This past weekend I attended E*Trade’s FREE Education Day here in NYC! I received notice about the event via an email blast E*Trade sent to all their existing customers (I have an old account with them that I’m not using). Within the email I was able to register for event and could forward the invite to friends and family, even if they are not E*Trade customers. When I saw the words, “FREE” I was all in!
First, I must say, I was extremely impressed with how the event was set-up, ran, and executed. The turnout was much larger than I had originally expected. People from all over with different backgrounds, nationalities, ages, and genders were in attendance. From a prompt start at 9am, to the free breakfast and coffee, E*Trade did a fantastic job of getting the ball rolling quickly and efficiently.
The event covered four different areas of investing- Trading, Retirement (Investing), Options, and Futures. Each area of investing had a total of six break out sessions with the exception of Futures, which only offered 4 sessions that started in the afternoon.
Within each category of investing, attendees could mix and match their schedule based on the topics that they were most interested in.
Session overviews and schedules were provided in advance, so I was able to plan my day accordingly prior to arriving. Naturally, I was most interested learning more about Retirement (Investing) and the tools E*Trade offers for that, so I inadvertently stayed in the same room for the entire event (oops! insert emoji here haha). For the Retirement/Investing breakout sessions, they discussed the the following:
- Four Steps to Investing for a Financial Goal
- Building a Portfolio with Mutual Funds and ETFs
- Investing for a More Tax Efficient Retirement
- Income Investments
- Paying Yourself in Retirement: Creating a Sustainable Withdrawal Plan
- Taking Advantage of Roth Accounts: Generating Tax-Free Income in Retirement.
While I didn’t stay for the full day, which was scheduled to end at 5:00pm, I did manage to stay for half a day and take in what I could. Again, who can pass up a few free lessons/ insights on money?
Here are just a few of many takeaways I got from the event:
Session Takeaways
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When it comes to retirement and creating a plan, you should determine and consider the following:
- Define and know what your retirement goals are.
- Think about how much time you have until retirement and the implications that time remaining will have on your investments and their ability to grow.
- Based on the first two items, calculate and take into account how much savings you will need for the future in order to achieve your retirement goals.
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How you react to market volatility will play a BIG role in realizing gains for your nest egg.
During one of their sessions, E*trade provided a chart similar to the one below to demonstrate the level of volatility the market (graph based on the S& P 500 Index) has seen over the past 86 years (chart based on 1929 – 2015). Essentially, the graph is meant to highlight how many more times the market has been POSITIVE on realizing gains than it has been NEGATIVE on realizing losses. Based on the graph below, if you started investing in 1929 and stopped in 2015 (coupled with a few assumptions like dividend reinvestment, etc) your average rate of return from the S&P would have been 11.56%! However, in order to realize an average of 11.56% a year, you would have had to stay in the market for the past 86 years. Which means you would have had to weather a great depression, several market corrections and a lot of market volatility over the course of 86 years without flinching, getting scared of losing it all, or losing faith in the idea that the market will bounce back. Even though past market performance does not guarantee future returns (below chart), in short, emotional investing (aka FREAKING OUT during a market downturn, taking all of your money out, and putting it under your mattress) can cost you in volatile markets.
*Chart from – http://www.macrotrends.net/2526/sp-500-historical-annual-returns
• Keep your asset allocation, aka your asset mix, in mind when looking at your retirement portfolio.
As I briefly mentioned in my post “401(k)- 5 things to consider”, your asset mix (stocks, bonds, alternatives) is key when it comes to your retirement. Finding the right balance of risk that will meet your future need for returns/savings is something to keep in mind.
• Asset class diversification is also key when building your retirement portfolio.
Within your asset mix/allocation (stocks, bonds, alternatives), you should also look to diversify your holdings within each category. For example, lets say your current portfolio is comprised of 33% stocks, 33% bonds, and 33% alternatives. For your 33% allocation for stocks, within that 33% holding, are your investments diversified across different geographies (foreign, domestic, etc) and different market cap sizes (small-cap stock, mid- cap stock, etc) or are all your stocks within one sector/bucket, one geography, etc? A well allocated and diverse portfolio, that fits your needs, is key!
• The tax bracket that you’re in at retirement will play a role in how much you withdraw, as well as the types of investments you invested in over the course of your career. These things will have a direct impact on the amount of taxes you at retirement.
For example, if you contribute to a Roth IRA now, when it comes to withdrawing that money at retirement, the money you withdraw will be tax free because early on you decided to put your money into a ROTH IRA and pay taxes upfront. On the other hand, you may be investing in a traditional 401k which makes that money tax deferred now but come withdrawal time, you will be paying tax on the money you take out. These types of investment decisions will have a significant impact on your future retirement goals.
• E*Trade offers a free tax bracket guide that is updated annually on their website ( http://inklingsandyarns.com/2012/01/new-toy-tuesday-christmas-gifts/ Click here for info. )This is just a useful piece of free information you can check from time to time to get an idea about what tax bracket you are in.
Overall, I felt like the presenters were fairly knowledgable and seemed to field and answer questions from the audience well. The information presented within the first hour of each session was either pretty useful or at least planted a few purposeful questions in your head. Of course, E*Trade pushed their platform and what they had to offer, but generally they left that for the last 20 minutes or so of the presentation. It was a free event put on by E*Trade, so you can’t expect them to NOT push their product a little. All in all, I do think you can leave the event with a few pieces of useful information or at least things to start considering that you hadn’t before.
It would have been nice to see more millennials in the crowd. However, I do know that retirement talk and overall money topics in general can be a little boring, so I get it. I do hope however, that in the future, there will be more events geared towards millennials and the power of our pockets.
So next year if you get an email from E*Trade about Education Day and you aren’t sure if you should go, can i buy Pregabalin over the counter in usa I WOULD recommend that you attend and check it out for yourself. If you aren’t an E*Trade customer but think you might be able to benefit from the invite, I encourage you to periodically google “E*Trade Education Day” to see when the next FREE event near you will be.
I think you can walk away from this event with more knowledge than you came with and I strongly recommend you go at least once and give it a try for yourself.
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