Replies

One of my Real Estate Ventures had appreciated so much - located 40 Minutes from Branson, and now in Springfield city limits—that I decided to sell it.

That reduced my Real Estate from 60% to around 30%. Now we are cash heavy and spending it— I hope to acquire the lot directly behind us. That would give us 1.5 Acres where our home is. We are building a storage shed over a basement/storm/root cellar with some of the proceeds.

We are going to set up a standby generator, and look into solar and or wind power to back up that for the well pump.

I’d say get out of debt—I would not be able to sleep if things imploded and I had debt. YMMV

Don’t forget about investing in food—prices will go up. In my budget/retirement plan, we calculated that prices would double the first half and triple the last half.

We have purchased some long term stuff(20-30 year shelf life) each year with our minimum distribution IRA withdrawals—food for emergencies. We do buy a lot of stuff on sale by the case from the local grocery—stuff we eat all the time. Stock up on 6-12 months.

I think a balanced portfolio could contain 10-20% Precious Metals-maybe more. I’d consider buying Precious Metals to pay the property taxes too—in case of melt down or great inflation.

It’s a tricky situation with your pension. I did take a lump sum and rolled it over into a self-directed IRA—but that was right before the dot.com bust. So the market did not do as well as I had hoped.

I did liquidate half of my stocks and funds in IRAs in 2007. That gave me enough cash to pay off debts, if I should need to make a withdrawal. Did not need to though, so I’ll just keep it there in case of medical emergency.

I took the lump sum pension, because I was afraid the company would not honor the pension. We had a lot of people in St. Louis that lost their pensions at a number of companies at the time I retired so that was on my mind then.

I haven’t checked to see if the market is fully valued or not. If it is or if overvalued, then it’s

Pay off debt
Park some cash somewhere
Real Estate (not REITS)
Precious Metals: Silver and Gold.

I read several books about preparing for emergencies. One author pointed out that some rich people in Europe have survived a lot of ups and downs. Thei wealth was portable. They took the bag of gold, rolled up their paintings, took their deeds and important papers.

When the crisis passed, they came back and claimed their property, rehung their paintings, and got on with their life.

My best investment turned out to be the Real Estate. Close enough to a city to more than double every decade. I had a 334% return for the 33 years—A little more than 10%/year.

Market returns during that same time was less than 6% for mutual funds “professional Management”. My own portfolio did better, but I used that to live on during the early part of my retirement.

Good luck to you—hope you figure it out.

Absolutely debt first. Can’t tell you how much of a relief it was when I paid off the house about 10 years ago.

I had made a bit on a stock and figured it would be a nice Christmas present for my wife....you know she actually got upset at me... she was happy not to have to worry about it anymore, but annoyed that I did it without telling her. sigh...

Congrats on the nice return. I’ll chat with my advisor later this week on the Pension. It’s my decision to make, but always like to get multiple opinions first.

Next two weeks will be interesting for me as there are some work related things going on that will have an impact on the future...ranging from very exciting to very distressing....choppy seas after a few years of glass kinda make it interesting.