Posted on 10/04/2022 7:22:29 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Cooking at home, you say. My, what a sacrifice
This is why hand picking stocks can be so tricky. Just a few decades ago, companies like Eastman Kodak, Sears & Roebuck, and Eastern Airlines might have seemed like good, solid bets for blue chip stocks that you could hold onto for a lifetime. A few decades from now, many of today's super performers could be in the dustbin of history.
You are always better off with mutual funds that have a wide diversity of stocks that are managed by professionals then you are trying to hand pick the next Microsoft or Apple on your own. That is how amateurs (and even professionals) lose most of their money in the stock market.
Same. We paid off all our debt including house, hammered the 403b/IRA and live frugally. The problem is what to do in retirement
Someone doing massages, spending $4,500 on surgery for an elderly dog and a number of other things mentioned in the article hardly counts as pinching pennies. It sounds like she was hoping to live the high life and now is back to a more normal middle class life. That happens. Could always work again.
People also die way before 90, you just never know. Median is upper 70s. I’ll be retiring at 42-44.
I walked out of my classroom 12 years ago after nearly 30 years of “shaping the future”.
Not once have I missed it. Not once have I questioned my decision and the only regret that I have concerning the whole situation is that I didn’t retire a year earlier as I originally planned.
“Bidenomics snares another victim.
I went out in 2019. I had a decent retirement plan that would ensure (but not guarantee) solvency and a modest lifestyle for the foreseeable future. I guess I need glasses because I didn’t foresee how much carnage FU Biden and the left would do to us.
Now I gotta feeling I’m gonna be greeting Wally World customers til the day I die...”
_________________
If I hadn’t been so irresponsible with our finances, I probably would be retiring this year.
But alas, me and personal finances have been on a separate track for years. Finally, about 7 years ago I started to stir from my slumber, came out of hibernation so to speak and started making a move towards achieving adulthood.
Actually the easiest starting point for us was to pay of our mortgage, a 15 yr fixed which we did in a little over 12 years. Then we snowballed our considerable credit card debt that took another 2 years. Then we attacked our personal loans and such. In the mean time I got stupid and bought a new truck with payments in late 2020. It is a nice color though, matches my favorite fishing rod.
While we were going after our debt we were also increasing our retirement investing which is you know not a fun thing to watch, and putting cash aside also. So we have reduced the amount of outgoing dollars payable to banks and other institutions by a lot and have reduced the number of checks we write every month and finally in general we feel good about our situation.
This now bring me to my actual point. And that point is, had we been financially mature 35 years ago we would have saved enough monies to have plenty to retire on regardless of the current situation. If we had stirred from our slumber 20 years ago we would have more money saved then we do now but not enough to weather this storm. But we started full bore 7 years ago and this meant we had to stay in the workforce longer which given this situation is ok because we didn’t, as my brother did, retire just before the current crisis only to see everything economic go south with a vengeance.
So not the best situation but ok I guess as we buy in the dip if things get back to a positive economic situation and we save diligently and work longer and put off collecting social security and with no debt I think we are in decent shape, this in spite of our delayed maturity.
If you took SS at 62 you made a yuge mistake.
Everyone pile in here to express your two sentences of outrage and horror to CNN’s latest fiction.
I had invested my funds (six figures) with a big investment company ("When XY talks, people listen." 1960s t.v. ad). I always managed my own portfolio. Got 10% p.a. returns over 14 years ("The Rule of Seven"), thus quadrupling my principal - despite the Crash of 2008. The ONE time I sneakily asked for advice (on a buy-back offer for Ford Senior Debentures) - even though I actually already knew the right answer - my personal investment advisor - whose children had played on the beaches of Hawaii together with my own children - said that she would have to recuse herself, because her company was advising the counterparty (Ford).
Then, in 2016, the company "kicked me to the curbside" because of anti-money laundering laws and such (fear of "claw-backs" - of course, clients with $5 million plus were probably not harassed). Was given three months to dissolve my account. When I asked for advice on with what new company I could instead invest my funds, was told "look in the Internet."
They slyly "upped" their commissions on my stock trades over the years, never provided any actionable advice, and then kicked me to the curb in 2016 - meaning that I missed out on the "Trump Bump."
Chickensh*t business practices.
Regards,
Never invested in mutual funds.
Hand-picked my stocks, re-balanced my portfolio on a quarterly basis.
Quadrupled my investment in 14 years.
Regards,
Sounds like you are doing it right.
Different experience than I have had, but as I said in another post, I never traded stocks, beyond one ‘dip’ into that world that ended poorly.
I always have stuck with managed mutual fund portfolios that were diversified and balanced to match my desired level of risk. I contributed with every paycheck and pretty much let the managers watch it ‘cook’.
They (First Command) have personally kept me appraised a few times a year and of course I can see statements or check online at anytime. They also have given me sound advice on tax planning that will save me in the order of 7 figures in tax liability over the next 20 years in retirement.
There is/was an upfront cost to that. When I started investing, Roth’s were not around, and I was late in switching, enjoying the pre-tax dollars being invested. But on the back-end, that costs a bundle. I have spent the last few years converting to all Roth’s. This means paying taxes now on those untaxed dollars, but huge savings in the future as the accounts grow and as tax rates go up.
Yeah, but just imagine the subterfuges, work-arounds, and evasions I've had to resort to to circumvent the all the burdens imposed upon expats, after the Patriot Acts were ratified!
Foreign banks won't touch U.S. depositors with a 10-ft pole! U.S. investment houses want nothing to do with expats!
"We don't want to hire a new employee whose sole duty will be to fill out all the forms which the U.S. govt. forces us to submit!"
Regards,
"One dip" is equivalent to resolving to lose weight and improve health by jogging, then going on a single, first 20-minute jog and getting "side stitches," and quitting in disgust.
I began while still in college. Investing money that I had scrimped and saved while dining on the equivalent of ramen noodles. Made a killing, pentupling my investment (broadly diversified) within a year. Wow! $5,000 profit! This was the early 80s.
Took the money and invested in real estate on the Big Island in the late 80s - just as Japan's bubble was bursting. Built some houses and rented for a decade - dealing with chickensh*t renter problems from halfway around the world, and paying 15% to my "estate manager." May have only broken even, but it forced me to economize and stick with the program for ten years - and I learned a lot.
Sold out and invested in the stock market just as "Desert Storm" was brewing. Forced to divest when my investment company declared that I was a pariah/leper in 2016.
Regards,
There is clearly more than one way to ‘get rich’. I never had time or inclination to either be a smart trader or even run my own business. I thought about whether I’d invest in housing and deal with rentals, or invest in land and market (via mutual funds) while I worked my middle class career. For me, the latter seemed less stressful even if it was not the way to quick cash out.
If you now indeed have a net worth of seven digits, then you must have been doing something right! Congratulations!
Regards,
Wow that is smart. Honestly I only have seven individual stocks and I don’t dare trade I just buy. The rest goes to mutual funds IRA 401(k) etc. I also have a military retirement and a few cents from Social Security in 15 years. Maybe.
Retirement is not for the faint of heart. I retired at 61, two months short of early retirement. Had two TSA, one of 100,000 another 23,000. A teacher pension of 3400 a month and a future 1400 per month of social security starting in three months. Also was blessed with good heath accumulating over 200 sick day ( could only collect on 120 of them) I’m in good shape and have been able to help some of my family member.
I’m 78 and still work full time. I don’t see the fascination with retirement. It will just lead to boredom. After all how much television can you watch? Besides I want to end up with a C8ZR1, and you can’t afford those on SS and pensions.
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