Graduates: 5 Epic Reasons You NEED a Roth IRA Account ASAP

Think twenty is too young to be thinking about your future retirement? Think again. 

Putting money into your own IRA account is one of the smartest ways to save for your retirement without paying thousands of dollars in taxes later on. 

5 Reasons Why Young Millennials and GenZers Should Take Advantage of Roth IRAs:

1. You’ll Get Decades of Tax-Free Growth

   That’s right. By taking advantage of a Roth IRA and following the rules, you’ll be able to put away thousands of dollars while your earnings and contributions grow 100% tax-free.

2. Withdraws After Retirement are Tax-Free

   Why lose a percentage of your precious earnings and contributions when you can withdraw for FREE? A Roth IRA has this among many other benefits. 

   And if that wasn’t enough of a reason to start a Roth IRA young, individuals in their 20s often make less than their elders in their 30s and 40s, which means they’ll be in a lower tax bracket. Use this opportunity to put away as much as you can!

3. You Can Start at ANY Age (But the Sooner the Better!)

   As long as you have an earned income, you can start your Roth IRA just as soon as you’re ready! Keep in mind that there is a limit to how much you can make when you’re contributing to a Roth IRA. If you are a single tax filer and earn more than $133,000 in 2020, you will not be eligible to contribute to a Roth IRA. For married couples the income cutoff is $196,000. 

4. You Can Use Your Roth IRA Fund for Future Home Purchases

   If you follow the rules, you can use up to $10,000 for buying, building or rebuilding a home. This is a “first time homebuyers exception”. However, this doesn’t necessarily have to mean you’ve never owned a home, just that you haven’t in the last two years. 

5. Saving Young Means Saving More - And With Far Less Hassle

   Financial planners will usually advise you to save between 15-20% of your income, beginning in your twenties, but having a clear goal is a much better plan. 

   You can find out specifically how much you’ll have to save a year using this handy financial planning calculator. Just remember that the more you can save, the better. After all, this is your retirement we’re talking about! 

To put things in perspective, if you were to put a minimum amount of $1,000 a year towards your Roth IRA starting at the age of 20, you will have already accrued around 225,508.12 by the time you’re ready to retire at 65. 

Contrast this with waiting until you’re 30 to begin putting a minimum of $1,000 a year towards your retirement, which would come out to be around $118,120.87 by the time you were 65 at an annual rate of 6%.

Another useful way to look at this would be that if you want to have over a million dollars in savings by the time you retire at the age of 65, you should be actively putting away around $4,500 a year from the time you’re 20 until you retire. This comes out to be $1,014,786.56 in total. Awesome, right?

Meeting savings goals will get harder the older you get because in order to save a minimum amount of around a million dollars for retirement, you’ll have to put nearly half your income into savings in a single year if you wait until you’re 40.

When it comes to retirement, the more you can save, the better. And that means the sooner you start, the more you can save and the easier it will be to meet your savings goals. 

What Are You Waiting For? Open a Roth IRA TODAY!

For contributions in 2019 and 2020, you’ll be able to contribute as much as $6,000 to a Roth IRA for both years. Remember, you have until July 15 to contribute to your 2019 IRA; For contributions in 2020, You can deposit from Jan. 1 this year to the tax year’s filing deadline in mid-April of 2021. 

When you open a Roth IRA account with Firstrade, you’ll be able to secure your retirement in a completely no-fee IRA. That means no maintenance fees, no account set-up fees and no annual account fee!

In addition, you’ll be able to take advantage of trading free of commission on stocks, options, and mutual funds in your IRA.

So what are you waiting for? Let’s open your Firstrade no-fee Roth IRA account and start saving for your future and retirement NOW!

Firstrade v3.3 for iOS is here!

We’ve updated our iOS app to bring you the fastest, most efficient trading experience from Firstrade yet! Version 3.3 is available in the Apple app store now with an Android version coming soon.

This upgrade introduces innovations that greatly improve trading workflows and adds some of the most popular features of our desktop trading platform, optimized for a smaller screen.

New features include more charts, a redesign of the account management module, and advanced tools for options traders with more sophisticated investing strategies.

Here are some highlights:

Seamless Portfolio

Improved Indices
Minimize feature lets you view more holdings at once.

Redesigned Account Value Module
New pie chart and account funding shortcut makes account management a breeze.

Consolidated Positions Table
See all your data in one row using horizontal scrolling

New Action Menus
Contextual menus gives you fast access to research and trading

Options Trading Reimagined

Faster, Efficient Complex Options Orders
Click on bid/ask and instantly add options to the new order basket. Edit and keep track of selections instantaneously.

New Risk/Reward Profile
View your potential maximum gain or loss on the order summary screen.

Close Complex Options Positions with Ease
The app now finds the correct combinations for you based on your chosen strategy.

Quick Edit
Change the quantity and net price of your open complex options orders on the fly, allowing you skip the Review screen — so you can react instantly to market fluctuations.

If you’d like to learn more about our new app, check out these videos. Happy investing!

Earn Extra Income From Our Securities Lending Income Program

Do you want to earn more money from your investment account? If you do, here’s an opportunity for you to earn added income from Firstrade’s Securities Lending Income Program, which allows eligible customers to lend certain fully-paid stocks to Firstrade’s clearing firm, Apex. In return, you can increase income from your portfolio through the securities-based lending market.

While your shares are on loan, you will be paid an income that is accrued daily and credited to your account on a monthly basis.

What are the benefits of Securities Lending Income Program:

• You will immediately begin earning income on any shares that are loaned out.

• Stocks in your account identified as in-demand by the securities lending market will automatically be loaned out and processed by Apex. It’s easy and hassle-free.

• There is no long-term commitment. You may discontinue participation in the program at any time.

• You are fully collateralized. When the lending transaction takes place, our clearing firm will hold a cash collateral equal to the dollar amount of the stock borrowed.

• There are no restrictions on when you can sell your stock. You retain full economic ownership of the securities you have on loan and may sell the shares at any time. Selling your shares will terminate the loan transaction.

Please click here to learn more or enroll in our Securities Lending Income program.

Complex Options Just Got Simpler!

We just launched a major update to our complex options order workflow that will improve your trading experience.
 
Placing and editing complex options orders on your browser is now easier and more convenient. 

Here are some highlights:

• “Edit” function for complex options orders

You can now make quick edits to your open complex options orders, right from the Order Status screen, just like when you edit single options orders.

• Easy “Close” function for complex options orders

To close a Straddle position, simply select Sell Close as your transaction, and then select any of the available positions from the Select Options Position to Close dropdown menu.

To close a Butterfly, Condor or Iron Condor position, simply enter an underlying stock symbol, then select any of the available combinations to close from the dropdown menu.

• New Options Strategy 

You can now utilize an Iron Condor strategy on our desktop trading platform.

Do send us your feedback, we’d love to know what you think!

Not That Sexy, But Very Popular Nonetheless

OK, they may be boring but they’re a great long-term investment. Of course, we’re talking about mutual funds. We make it easy to invest in mutual funds—we’re the only online broker that has zero commission for all our mutual funds transactions! And, we support more than 4,000 no transaction fee funds, more than 10,000 no-load funds and 4,000 load funds.

Let’s take a step back for a moment. What are mutual funds and what makes them so appealing for investors?

Mutual funds are investments that pool your money with other investors to invest in stocks, bonds, and other securities. Each investor owns shares, which represent a portion of the holdings of the fund. Through a mutual fund, you can invest in many different underlying assets in one purchase.

Simply put, they’re a great way to diversify your portfolio, diversify your holdings within a particular sector, and create a professionally managed, low maintenance portfolio with low minimum investments. Like investing in the stock market in general, mutual funds also offer the liquidity to buy or sell at your own discretion.

And, you have your choice of sectors, levels of risk, investment types and more. Why put your eggs in one basket when you can fully diversify with a mutual fund? And, the beauty is that professional money managers are doing all the heavy lifting for you—it’s their job to develop an optimally balanced portfolio for you, always keeping diversification in mind.

But with so many choices, it may seem a little daunting to decide which mutual funds may be best for you. Still, there are steps you should take to determine what approach you should take.

• Ask yourself what return you would like to make and the risk level you are willing to tolerate.

• Do some research and have a good understanding of the fund that you are buying.

• You can find information about a fund's goals, strategy, performance, management, and fee structure in its prospectus. Compare performance over time and in different economic and market environments.

• There may be certain industry sectors that are of particular interest to you, such as technology or energy, where you may want to invest.

• A fund manager's experience and record, the fund's level of consistency, and its major investment holdings are other important factors to consider.

• Investors can also find information and ratings of mutual funds in various outlets such as Morningstar, Forbes, Value Line and Barron's.

To learn more about investing in mutual funds at Firstrade, visit here.