Is it better to buy individual stocks or invest in your company 401k?

[Yagirlcheatinonus]

?

 

[beenz]

Your company 401k typically will only allow u to invest in a number of mutual funds

If u have done any type of retirement rollover plan from an old job, u can use those funds to invest in individual stocks.

Or u can use your own money and open a personal Brokerage account and invest in whatever the hell u want.

 

[NatiboyB]

Do both...but always max out your company 401K especially if they offer any type of matching.

 

[NeilCartwright]

I’m a bit younger but I’m biased towards index funds and technology stocks. Idk where you work but I’d imagine they aren’t getting higher returns than Tesla, Apple, VOO. VGT, etc

There’s a few documentaries on Amazon prime about Enron and similar situations. Basically companies doing dirt and employees stuck holding the bag

*I always invested up to what my company would match bc it was free money. Thought you meant if you should invest in individual company stocks or pick your own

 

[Prodyson]

If they are matching, you should contribute enough to get the full match, otherwise you’re giving up free money.

After that, 401k is probably still a safer bet considering a large part of investing is luck. But... you have the potential to see much bigger returns investing in stock. Research says most professional stock brokers perform only slightly better than a button pressing monkey (this is not an exaggeration per the book “Superforecasters”). But if you’re willing to take the time and do the research and you have some extra money, you should definitely give it a go.

 

[R.E.N. Spells Ren]

Yea def contribute enough to maximize your company’s match. But your company match will typically be in the form of your company’s stock. So you will want to rebalance your 401k portfolio every so often (at least once a year) so you can get get into better growing and more stable funds.

 

[NeilCartwright]

Aside from a Roth 401k, open up a Roth IRA. It serves the same purpose but you deposit and pick the stocks yourself, and it’s tax free upon withdrawal

 

[BlackedOut]

@Stuntone

 

[BlackBall]

I go up to the company match and put what I can into my own stick picks

 

[Cadillac]

interesting replies

 

[DA_LURKA]

Subscrizzles. Put me on brehs...

 

[Koapa]

Both

Take advantage of your company matching 401K contributions.

Both stock in emerging companies.

 

[beenz]

My job increases our 401k contributions each year automatically by 1%. I know I was looking at January check wondering if I took a pay cut. But nope , that was them increasing the contribution.

 

[Yagirlcheatinonus]

Appreciate everything

 

[Prodyson]

My job increases our 401k contributions each year automatically by 1%. I know I was looking at January check wondering if I took a pay cut. But nope , that was them increasing the contribution.

You should be able to change that. Some companies do it automatically to “encourage” saving but it shouldn’t be mandatory. Learned about that from a book called “Nudge.” Interesting the things some companies do to “encourage” certain behaviors in employees/consumers.