It's never too early to start planning for retirement and build a stronger financial future. In this segment of Backstage Pass, recorded on Nov. 17, Fool contributors and investors Rachel Warren, Connor Allen, and Travis Hoium discuss their personal approaches to preparing for retirement.
Rachel Warren: Then Vihaan said, "outside of taxable brokerage investments you hold can you please talk through how you're managing your retirement portfolios? Roth IRA has limited 6K, when did you start 401K? How are you best managing Uncle Sam for long returns? How is your capital concentrated across your portfolios?"
If you guys want to try to hit that really quickly, I can say for me right now I'm focusing on building my stock portfolio for retirement. But my retirement is a long way off. That's how I'm doing it right now, but I'm sure I will adjust that strategy and diversify beyond that as I get older.
Connor Allen: Well, that's a lot of questions from Vihaan, all-in-one. But I'll try to just say what I do. I'm 22 right now. I opened a Roth IRA when I turned 18. I do my best to put as much money as possible into my Roth. I haven't ever opened a 401K and Travis, you may be a better person to take this question because you might have more experience with all of this being a little bit older.
Travis Hoium: Shots fired.
Allen: Your beard is just a little bit nicer than mine so I figured you had a few years on me [laughs]. But what about you, Travis? What do you do?
Hoium: I'm maybe not the best example here. I'm not investing in retirement accounts specifically. I really value the liquidity of having a taxable account and that served me well throughout my life.
Like I said, I've used the money that I've invested to do things like pay for college, pay for our wedding, now we've spent a lot of money on kids over the last couple of years. So I really value that flexibility. We also don't have as contractors, we don't have typical 401k matches and things like that.
Everybody is a little bit different. My wife is in a different boat so we have 401k through her company. Depending on what your financial advantages are, especially with the match piece of things, everybody would be a little bit different. But I'm maybe not the best example just [laughs] giving that I'm in taxable.
I guess I'm not afraid of paying my taxes if I have some big winners. But that's the reason, is that I value that liquidity for right now. For better or worse, that's where we're at.
Allen: I know we're running a little bit behind on time, but just one more thing on that. A great approach to that is just putting money in your 401k up to your match and then whatever rest you have put it in your Roth IRA. That's a great budget to have.
Warren: Awesome and dividend paying stocks for me is a huge part of my strategy long-term for retirement as well, so I love that.
