Just found out the wife ran up some serious credit card debt

I'd be curious to know what you're invested in that is down vs 2-3 years ago (which I'm interpreting as pre-pandemic).

Unless you were loaded up on BTC or something

 

I'm down from the peak but not down compared to a time frame of more than 3 years ago. Maybe down 12% from the peak.

 

You and me both. January 4th of this year was when I was at my Maximum Paper Wealth™.

 

I did in fact misread when I looked the other day so my bad. I thought I had been looking at my data dating back 2 years but it was only 1 year and this was it. Bottomed out at about 28% down but as you can see has started to recover a bit and is currently about 18% down from where it was. So I was wrong lol. Carry on. For what it's worth, most of my accounts I don't look at often as I don't even have the option to make changes to them and I intentionally don't consolidate so that my money is "diversified." And even the couple that I could make changes to, I don't as I'm sure the "experts" know better than I.

 

yep, ask the people that are still down 20-30%... being investment money conservative, no high stakes gambling, saved me from the same fate as the masses. I just got lucky. Ski

 

Yeah, that’s the actual problem with this plan. If you could repeatedly pick the top and bottom of the market, it wouldn’t take long for you to become the richest human in history.

 

@motion could fuck that up.

 

I've made thousands of trades. I can only think of 2 that were to-the-penny perfect timing.

 

I don't know much about any if this, but I do participate and am starting to try and learn a bit. My limited understanding at a quick look, IMO, seems to be that most people lose from being too short sighted. It seems, on average, people lose from trying trying to watch the market and buy/sell/move money around based in expected market changes. It also seems the biggest winners do the same thing, albeit much more successfully. Most people would do fairly well to make safe investments, in less risky investments that will yield lower gains, but play the long game.

Am I off base in my thinking?

 

I thought he had the timing down perfectly, but reversed the order of operations?

 

Shots fired

 

He always picks the bottom- problem is he SELLS instead of buying

 

We can make that work...just buy whenever he sells.

 

@USracer900

Not trying to be nosey, but just randomly remembered this thread and wanted to check in on you. How's it going?

 

Testing the signalling theory a bit here but...

This GF of mine hated credit cards and, when used, would "pay them right the h--- off" (her words). I loved to watch her shop -- well, do anything actually.

 

For the most part, yeah.

The exception being the day-traders; the people that sit there and will move shit around all day as the prices fluctuate.

I took advantage of the pandemic and actually bought a lot during that time. But I bought shit that I KNEW would be back at some point.

Shit like Transocean, BP, Ford, etc.

I am mostly looking at the long term, specifically focusing on ones that pay Dividends.

Personally, I see that as the stock market’s version of Rental Property. I own the stocks, and they pay me money every month/quarter, while I still own the stock.

I’ve never wanted to hassle with rental property. Stocks with Dividends serves the same purpose (making money from others without having to actually do anything myself), without having to bother with tenants.

For example, I just looked and I have a $560 Dividend pending from Ford right now. Plus $78 pending from BP.

In addition to those ^, in the past 30 days I’ve received $135 from PSEC, $230 from VOC, $42 from HRZN, $153 from AT&T, $21 from GLAD, $120 from TWO, $23 from SPHD, $40 from ORC, $33 from IVR, and $102 from SPYD.

None of those are big money, but over the course of the year it adds up. And sometimes it is higher. The Dividends obviously go up and down with the market.

But the main point (for me) is that it is “free money”. I didn’t have to do any work myself, travel, or deal with anyone to get that.

When those stocks drop, I’ll buy more of them.

My long term goal is to eventually be able to live off Dividends without messing with the stocks, and just stick our paychecks in savings.

 

ivr pays the largest out of all of mine but im down 35% overall on it. Havent bought anything since late 2020 but you think its coming back?

 

Plus, and at your age probably not something you will ever be concerned about since I doubt that the program will exist in anything resembling it's current format when I hit 65 (or 67, or 70, or whatever the age they've changed it to) but dividend income, as well as rental property income, doesn't count against one's annual earned income for purposes of determining annual social security benefits.

I'd guess that will be one of the first things that gets changed on the way towards completely phasing out social security to something that people only get if they will truly be completely destitute. So many people I know who are in their 50s, live payday to payday in an apartment, have an old ass beater car, and couldn't afford a surprise $1000 expense.

Those people need a safety net. There's a few people I know on the other end of the spectrum that are in their 70s, have 7 or 8 figures net worth, and jump through crazy hoops just to keep their piddly-ass social security payments they they don't even remotely NEED, but "IT'S MY MONEY!! I EARNED IT!!"

I'm personally not counting on a red cent out of it. Anything that is left when I get there will be gravy.

 

I can kind of understand their sentiment though. If my understanding is correct, if those coffers hadn't been pilfered for completed unrelated issues, then the program wouldn't be in danger in the first place.

It is their money, and they paid in by mandate on the expectation they would get it back.

 

See, that makes sense to me. Rather safe investments, long term plan, receiving passive income that adds up over time...

That seems more sensible to me than constantly moving money around. Probability of success seems higher that way.