Need advice

General Business
1

I have an IRA at the bank we do business with and it matures on the 8th. I have ten days from that to move it to something else or let it renew for 5 more years. If I let it ride the interest drops from 1.04% to .35% and I don’t like the idea of that. Is there anything I can roll over to that will get better interest and not have any penalties associated with moving it? Not really looking to invest but just to push it somewhere to pick up a better interest rate and let it grow.

16’ Bonito 65 Johnson

2

Interest rates in general pretty much suck right now and will only get worse in the short term. You could do better in a short term bond fund but your principal would drop a little when rates start to go up. Vanguard Wellesly may be an option. It is an income fund that has short term bonds and dividend paying stocks, currently yielding about 2.5%. The principal fluctuates with stock price changes and interest rate changes, but they are muted compared to the overall market.

https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundIntExt=INT&FundId=0027#tab=1

Pioneer 222 Sportfish
Yamaha 250

3

Depends on how much risk you want but most any decent broker can get you 4-6% over the long haul without a huge amount of risks. There will be ups and downs but you have to ignore that

Lot of my clients, as well as my Wife, use Edward Jones . I know several of the EJ folks in our town and go to lunch with 3-4 of them every year at various times. One thing I have noticed is they company as a whole has pretty conservative basis on investing and they are in for long haul

WIth that said pretty much any broker can do same thing for you, Personally I am not too keen on the brokers that work for the banks but there are some good ones there as well

Most will do a risk tolerance test to see what your long term goals are and go from there

Personally I would not want to put IRA in something paying what they pay now, not worth the trouble however it is very safe

I have an old IRA that I started 30 yrs ago, it has a min 4 3/4 % guaranteed return which at the time was not a big ordeal(was paying 7-8% back then) but now that is pretty (**() good rate with no risk at all

Sea Pro 210cc
Yamaha 200 4 Stroke
Dodge 1500 4x4 HEMI
2008 Corvette 3LT

4

OK Coot…Here’s the deal…This is a straight shot at getting you where you need to be.

The IRA is an account…“Individual Retirement Account”. It does not pay interest, or dividends. It is an empty basket, an account.

What the “Bank” puts INTO the account(IRA)is a Certificate of Deposit…A CD and the CD has a maturity date and an interest rate that it pays. Once the CD maturity date is reached the CD matures and it converts to cash on that date, you keep all the interest.

What the “Bank” gets away with doing is setting up your IRA Account so that the “Bank” can automatically by a new CD for your account after the “magic 10 days”. You are now reinvested…like the CD or not. The "Bank’ just got you.

You can demand that the account remain in cash, do not purchase the CD.
Open a new IRA account with a brokerage firm, not a “Bank”, and have them transfer your Bank IRA to your new IRA. It will be a new IRA with the cash transferred right along with it. You start fresh.

Brokerage Firms like Fidelity, or Schwab, or Scott Trade, or Vanguard offer very low fees…not like the “Bank”. There are on line brokerage firms that allow you to key stroke all of your account management from home.

When you refer to growth in your post, know that growth only comes from exposure to stocks. CD’s are not “Growth” investments. A CD is an “Income” investment…it “pays” interest.

Stocks are ownership in the engine of economic growth generated by profit driven corporations. You buy stocks, and ride their coattails for the long ride. That growth compounds when you keep buying stocks with your IRA contributions, and the dividends paid out by some corporations back to their shareholders in cash.

I will tell you with 95% certainty that an investment in the Russel 5000 Index…You would buy that index by buying shares in either a mutual fund that tracks the Russel 5000 Index, or an Exchange Traded Fund(ETF) that does the same…would be an excellent 1st choice to invest that new cash in your new IRA.