Thread: New to investing!

Welcome to the Board Pipelayer1906. You are in safety right now, the BOTTOM is not in. I am staying in the "G" until it turns around or indicates a bounce is likely then it would be back to safety. Some are Dollar Cost Averaging [DCA] on the way down to buy shares on the CHEAP. I'm sure they will be here to welcome you and explain DCA if you are unfamiliar with it. Be careful out there.
Best of luck
Norman

Originally Posted by Pipelayer1906

Hello everyone! I'm just started my TSP about a year ago and I have 100% on my G funds. When should I starts dividing my funds into different funds?

Welcome PL ! Nnuts pretty much said it all ! Just remember the true
answer to your question. The answer is; "When You Decide To". You'll
find a plethora of different opinions and philosophy's on that one.

Welcome PipeLayer,


You got to of the best people telling you the smart move to make. No reason to try and catch a bottom when we ain't seen one yet. Hold on to your nest egg right now and watch, read, and learn when you think YOU will be comfortable getting into the market.

Peace

Pipe, Welcome to confusion, it is hard to filter all of the noise out and the information in. Read everything you can get your hands on in regards to investing.

In my humble opinion the answer to your question depends on your age. If you have a few decades until retirement, in my opinion you should venture out some(invest). You have to make that call for yourself.

To me the most important barometer is the sleep barometer. If you are losing sleep over your investments you either a) need to move to safer investments b) do more research to make yourself more comfortable with the decision that you made.
Don't jump in (invest) because someone on this board or at work, says you should. Don't try and pick the bottom or the top. Think long term.

Good luck, this is my 2 cents that due to inflation is only worth 1.5 cents.

I know no one wants to give you advise, also you shouldn't take advise, so here is some advise. Not really, I'll just tell you my logic currently, however, it's subject to change. By luck I moved into the G-fund in April after playing the swings between C/S/I funds and G fund in the spring when we could make more than two moves. So in that I've been okay, at this time I plan to buy into stock again slowly at certain points plus one of the L funds. I made my first buy today moving in 11% with the "mark" of the Dow going under 8500 the logic is to keep moving into the market with each 500 plus point drop. Since we can only make 2 moves a month, I will try to watch what I believe to be a "trend" to move in twice a month as I can always pull back to the G. That said, any major bounce up at this point I will pull back ALL into the G fund and start over. I think we will see bear rallies approaching or 10,000 in the DOW but I think they will fail. Point is I might make money I might loose, if I take a big hit and loose 5 or 10K I'll probably go safe and lick my wounds, but I expect some downside as I buy in. Maybe I'll catch a wave. If you have been in for just one year you probably don't have too much in the G and your retirement is probably off in the future. Since the major stock in the fund are down around 40% it "seems" they would be heading up "sometime" probably not today or soon but sometime. What I would do if I were you and new to this whole world is call your G fund your nest egg and just watch it sit for a bit in the G-fund but I would being buying in with my future allocations. The easy way to go is the L-fund that matches your timeline. I tend to go for a C/S/I split (sometimes with an L-fund for a 25% split. If you get confident that the bottom is in you can move some or all of the proverbial egg, or just always have a safe space. Again, it's easy to say what I would do with YOUR money, like they say it's the "sleep test" for you.

Originally Posted by DrScooter

By luck I moved into the G-fund in April after playing the swings between C/S/I funds and G fund in the spring when we could make more than two moves. So in that I've been okay.

When it comes to luck, Atlantic City Casino's come to mind. With that said,
You made a decision to move into the (G) Fund. You had a choice to stay.
You made a good decision. It wasn't luck, it was a good decision. The trick
is making more good decisions, then bad. Being right more often then being
wrong. You will have plenty of bad decisions. When you come to terms with
the fact that this will happen, you will remove emotion from decision making
process and benefit from it in the long run. I just thought I'd thow that into
the mix. May we all avoid snake eyes in this very hard Bear Market.

You have only been at it one year. Go ahead and bet your whole pile a few times, you can't lose big at this point. It will be good practice.

Oh, and one big "Oh sh**" can cancel all "atta-boys" you may own.

The more you practice the better you will get.