With a 25-year horizon and a preference for a quiet life, ETFs fit your situation better: they stay liquid, diversified and automatic, while a rental adds tenant, maintenance and vacancy work. I would only choose the property if the net rent after all costs clearly beat the ETF return and I was happy being a landlord.

Equifax is only one of three nationwide credit reporting agencies, with the others being Experian and TransUnion. Also, the "credit reporting agencies" are only a tiny fraction of all the companies collecting information about you.

I'm not sure if CreditKarma or Borrowell source information from companies other than (or in addition to) Equifax, but if they do then no, they aren't redundant.

That said, there are other strategies to protect yourself, depending on your situation: instead of interacting with more of these companies to better monitor your credit, you could freeze it so that there's less need for monitoring.

I think there are some federated wiki services that we can make use of, but im sure there are others with far more knowledge on this

What's the preferred way to go about this on Lemmy? Based on @greatwhitebuffalo41@slrpnk.net's comment it sounds like Lemmy might not have a Wiki-equivalent? Would you want to see the content hosted elsewhere and just linked to on the sidebar?

Sure, reddit might be a lost cause, but the data there was posted by people like us. As long as we import the content so to speak into lemmy instead of acting as a launchpad for reddit, I'm open to it. I would prefer we people who link to content on reddit do a write up around it similar to bestofredditorupdates sub though.

@WandererLagomorph799@lemmy.ml / @nieceandtows@programming.dev / @nieceandtows@lemmy.ml is this something you are open to?

Idk if Lemmy.ml has a wiki. I know piefed does and my instance does. Since I run both the reddit and Lemmy communities for my sub, I just brought the entire wiki with me. I have to maintain two now but, that's not that big of a deal.

How about linking to something else like choosefi or another chart.

I couldn't agree more. I'm trying to use Lemmy more but still not familiar with the platform. I assume it's similar to Reddit where the community Moderators are the ones who can pin posts or update the sidebar?

The flow chart and fund selection advice should be pinned.

They address the basic questions of “what do I do with my money”.

not an answer to your question, but for what it's worth, ive held a negative balance on ebay for getting close to 20 years. ive been impressed with that persistence.

Just do the etfs unless you already make your own hours and are good at finding trades people that don't suck.

Furthermore, I don’t believe I want to be a landlord. Ain’t it too stressful?

If an investment would keep you awake at night, it's the wrong investment for you. From the Bogleheads investment philosophy (mostly USA centric, but easily tweaked for non-USA):

Aim to select an asset allocation that lets you sleep at night, and avoid the destructive urge to sell out in a panic the next time the market plummets, then having to worry over when is the time to get back in. This leads to selling low and buying high, the exact opposite of prudent investing.

As you said, your time horizon is at least 25 years. Would you want to be a landlord (even one that just outsources everything to a property management company) for nearly three decades?

I will offer two anecdotes from colleagues of mine that pursued rental property. The first colleague came from a family of real estate agents, and basically every branch of his extended family already had rental properties. He now has six rental properties and benefitted from the extensive "knowledge capital" within his family on how to do rentals properly. He's also good with DIY and carefully selected long-term tenants that reliably pay rent, so he doesn't have to raise rent often, which keeps turnover low. It was clear he would be fine as a landlord, as a part of his diversified portfolio.

My second colleague became a landlord because he got married and moved to a different area to start a family, meaning his original home could be rented out. He wasn't too far though, so he took care of the property maintenance himself. As it happened, when he had twins, there wasn't much time left to deal with the rental, and in the end it was easier to just sell it and focus on his family. He made positive money from the sale, but the nature of holding just a single rental property means it could equally have been a loss if market conditions were different. I think he made the right move to simplify his portfolio, because although his retirement time horizon is decades out, he only has so many years to be a doting father. Life changes should ideally not cause one's portfolio to be overhauled.

£120,000 in one bank

is this advice mean for the average lemming? lol

Pensions are invested in the market too, and sometimes badly managed and can fail or reduce benefits, and 401ks work fine, historically anyway with some knowledge, can't know the future, but the wealthy like when it goes up too. Follow the early retirement formula 4% guide, index funds, don't try market timing, when market is down and it's payday the new shares are on sale, as retirement approaches adjust allocation if desired, or stay all VTI or VUG from early 20's to retirement. I didn't come up with this, got from Mr. Money Mustache, and he got from Boggleheads or whatever. This blog is good too https://livingafi.com/2014/01/21/how-to-live-in-corporate-prison/ Good luck!

Good call - added. Thank you!

Looks cute, clean and comprehensive. Nice tool for young and folks new to money, budgeting and planning.

It might make sense to specify it is for people in the US near the top.

I Will Teach You To Be Rich Scam-like title but the author actual pokes fun at it. It's a quick read and funny too meant for 20/30 something year olds but can apply to anyone.

I'm going to go against the grain of everyone here and told you to be careful with these kind of investment. Sorry if it's condescending, it's not my intention, there is just so many sad story of young people loosing it all trying to get rich quick, it's very sad.

Stock and ETF can make you loose your savings. They are taxed. The market are lopsided towards AI and is more and more volatile. Do not place all your savings on a single ETF or anything like that. Market ETF can help with diversifying without too much risk, but risk is a fundamental components of this world.

Before placing this money in any of that, please take the time and energy to understand. If you want to take a shortcut, use an LLM. Explain you situation like you did and ask how you should use your money. Understand finance and the markets, not just definition but how they work too, what are the risks, etc. What options are realistic with you salary and current saving ? If you want a fun side to start getting into finance, check Atrioc on YouTube, if you want a more grounded side, check Patrick Boyle, or The Plain Bagel. From these recommandations, you will find many other good source and avoid scammers. Be careful, there is always a phase when you learn about something where you feel very confident in your understanding, especially in the beginning. Remember that you are not a financial experts (and I'm not either).

Here are some tips, based on my experience in France, which could be completely different that Italy, even though we are neighbors and in the EU. Maybe, like in France, you could create a "life assurance" ("assurance vie") that is partially secured or assured (if they exist and work like in France). Also, if you are young, maybe there are saving accounts made for young people that are safe and good return (again, it exists in France, maybe you have something similar?)? These special saving accounts are not usually crazy but they fight the inflation and you cannot loose you money. Once you have something like six months of salary saved in one of these for emergency, then you can look for other placement. Again, if you have something equivalent to a life assurance in France, this is you best bet. Usually, you can split your portfolio between very safe placement (usually it's bonds) and more risky one. The idea is to have a more risky profile in the beginning and slowly move towards a safer profile as you get closer to your retirement. With those, the worst that can happen, and it can happen of course, is that it gets you 0% months after months. Realistically, it more likely to get bad by not beating the inflation. But experts traders at the bank will choose how to use you money and they should be better than that. Of course, it is a service and it will cost money that will eat at your gain, so be careful about that (and tax maybe?). Choose a bank that have good return (but remember that it does not guaranty they will stay at the advertised level) and fee that are acceptable. Also your profit are compounded. So it's not like betting on a stock for years and loosing all because you didn't sell before a crash. And the banks money should be assured (up to 100000€ in France) so even if there is a crash you can't loose your savings. This should be your retirement fund and the bulk of your savings.

If after that, you still have money this you can spare and you are willing to loose it all, again, start by understanding the finance world. Avoid Options or similar, as you can loose exponentially more than you placed. Leave that to the expert and the degenerate gamblers. This is what fuel Walt Street Bet stories. Don't be like that. Don't loan money to use in the market or really understand what is a margin call. Learn to accept the FOMO and keep your greed in check. Don't get swallowed by the hypes and the exceptional winner : they are the outlier. Most people and traders do not beat the market. Yes, you could be lucky but this is gambling at this point. Ideally you are looking to beat inflation and maybe have a little margin. It will not make you a millionaire. Check what happened with Game stop and the apes. Look at what happening in Korea and the ants. Learn from their mistakes.

I wish I could give you more information, but honestly I'm not an expert at all, and even expert can fuck up.

Sorry to rain on your parade, but staying grounded and realistic with you money will avoid ruining you for a stupid mistake or hubris. I understand the attractiveness of this world especially if you feel stuck and life is hard. There are so many people trying to scam you or that are just confidently giving shit advice (ex. "Infinite money glitch" of writing fake check, which is fraud...). You hear stories of people becoming millionaire overnight.

And be skeptical of what I said (maybe I wrong or missing something important) or anyone tell you. Do your research! Good luck and take care

You can look up the composition of each index, before you buy it.

Usually I need a web search to map the stock ticker to a holding company and then another wwb search to map the holding company to a real company.

You'll see heavy amounts of Microsoft, Alphabet (Google) and Amazon in anything that is just blindly buying with an algorithm - almost as if algorithm companies are good at fooling an algorithm...

Searching for funds with a non-technology focus will help, or searching for funds that focus on providing a dividend return (today's biggest tech companies are deep in debt and usually don't pay a quarterly dividend.)

Companies that do routinely pay a dividend are under some pressure to resoond to their customers rather than to CEO hype waves.

This is excellent advice. I don't know the future. I just know that technology is acting the ways it did before previous busts, but much worse this time.

Still... transportation is looking really good, right now. Everybody needs stull delivered.

If that's the case, most ETFs will get crossed off your list

Dont trust anyone that claims that something will go up or down like he is a wizard.

Be sure to dig into the composition of any index fund you buy. Many of them have so much technology stock that they're both indistinguishable from each-other and also doomed (edit: As was pointed out - yes this is hyperbole. I am neither from the future nor a sacred prophet of a time traveling diety.).

The market does great over time, but anyone in tech can tell you this is an abysmal time to buy in to tech stock.

Any fund that blindly buys big popular companies is going to be shattered by the coming tech bubble bursting.

Look for funds with rules for inclusion. Today's tech stocks are fraught with fraud may have trouble passing those rules.

Ethical funds exist, but don't currently go far enough to protect your investment. Smoking is bad, but certain kinds of warmongering are apparently a-ok...

Sector specific funds like energy, or transportation have much lower exposure to the current tech bubble.