Our age plays an important role in the type of investment accounts we must open or the choices we make. The advantage of being young is the best investment accounts you can get have low or no fees and minimums. The investment scope matters as most young adults don’t think about investing goals for the long term.
Young people have competitive investment timelines requiring them to consider both long-term and short-term investments based on these various needs. However, a lot of young adults want to start investing and save for retirement but don’t have any idea where to begin.
In this article, we’re going to share the best investments for young adults like you. We will also discuss the most ideal ways you can handle your money.
1. Retirement Fund
During the 1950s, employers are responsible for taking care of their employees after they retired with a generous pension plan prepared by the company in exchange for years of service. However, people, today started living longer and earnings failed to keep pace with inflation. This has gradually become the responsibility of employees to handle their own retirement funds through contributions to an Individual Retirement Account or IRA.
It’s better to start saving for retirement as it’s never too early to do it! If you start to save while you’re young, you can avoid this problem by growing your money over time.
2. Debt Elimination
Plenty of young adults deals with large debt loads nowadays compared to earlier generations as they come out of college. As a new college attendee, it can be hard to choose between paying off student loans or starting to invest in earnest.
There are services like Splash Financial which is a student loan refinancing marketplace you can find online. It’s a refinancing option that can help you reduce the costs of these loans. It provides real-time quotes from a few refinancing lenders in the market, giving you an idea about the best refinancing option available to you.
After you get used to handling your student loans in a responsible way, you must then look for ways to invest funds in your retirement accounts that you can grow for the long term.
3. Real Estate Investment
Most young adults who rent think that they must buy a house as early as they can. Above all, if the price of rent and monthly debts are similar, why not own the property? However, the buy vs. rent argument is about more than just the mortgage price every month.
This is why buying your own home is a major investment and is something that you should not take lightly. For instance, if you’re living in an apartment, you may contact your landlord to deal with pricey home issues. Let’s say if a furnace worth $4,000 dies in the middle of the winter, this is the landlord’s problem when you’re living in an apartment.
So, if you’re the homeowner, there’s nobody to call besides the local heating repair company. If you try to learn about the real costs of owning a home, it can help you understand if you’re ready to buy.
Aside from that, if you are a new real estate investor, learn about commercial property depreciation. It’s a great way to deduct the expense of purchasing real estate over a period of time. Check with a tax depreciation provider as they can provide you with the depreciation rates for it.
4. Health Savings Accounts
Health is wealth, so it’s only imperative that you invest in it. HSA or Health Saving Accounts provide unique tax benefits not found in other tax-advantaged investment accounts which is the triple tax benefit. This type of tax includes benefits such as:
- No tax accountability on contributions made into the account (discountable from your income)
- No tax liability on gains identified from investments created in the account which is excluded from income
- No tax responsibility on withdrawals made for entitled health expenses
Most often, some people have these provided by an employer-sponsored account. In this circumstance, your contributions will come directly from your paycheck pre-tax but you can keep the ability to make contributions for your health savings account also. You can claim these contributions on your tax return, therefore deducting your taxable income.
Take note that if you do not own an account made available by your employer, you can prepare your own Health Savings Account and reduce your contributions on your tax return.
5. Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs)
An Exchange-Traded Fund is a body of securities, including stocks that normally track a fundamental index but you may invest in any number of industry sectors. Although ETF is somehow the same as a mutual fund, it’s listed on exchanges such as stocks.
ETFs include various types of investments, such as bonds, stocks, commodities, or a combination of investment types.
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