The myth of “pulling equity from your home” with “cashout financing”. One never hears “convert your home equity to debt” in the mortgage ads.
Matt White
7 months ago
The overstated amounts of money we are told we need. We are bombarded all day, every day, from all sides, with messages about all the many things we should spend our money on. Much of it can be skipped or scaled back, and the simplicity is liberating.
Rick Connor
7 months ago
Choosing when to receive Social Security retirement benefits is an important, and often confusing, milestone in retirement. I often hear here people recommending taking your benefits early and investing them in the market. It is claimed that this is a better option than deferring SS and gaining delayed credits that result in about an 8% increase per year.
The problem with this comparison is that you are comparing a risky asset (equities) with a basically risk-free insurance product – an annuity.
If a person has more than enough resources such that SS is not an important part of their retirement plan, the choice doesn’t much matter. I have friends in this situation; one has never touch a dollar of SS in 15 years. He is single, and was a heavy smoker. His decision to start early mad sense for him.
I worry about people who count on SS. They need to try to maximize their benefit without risking future income.
Andrew Forsythe
7 months ago
That you really, really need to hire whatever financial services firm whose ads you’re currently reading or seeing on TV. With a little self education, now so widely available on the internet, you can likely handle your investments yourself. And you’ll start ahead of the game because you’ll avoid the advisor fees whose “negative compounding” effect will cost you a bundle over time.
Greg Spears
7 months ago
”If you rent, you’re just throwing your money away.”
House prices can get too high, as they did in 2008. It would have been wiser to sit out the housing bubble in a rental than buy an overpriced house that depreciates.
Mike Zaccardi
7 months ago
“You don’t have to invest in foreign index funds to get foreign stock exposure. S&P 500 companies get plenty of overseas revenue.”
While it’s true that large, multinational firms have significant non-U.S. operations, simply looking at return differences over the decades shows there are clear periods in the distant and recent past during which either U.S. or foreign stocks outperform. I own both VTI and VEU.
Or just buy Vanguard’s VT and your covered Worldwide with the majority of the portfolio in the U.S. and other Developed markets!
VT Factset Analytics InsightVT holds a well-diversified, cap-weighted portfolio of developed and emerging market stocks. The fund ignores frontier markets—as do most peer funds—but excluding the likes of Vietnam and Kuwait has minimal impact on the fund’s ability to track the global market. VT’s inclusion of small-caps makes it incrementally more representative than direct rivals like ACWI. The fund uses a sampling approach to tracking the index – in that it may not hold all the stocks in the index – it will hold a representative sample of the securities that resembles the full index in terms of key risk factors. Two structural comments: The issuer uses fair-value NAVs which minimize trading premiums and discounts but distort typical tracking calculations. And it discloses positions monthly rather than daily. Still, these considerations are hardly deal-breakers.
Work hard so I can be rich.
The myth of “pulling equity from your home” with “cashout financing”. One never hears “convert your home equity to debt” in the mortgage ads.
The overstated amounts of money we are told we need. We are bombarded all day, every day, from all sides, with messages about all the many things we should spend our money on. Much of it can be skipped or scaled back, and the simplicity is liberating.
Choosing when to receive Social Security retirement benefits is an important, and often confusing, milestone in retirement. I often hear here people recommending taking your benefits early and investing them in the market. It is claimed that this is a better option than deferring SS and gaining delayed credits that result in about an 8% increase per year.
The problem with this comparison is that you are comparing a risky asset (equities) with a basically risk-free insurance product – an annuity.
If a person has more than enough resources such that SS is not an important part of their retirement plan, the choice doesn’t much matter. I have friends in this situation; one has never touch a dollar of SS in 15 years. He is single, and was a heavy smoker. His decision to start early mad sense for him.
I worry about people who count on SS. They need to try to maximize their benefit without risking future income.
That you really, really need to hire whatever financial services firm whose ads you’re currently reading or seeing on TV. With a little self education, now so widely available on the internet, you can likely handle your investments yourself. And you’ll start ahead of the game because you’ll avoid the advisor fees whose “negative compounding” effect will cost you a bundle over time.
”If you rent, you’re just throwing your money away.”
House prices can get too high, as they did in 2008. It would have been wiser to sit out the housing bubble in a rental than buy an overpriced house that depreciates.
“You don’t have to invest in foreign index funds to get foreign stock exposure. S&P 500 companies get plenty of overseas revenue.”
While it’s true that large, multinational firms have significant non-U.S. operations, simply looking at return differences over the decades shows there are clear periods in the distant and recent past during which either U.S. or foreign stocks outperform. I own both VTI and VEU.
Or just buy Vanguard’s VT and your covered Worldwide with the majority of the portfolio in the U.S. and other Developed markets!
VT Factset Analytics InsightVT holds a well-diversified, cap-weighted portfolio of developed and emerging market stocks. The fund ignores frontier markets—as do most peer funds—but excluding the likes of Vietnam and Kuwait has minimal impact on the fund’s ability to track the global market. VT’s inclusion of small-caps makes it incrementally more representative than direct rivals like ACWI. The fund uses a sampling approach to tracking the index – in that it may not hold all the stocks in the index – it will hold a representative sample of the securities that resembles the full index in terms of key risk factors. Two structural comments: The issuer uses fair-value NAVs which minimize trading premiums and discounts but distort typical tracking calculations. And it discloses positions monthly rather than daily. Still, these considerations are hardly deal-breakers.