By Amber T., Social Media Marketing Supervisor and Blog Contributor
I don’t know about you, but I do my best to stick with my health-related New Year’s resolutions for about six weeks by the time life kicks in and I am off the bandwagon.
Fortunately, when it comes to my financial resolutions, I do a little better. For example, this year I opened a Scottrade Bank® account and have been using the automatic deposit feature to make sure my savings are continually increasing.
We asked investors and traders about their 2012 resolutions and holiday plans. Here’s what they had to say.
Most Popular Resolution
Knowledge is power. The most popular 2012 investment resolution is to become more educated about trading or investing (35 percent).
That’s great news if you are with Scottrade because while the weather might be chilly or downright cold where you are this winter, we have a number of investment education resources that you can participate in from the comfort of your couch.
Cozy up by the fire with your cocoa for a Live Webinar with one of our Client Education team members or if you like to learn on your own, articles abound in the Knowledge Center to help you get up to speed or sharpen your investing and trading knowledge. If you are out and about this winter (or bored at family holiday gatherings) the Scottrade Mobile® app can help you stay connected.
Survey respondents also indicated their resolve to put their know-how to work by building-up their savings cushion and investing more money in the stock market.
The Little or Not So Little Ones
For investors who set a goal of opening or contributing more to an education savings account (ESA), 43 percent said they are doing so to help their grandchild or grandchildren. Do I hear gift idea?
Bulging Holiday Budgets?
Do you plan to spend as much or more than you did last year on gifts for the holiday season? If you answered more, you are not alone. The majority of investors (71 percent) let us know they plan to do just that, while less than a third plans to spend less.
Better to Give or Receive
Adding a little fun to our holiday survey, we asked respondents to let us know what they expect to receive this holiday season. Here’s the breakdown.
What are you expecting in your stocking this season and have you started on your resolutions? Share with us in the comments section below.
Amber T. is the Social Media Supervisor at Scottrade. She has been at Scottrade since 2008 and oversees social media marketing.
Want to continue the conversation? Go to the Scottrade Online Community.
I am really excited about 2012. 2008-2010 were the years we got out of debt. 2011 was the year of building the emergency fund. 2012 is the year we will be plugging back in. Now that we have our emergency fund in place, I feel that we can now invest with confidence.
We had put our retirement and non-retirement investing on hold while we got out of debt and built up our EF (we are Dave Ramsey fans) because we understand the impact that having extreme levels of focus can have on your goal path and your momentum. For example, if we had continued to invest while we were paying off debt and building the EF, it would have taken us longer to reach those goals. Also, if we had run into a financial problem during that time, we probably would have needed to cash out our investments to cover that problem. That would have been a serious hit to our momentum and confidence in our ability to reach our goals. The fully-funded emergency fund is insurance for your investments and it is so valuable.
Now that we have our FFEF, my husband is going to start up his 401(k) contributions in January. He will be contributing up to the match, then the rest (for a total of 15% of his income) will go into a Roth IRA. I can't contribute to my 401(k) yet, so I will be contributing $5k to a Roth IRA, and the rest (for a total of 15% of my income) will be going into a taxable account here at Scottrade.
We are still working on paying off the house, and that will move slower now that we are re-engaging our investing, but we are in such a better position now than we were 4 years ago. Investing is important, but getting your life in order so you don't have to cash out your investments is even more important!
Horray for the promise of 2012!