[l3uddha]

i dunno what the heck that health insurance thing is all about, but I recently started contributing from my paycheck to my fidelity 401k that my work set up and also contributes to. they contribute some amount each year outside of my pay (cant remember what), but what i started doing was taking 4% out of my paycheck before taxes each week, because they also match that 4%. I've still got other loans to pay off, but really the sooner you start contributing at least something to the 401k the better. my dad went over it with me and helped me set it up. he's a total wiz at the stuff. and i think with the 401k you're able to take money out without any penalties once, to put it down on a house or something. and really, something like 4% before taxes is something that won't be missed outta my pay. i'll tweak it more as i go along, adding more to it as i pay off other loans, but for now i've got a 85%stocks and 15%bonds split. fidelity has a freedom fund that is a pretty good start and has decent returns, but they have a 1% management fee, so i ended up picking my own stock and bond funds. the market is doing pretty poorly right now, but because i've got 15% in bonds i'm still earning a little money rather than losing it. i think it'd be a really wise choice to get going on it at your age, because when i talk to a lot of people about it, they say their biggest regret was not contributing to it sooner. that stock & bond split is a good place to start too, and get your nose wet. that's where i'm starting, but my boss said at one point he sat down with a fidelity guy who went over it in much more detail, such as a certain %in foreign markets, large cap, med cap, etc. the way i look at it, is that this is a retirement fund. i'd like something that shows stability and a positive gain over a long-term, and I can just sort of not have to worry about it too much. at some point i'm going to take a few thousand and play with some stocks short-term, but investing is more of a long term thing and it seems kind of silly to have my retirement split 10 different ways and have to constantly keep and eye on both domestic and foreign markets to switch things around at a moment's notice. if you're doing that, you're trying to stay ahead of the market, rather than understand what it's doing. just what i think anyway.