
some of y'all sitting pretty good for young folks. I'm not in a postion where I can save a lot yet. I have a 401k but I don't contribute much and it's probably under 3k at this point.
My wife finishes school in December and I plan to save most of my money once she gets a job. I'm not very knowledgeable about savings/investments though, hopefully some of you more experienced brothers can help me out at that time
You should consider adding more to your 401k contribution now unless you are barely scraping by, even if it's 1 or 2%. The more you contribute early on the better because of the compounding interest over time.
You don't pay taxes on your 401k contributions or resulting earnings until it's time to take the money out when you're ready to retire. Whereas if you just invested your money normally, you would be putting in money already taxed in, then being taxed on your earnings again when you cash out. It's basically like getting an interest-free loan to accumulate wealth with.
You have the freedom to choose from a variety of different funds offered by your broker and decide how aggressive or safe you want to go: aggressive being stock-heavy and safe being bond-heavy. I just go with the default offer, which is usually balanced to be stock-heavy when you're young, and move to being more bond heavy as you get older. Bonds offer generally a lower return, but are less volatile, so most plans recommended by brokers move more toward bonds in the latter years to hedge against risk of a stock crash around retirement time.
Plus most importantly, your employer contributes matching funds.