Hi, I am 21 years old and just graduated from college. I just started a 20 hour per week job at a university in upstate New York and want to join the university's tax deferred retirement plan. We have a choice of TIAA-CREF or Fidelity. My parents also work at the university, but started when only TIAA-CREF was offered, so their retirement funds are all in TIAA-CREF. They hope to retire in another 3 years - at 55 and 56 years old - but that is a topic for another thread.
I have browsed through a lot of threads on this board, and am hoping someone would be willing to provide me some advice on how to allocate my contributions to my tax deferred plan. I'm thinking Fidelity and index funds; I think 75% in stock index and 25% in bond index, but I am totally confused on which ones to chose: Vanguard 500 Index Fund - Investors Class OR Spartan 500 Index Fund - Investor Class OR Spartan US Equity Index Fund - Investor Class, etc.. There are many listed in the materials the HR department distributed, but not much in the way of descriptions (that I can make heads or tails of, anyway!) There is also a Fidelity Freedom 2050 Fund with a target retirement date, but the expense ratio on that is .77 - much higher than the expense ratio on the various index funds, which appear to run between .10 and .18.
Would any of you perhaps have any words of wisdom to offer? With only working 20 hours per week right now, I don't bring home a big paycheck, but would like to start investing 10% and try to keep doing that as long as possible, depending on what life dishes out!
Thank you very much for any input you might be willing to offer.
I have browsed through a lot of threads on this board, and am hoping someone would be willing to provide me some advice on how to allocate my contributions to my tax deferred plan. I'm thinking Fidelity and index funds; I think 75% in stock index and 25% in bond index, but I am totally confused on which ones to chose: Vanguard 500 Index Fund - Investors Class OR Spartan 500 Index Fund - Investor Class OR Spartan US Equity Index Fund - Investor Class, etc.. There are many listed in the materials the HR department distributed, but not much in the way of descriptions (that I can make heads or tails of, anyway!) There is also a Fidelity Freedom 2050 Fund with a target retirement date, but the expense ratio on that is .77 - much higher than the expense ratio on the various index funds, which appear to run between .10 and .18.
Would any of you perhaps have any words of wisdom to offer? With only working 20 hours per week right now, I don't bring home a big paycheck, but would like to start investing 10% and try to keep doing that as long as possible, depending on what life dishes out!
Thank you very much for any input you might be willing to offer.