Barbara Friedberg Personal Finance

As with most elegant solutions, ‘Two Funds for Life’ is simple – you regularly invest in a portfolio containing one target-retirement fund and one fund of small company value stock. When you read the book, you’d find that the average improvement on the target-retirement fund return this strategy produced over the last 40 years was 23%; and that an 80% – 20% allocation shows an average improvement of 45%. They include starting to save and starting young, investing in stocks, not bonds, diversification rules, index fund investing, and other investing fundamentals. While the Two Funds for Life strategy yields the best results when applied over a long time, and therefore is most suited to younger people, using it will improve your retirement nest even if you only ten years away – we agree with the authors that it is never late to supercharge your retirement.

If your 401k investment choices are filled with high fee, actively managed mutual funds, company stock, or other less desirable choices you need to consider other types of accounts for your retirement dollars. In this case, only invest enough in your employer’s 401k plan to receive the company match, and invest the remainder of your retirement savings in a Roth IRA or traditional IRA outside of the company plan. Notice that marginal tax rates haven’t been as low as they are now, since the 1920’s and 1930’s. With the average 401k plan participant holding more than 7% of her investment portfolio in company stock, according to the Investment Company Institute, you may be accidentally setting your portfolio up for future losses.

EquityMultiple is an online real estate crowdfunding platform committed to bringing high value commercial real estate investment opportunities to the accredited individuals. EquityMultiple is a real estate crowdfunding platform offering smaller investors opportunities to invest in professionally managed commercial real estate. EquityMultiple brings together commercial real estate sponsors and private lenders (e.g., real estate companies operating in thriving primary, secondary, and tertiary markets with a proven record of exceeding return projections) and a growing network of individual investors who co-invest with these firms, through EquityMultiple’s platform, at relatively low minimums. It focuses firmly on separate projects and, differently to other crowdfunding real estate platforms, doesn’t offer REITs or real estate investment trust investment funds.

If you’re interested in building wealth through real estate but want to avoid the management headaches of owning actual property then investing in real estate notes might be for you. While a real estate investor can buy single-family homes or commercial properties to flip or rent out, some purchase mortgage notes as a type of investment. To get started buying and selling real estate notes, you’ll need to understand the types of notes and where to buy them. Similar to flipping actual real estate, you can also make money buying real estate notes at a discount and then reselling or flipping them, for a profit.