5 Ways You Could Be Wrecking Your Retirement
Motley Fool Answers
The Motley Fool
4.4 • 823 Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 2016
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There are countless ways you could destroy your retirement savings (investing in Orange Juice Futures and Pokemon cards comes to mind), but we’re only going to focus on 5 common mistakes that even you could be guilty of committing. We’ll also answer your question about comparing market index funds and share the results of our listener survey.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Motley Fool Answers. I'm Alison Southwick, and I am joined by Robert Brokamp, |
| 0:07.6 | personal finance expert here at the Motley Fool. He's also the advisor on Motley Fool's |
| 0:12.4 | Rul Your Retirement Newsletter. Hi, bro. Hi, Allison. Today we're going to talk about five |
| 0:18.6 | great ways that you, yes, even you, can wreck your retirement savings. There are probably more than five ways. I mean, we're not going to talk about five great ways that you, yes, even you, can wreck your retirement savings. |
| 0:22.7 | There are probably more than five ways. |
| 0:24.2 | I mean, we're not going to talk about beanie babies or investing in fine wine. |
| 0:29.5 | But, you know, these are five good ways to wreck your retirement if you want to do. |
| 0:33.6 | We're also going to answer your questions about whether the SP500 index fund really is the best. |
| 0:38.9 | And we're going to reveal the results of our listener survey because you guys say the darnedest things. |
| 0:44.0 | You're awesome. |
| 0:45.0 | All that and more on this week's episode of Motley Fool Answers. |
| 0:48.9 | All right, it's time for Answers, answers, and this week's question comes from Howard. He wants to know, |
| 0:55.0 | which is the best long-term investment, an S&P 500 index fund or a total market index fund? First off, |
| 1:02.0 | Robert, what's the difference? |
| 1:04.0 | Well, the S&P 500 index fund basically just buys whatever is in the S&P 500. So it owns 500 |
| 1:10.0 | stocks. However, there are thousands of publicly traded stocks in the S&P 500. So it owns 500 stocks. |
| 1:11.5 | However, there are thousands of publicly traded stocks in the United States. |
| 1:15.5 | So a total market index fund is going to try to buy many more beyond. |
| 1:20.7 | It'll have that S&P 500, but another several. |
| 1:23.9 | In fact, if you look at the holdings of the Vanguard's total stock market index, it holds almost 4,000 stocks. |
| 1:30.3 | Wow. That's a lot. Okay. So then, what's the best long-term investment? |
| 1:35.3 | Historically speaking, if I had to choose one and hold on for the long term, it would be the |
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