Should I be focused on buying rather than renting when the time to move out comes? I just do not know what the best financially smart decision is... Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks! (P.S. I have about 19,000 left in student debt as well. Im on track to pay it off early but I have pulled back from being so aggressive in paying it off to grow my savings over the past year)
Submitted September 16, 2018 at 08:58PM by fondlemycookie https://ift.tt/2OtYLqM
