Help with investing nest egg

Investing
#1

I’ve broken several of your 7 investing mistakes. I’m 59 years old and cashed out of the market during the Covid crisis. I have $610000 in cash and the market keeps climbing. I have 6 years or so before retirement.

How best do I get back into the market? Also what time period would you suggest I cost average back to 100%

Thanks, David

#2

Welcome @Dtsmith!

Congrats on having a solid nest egg! Hopefully you can add and invest it and get well over $1M by retirement!

So, the first thing I would suggest is to make a plan. At 59 you easily have 30 years of investing ahead of you! You want that $610K and anything you add to it to last. It’s simply not enough to leave in cash that whole time. You need to invest it to grow and outpace inflation.

Your plan could looks something like this:

  1. Dump all $610K into a target date index fund
  2. Add any additional contributions to said target date index fund
  3. At retirement withdraw monthly just what you need to live from said target date index fund, and leave everything else to grow

Write down you plan, and make notes about why you’re doing it. So future you can look back at it and not make panicky decisions based on the latest fear mongering headline.

You’ve experienced several market crashes in your lifetime. You’ll experience several more. But, despite any crashes, over the next 30 years the market will be way up. And the beautiful thing about target date index funds, is that they’re designed around your age. They have built in bonds and even cash as you age. So when you’re 70 for the next crash, if the market drops 50% your fund may only drop 15%, leaving 85% to live on and enough skin in the game to grow for the next decade and beyond.

Now to your question: Historically, lump sum investing makes more money. All dollar cost averaging does is give you the average price over the next year (or whatever term you choose). Lump sum give you today’s price. If the average price over the next year is lower than today’s price, then you’re better off DCA. If it’s higher, you’re better off lump sum. We don’t know what it will be, but historically, today’s price is lower than the next year about 70% of the time. That’s the reason you dump it all in today. But if that makes your chest tighten up and you’re afraid you’ll pull it out again, then by all means DCA. Take $50K/month and dump it in to a target date index fund. Do that for a year. Then never sell anything ever again until you retire, then just what you need to live. Never react to the market.

Here’s an article on target date index funds:

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