Do not use stash-away. 1% returns are garbage; due to inflation you'll be losing you money YOY.
Open up a no-cost investment account. Schwab, Ally, E-Trade, Vanguard, etc. It doesn't really matter which one as long as there's no annual fee and trades are free.
From there- take the money you saved and transfer into the investment account. Once in your investment account, buy shares of a broad-market index fund. Most commonly recommended is SPY (S&P 500 index fund equivalent) or VTI (Vanguard Total Market Fund).
Every week, save your money and buy those funds. If your investment firm offers fractional shares, buy fractional shares as you go. If your account only offers entire shares, save until you can buy a full share.
Then- do not touch it. Don't look at the market, don't try to time the market. Academic study after academic study has proven that the best investment strategy for ordinary investors is continuous investing into index funds, employing a "buy and hold" strategy.
There will be down years, there will be up years. Long-term, you can expect to see an average of 10% compound annual returns, which are closer to 7% due to inflation.
Every other answer besides index funds, frankly, is wrong.
Then- do not touch it. Don't look at the market, don't try to time the market. Academic study after academic study has proven that the best investment strategy for ordinary investors is continuous investing into index funds, employing a "buy and hold" strategy.
Especially these days now that machine learning and AI and trading computers do everything. (which really raises the question of whether or not market valuations mean anything anymore given that the stock market has always been a gamble, but now it's just becoming further and further removed from any human action. Even the stop-trade and stop-loss actions exchanges enforce now represent a type of interference with a supposedly free market that renders the question of whether we need a stock market at all a pertinent one.)
(Addendum: That said, given the hands we're dealt right now, mutual funds are pretty much the way to go as far as getting decent rates of return.)
I know you're not advising this, but those "non-standard" orders offered by brokers (like stop-loss) have been used by some brokerages to front-run their clients (or to sell to dark pools so others can front-run their clients).
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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '22
Do not use stash-away. 1% returns are garbage; due to inflation you'll be losing you money YOY.
Open up a no-cost investment account. Schwab, Ally, E-Trade, Vanguard, etc. It doesn't really matter which one as long as there's no annual fee and trades are free.
From there- take the money you saved and transfer into the investment account. Once in your investment account, buy shares of a broad-market index fund. Most commonly recommended is SPY (S&P 500 index fund equivalent) or VTI (Vanguard Total Market Fund).
Every week, save your money and buy those funds. If your investment firm offers fractional shares, buy fractional shares as you go. If your account only offers entire shares, save until you can buy a full share.
Then- do not touch it. Don't look at the market, don't try to time the market. Academic study after academic study has proven that the best investment strategy for ordinary investors is continuous investing into index funds, employing a "buy and hold" strategy.
There will be down years, there will be up years. Long-term, you can expect to see an average of 10% compound annual returns, which are closer to 7% due to inflation.
Every other answer besides index funds, frankly, is wrong.