Need some investment advice for my parents

Mazeroth

My father has a PSP (personal savings plan) working for General Motors and has a few hundred thousand dollars tied up in it right now in GM stock. We told him years ago to diversify his portfolio but he never listened. The one plus of the PSP is it's tax deferred until you withdraw from it but that's the only thing it has going for it. GM doesn't match a cent of what he contributes so I'm trying to convince him to look elsewhere for retirement. Now, the bad part is my father will be 62 in a few months and my mother will be 57. My father should be retiring in the next few months so he won't be contributing to his PSP. Another thing to factor in is how volatile GM's stock is. A few years ago it hit over $70 a share. About a year ago it was down to $20 a share (my mother almost had a heart attack!) and now it's floating around $36, going up about $6 in the last 2 weeks.

With that, what would you recommend my parents do? I'm not very investment savvy so I've come to the best for advice! I'm not sure if it's too late to start a 401k or Roth IRA? Another thing to consider is if my parents were to sell their GM stock they would get taxed heavily if they withdrew it all at once, something my father said he'd like to avoid. He makes over $100k a year so I'm not sure if taking it all out would put him in a much higher tax bracket or not? His initial idea was to hold onto GM stock forever, selling a little here and there to supplement their income (they'll stick get SS and my father's pension) and avoiding jumping up into the next tax bracket. However, I'm not sure if that's the best approach to take.

Well, I'm working on a few hours of sleep and apologize if this was jumbled. I appreciate any help you can give me for my parents!

petrym

Meet and interview several investment advisors and let them deal with this headache.

Dennis Gardner

A couple simple guidelines: Diversify............Never have all your eggs in one basket....I have more than my fair share of friends that worked with Enron and lost their asses.

Roth IRAs are excellent vehicles for those with nice income to use since you can invest after tax dollars until you are 70 into a Roth and all growth is tax free. 13 years of nice growth and investment would be great.

Get someone that wants to teach your folks about different types of investing, not sell them insurance/annuities plans that they commision from.

beardog03

buy low...sell high




are you looking for long term ?

have you considered bonds/cd`s ?