I'm a newbie at all matters financial... so bear with me:
I've got a checking account (overdraft backed by one of the credit cards), a savings account (even though it's currently empty), three credit cards (with too much on them left from a few months of unemployment). Oh, and some 529 savings accounts for our 3 kids. That's it, no investments (including retirement), no cd's, no life insurance, no house or mortgage (renting)... nada. So, as you can see, we've got some financial planning to do.
We're going to start doing Dave Ramsey's baby steps, first saving some emergency cash in savings, then paying off the credit cards, then adding more to our emergency savings, then investing money for retirement. etc.. etc... (most are familiar with the baby steps, as far as I've seen here)
So here's my questions:
Where does the life insurance fit in? Immediately?
Should we look into online banking? Which companies are good to look into? What are the pros and cons of each?
Your local checking account can probably be accessed online. For an online savings account, check out ING, Emigrant Direct and HSBC Direct.
Should we put some of our emergency fund into CD's? (I'm thinking keep 3 mos expenses accessable, and put another 3 mos expenses in a short term CD)
I don't see much benefit of locking money into CD's when the online savings accounts are nearly matching their rates. With an online savings account, you don't have to wait for the CD to mature to access your money.
What kinds of retirement accounts are there, and which one is the one that you don't pay interest on before contributing? Is it Roth IRA? and how exactly do those work? does it matter which company we open it with? or which company manages it?
With a Roth IRA, you pay taxes before contributing, but not when you withdrawal. With a traditional IRA, you don't pay tax until you withdrawal. So which one makes sense depends on what tax bracket you will be in when you retire. Kind of hard to predict, but the Roth has other benefits. It doesn't matter which brokerage you open the account with, but choose one with low fees. Check out Vanguard & Fidelity.
A lot of questions, I know...
but the only dumb question is one you don't ask, right?