This Week’s Investing Project Update

Photo credit: Brad Montgomery, CC BY 2.0.

It hasn’t even been a full week since I last updated you on my investing project, but I wanted to do this early because I have a lot of news to share.

I got a bunch of freelance checks all at once — they tend to cluster around the 15th — so I put 5 percent in my HSA, 5 percent in my traditional IRA, and 5 percent in my personal investment account.

I didn’t invest the money I put in my traditional IRA because it hasn’t been transferred to Vanguard yet (the forms have been sent, and I’m waiting on confirmation). Until the IRA gets transferred to Vanguard, it’ll cost me $19.95 in fees for every mutual fund purchase, so I’m letting my latest contribution sit in my FDIC insured cash balance account for now.

I did invest the money I put in my HSA, which lets me invest in a limited selection of Vanguard mutual funds with no fees and no minimum buy-in. I also told my HSA to automatically invest my account balance in the same mutual fund, so it’ll take care of that for me every time my balance exceeds $50.

Have I mentioned that I love this HSA? I got my HSA debit card last week, and I’m excited to use it for qualifying healthcare expenses! It looks like I’ll need to take money out of the mutual fund before I can use the debit card to pay for those expenses, but that won’t be a huge deal; if I don’t get a chance to withdraw the money in advance, I can pay for qualifying expenses on my regular credit or debit card and then request reimbursement afterwards.

I also put a limit order on my personal investing account. When I bought my first ETF share last week, I put in a market order to buy it at the current market price. Adding 5 percent of my freelance checks to the account gave me enough money to buy two shares of an ETF if the price dropped by 41 cents, so I used a limit order to tell Vanguard to buy it when it hit that price.

I didn’t realize when I set the limit order that it would only last for a day. Vanguard lets you choose between day-long limit orders and 60-day limit orders, and the day order was at the top of the drop-down, so I picked it. This means that today I need to log back into Vanguard and figure out where I want to put that money. (Maybe a longer limit order this time?) Like I wrote last week, this is a learning process — and I am very excited to share what I learn next.

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