How frequently to invest?

[wvufan1985]

I have a vanguard fund that I have been automatically investing in once a week. How often should I been investing? Twice a month? Once a month? or does it really matter how often you invest?

[Broken Arrow]

If it's a mutual fund, it doesn't really matter. The most important thing is to keep contributing no matter what, and I would just set up the contribution schedule according to what works best for you.

[disneysteve]

I agree with BA. Set up an automatic plan that works for you. Weekly seems a bit much, personally, but there's nothing actually wrong with it. I do monthly myself.

[kork13]

I get paid on the 1st and 15th, so I just buy into my MF's the next day (so twice a month). Really, it's just a question of what works for you.

The more frequently you buy, the more closely your purchases will match the fluctuations of the market, which can be good and bad. It can sometimes allow you to catch blips that send the market temporarily down...and also the blips that send it temporarily up, driving up your buy price. However, over the long term of doing dollar cost averaging, those blips average out to be relatively meaningless.

So does frequency matter? It can. But as long as you buy in more at least once/quarter (that might be pushing it... probably once/month is better), your cost basis will average itself out, and no, frequency doesn't really matter too much.

[autoxer]

I invest weekly, because I get paid weekly and have it set to automatically transfer.

[MonkeyMama]

I have to agree, no right or wrong answer.

We invest twice monthly because it's automatic from my paycheck which I do get twice monthly. So that is our method (the whole automatic thing).

[Goldy1]

WE have made soem end of year dumping contributions to our roths before. I had it set up with fidelity to auto invest monthly for a while which was cool b/c you can do 100 a month with auto invest but to just take money from bank account and one time dump some in the mutual fund the miniumum is $250.

[maat55]

I do once a month and am considering going to twice. Longterm, it may make no difference anyway, I would just stick with what you are doing.

[MoneyTrev]

Monthly for me. I stopped once it stopped being profitable.

[Investing First Steps]

As long as you're not paying any type of transaction based commission, I'd stick with what's been working. The key is to put it on "auto-pilot" and since you've already done that, then it's probably best not to mess with a good thing IMHO.

[noppenbd]

Monthly for me. I stopped once it stopped being profitable.

Make sure you let us know when it is profitable again. My crystal ball is in the shop.

[disneysteve]

Monthly for me. I stopped once it stopped being profitable.

Make sure you let us know when it is profitable again. My crystal ball is in the shop.

Actually, I want to know just before it becomes profitable again. Waiting until it is already profitable is too late. I want to invest before the market goes back up.

[noppenbd]

Actually, I want to know just before it becomes profitable again. Waiting until it is already profitable is too late. I want to invest before the market goes back up.

Good point. Just let me know before you tell disneysteve so I can get in before he does.

[jIM_Ohio]

You are getting a more precise average cost (investing 52X per year) than I do investing only 10 times per year.

If the investment is highly volatile, there is a good chance the more frequent investments will generate a higher internal rate of return (might increase irr around .1-.5%). You are 5X as likely as me to catch the market on a down day.

[brianj]

We are in to much debt!