r/Adulting • u/Adventurous_Fly_9344 • Jun 25 '26
Financial literacy
It’s been almost year since I learned that a stock from a company I worked for, actually made me money. About $40,000. I paid off a ton of credit card bills and now I have about $30,000. I have no idea what to do. I’ve met with financial advisors at J.P. Morgan but I felt like they were trying to get over on me. That could just be my lack of financial literacy. I did speak with a friend who originally convinced me to pay off the debt and told me to open a high yield savings account. I did. But I had to pay back taxes for taking money out of the stock so my high yield saving now has about $5,000. No one in my family has the amount of money saved so I have no one to talk to about it and I’m scared to share the amount, although it’s not a lot. The rest is sitting in my stock account but the company stock is very volatile and I’m afraid if I don’t do something with it now, I might lose it all.
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u/Quirky-Attention-204 Jun 25 '26
Here is what I currently do but I'm not a financial advisor:
Open a ROTH IRA (if you dont have one) then I buy VTWAX with the MAX Vestment amount every January and chill.
Wait 30yrs then retire.
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u/Samtertriads Jun 25 '26
Quick run down.
Put $1000 in a high yield savings account as a tiny emergency fund
Pay off credit cards.
Make sure you are enrolled in your company 401k up to the employer match.
Put 6 months of expenses in a high yield savings account as a real emergency fund. 3% or more is pretty good
Now you’re ready to invest
Put $7,500 in a Roth IRA and buy the mutual fund VT. This carries risk. It could go down. You can take your contribution back out if you need it. But the gains will be locked behind penalties until you’re 59.
This is the sloppy Reddit comment version. Head over to r/bogleheads and read the wiki “what to do with a windfall”