Frugal Babe

A rich life without a lot of money

  • Home
  • About me

Muddling Through Investing

January 5, 2008 By Frugal Babe

I have a buy and hold strategy when it comes to investing.   Not because I’m highly educated in matters of the stock market and believe this to be the best method.   Instead, I know that we need to be investing our money, I know that we’re investing for the long term, and I’m woefully uneducated about the nuances of detailed investing.   Since I know that I don’t know much, I tend to keep my paws off  our investments once I make them.   I guess you could call it a buy and hold and hope strategy.   Since the stock market does tend to rise over time, my investment values also rise.   But could we be doing better?  

I bought my first ETF about a year ago.   I bought $500 worth of shares, and it’s worth $451 right now.   So I wouldn’t call myself a wizard at picking funds.   I don’t buy individual stocks, since that would require far more research and knowledge than I have.   Instead I stick with ETFs, no load mutual funds, and index funds.   But I feel like I could use some help in figuring out which ones to buy.

We just put $1000 into my husband’s IRA last week.   It was languishing in  the money market section of his account, and  we just used it to buy an ETF.   I spent about 45 minutes online researching the fund before we bought.   It’s an international fund, and I did research on the country’s economy, the morningstar rating of the fund, and the fund’s history.   I feel good about our purchase, but at the same time I feel that we only understand a fraction of what we need to in order to be picking ETFs and mutual funds for our retirement accounts.

I’m also perplexed as to where to go about getting good information.   The library and internet are swarming with investing advice, but how does one decipher the good from the bad and the ugly?   How do you determine what advice is unbiased and sound?   Everyone seems to have a different strategy.   I do know that we’re on the right track just by spending less than we earn and investing a good chunk of our savings each month.   But then what?

Filed Under: investing, savings 2 Comments

Comments

  1. plonkee says

    January 5, 2008 at 3:44 pm

    You’d have to be sure of making higher returns than basic index funds to justify another fee. Personally, I’m not into beating the market, but each to their own.

    Reply
  2. yp says

    January 6, 2008 at 3:38 am

    Trent at the simple dollar recommends low entry cost, index funds. It seems to be hard to time the market and most professional fund managers can’t even do it. Maybe your best bet is dollar cost averaging your money over time into an broad index fund.
    Trent though has also reviewed books on picking individual stocks and value investing. You might want to go over there and go through the reviews on them.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Great eBooks:

Recent Comments

  • Chris on Still Here, Still Frugal!
  • Cassie on Still Here, Still Frugal!
  • James High on $20 Window Well Makeover
  • Kay on Still Here, Still Frugal!
  • BigMama on Still Here, Still Frugal!
Shop for Fashion Dresses on DHgate

Organifi coupon

Recent Posts

  • Still Here, Still Frugal!
  • Goodbye, mortgage!
  • Achieving our goals, thanks to long-term frugality
  • Still here!
  • An update from our frugal corner of the world

Blogroll

  • Brave New Life
  • Budgets Are Sexy
  • Early Retirement Extreme
  • Green Baby Guide
  • Kristen’s Raw
  • Mr. Money Mustache
  • Nature Moms Blog
  • No Impact Man
  • Penniless Parenting
  • Personal Budgeting
  • Pleasantly Poor
  • Sense To Save
  • Simple Mom
  • Stop Buying Crap
  • Surveybag
  • The Good Human
  • The Thrifty Chicks
  • Tight Fisted Miser
  • Ultimate Money Blog


  • See Store Coupons
    • All Coupons
    • Amazon Coupons
    • Apple Coupons
    • Best Buy Coupons
    • Buy.com Coupons
    • Dell Coupons
    • HP Coupons
    • Newegg Coupons
    • Office Depot Coupons
    • Staples Coupons
    • TigerDirect Coupons
  • See Category Deals
    • All Deals
    • Laptop Deals
    • Netbook Deals
    • Cell Phone Deals
    • TV Deals
    • GPS Deals
    • Camera Deals
    • iPod Deals
    • Tablet Deals
    • eReader Deals
    • iPhone Deals
2b6bab8e374c855da7bfa46c21b51c6e-332