Where are Your Retirement Investments?

stockman · Senior Member

Where are Your Retirement Investments?

mjl1960 · Newbie

I am still investing in the stock market and mutual funds, though I question my own sanity in doing so at times. I have faith that one day they will take off again. I am still young enough (51) that I have time. What scares me is the government thinking they can interfere, or just take over companies that it deems fit to do so with. If they can do that, what is to keep them from just taking over the entire stock market?

Interest rates on bonds, cd's, or money markets are being kept artificially low. Nobody is paying any money because there is only a limited amount of money to be borrowed since banks are holding on to it. They are printing money as fast as they can, with really nothing to back that money. That is going to bring inflation, especially when the interest rates are being kept at near nothing.

It is almost as profitable to put your money in a pillowcase and hide it as it is to invest it anymore. If you want the most of your money, you are better off spending it now rather than holding it, because inflation is going to get you less in the future for the money you have today. This is sad...and thus, there is no answer to where to put your money.

stockman · Senior Member

mjl1960 wrote:
. If you want the most of your money, you are better off spending it now rather than holding it, because inflation is going to get you less in the future for the money you have today. This is sad...and thus, there is no answer to where to put your money.

I somewhat agree with the "spend the money" now statement.

One thing some do is purchase items that have a long storage life. Items like toilet paper, soap, etc. keep forever and they only are going up in price. By buying them now and storing them until needed you are actually saving money, because the price is rising every day. It is probably a much better return than you will receive from any bank.

sjmyler · Newbie

"spend the money"

Better hope the creek don't rise and float away all your TP and soap.

You should know that investing without a plan is just a form of speculating.

A better solution might be to run, not walk, to find help from a gifted advisor who learns everything they can about your hopes, dreams, goals and capabilities. Then they will create a plan with and for you that will include an investment plan. Then and only then he will help you build a portfolio based on what your plan dictates.

Beware of salesman trying to sell you the perfect investment product before they have spent the time helping you create a comprehensive financial and estate plan.

As the great Satchel Paige said "It aint what you don't know that hurts you. Its what you know that just aint so."

fmdog44 · Member

I'm 64 and will retire in a couple years. I have invested for forty years and holding very little stock nowdays after the collapes in the past thirty or so years. All is different now and I warned many friends about this world econmy we are in today. American investors and professionals have no experience at this new world economy so how can an expert advise anyone on what to do in it?
Gone are the days of recooping your losses. The market tanks and we get a 2-3% upswing in mutual funds when we used to gwt 30-40% per year. Right now way too much hinges on Egypt and Spain! Since when did they impact anything much less our retirement nest today?? How can anyone know what is going on behind closed doors in foreign countries when we don't know what is happening here?
We have seen the near collapse of this economy recently and narrowly avoided a depression. Despite inflation I am in index bond funds annuities and very low interest savings acountslike CDs. I have no debt and I no longer NEED to make big gains in the market. Times have changed drastically my friends. There are today new norms we must accept. Houses are falling, unemployment will never get back to 5%, savings account interests will never again beat inflation, jobs are gone forever to nevervreturn to America. This new world economy is everyday life now and you better adjust you retirement money accordingly or like so many have done already you will wake up broke.

Dennis · Newbie

Having read as much as we could over the last several years, my wife & I have concluded that the elites have configured things in both the US & Europe mostly to their advantage.

Extremely low interest rates or ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy), - FED policy - as it is known is a significant example. ZIRP's harsh negative effect on retirees and near retirees, while acknowledged by the FED, is viewed as necessary for the greater good.

While Madoff went to prison, Jon Corzine (MF Global) and many others on Wall Street are still walking around. HFT (High Frequency Trading) through sophisticated computer programs (sometimes trading in nanoseconds) now accounts for the vast majority of trades on the Street.

We have concluded that the game is now so rigged against the average investor, we would rather try investing on our own.

After a lot of self education, talking with many people & other due diligence, we elected to invest in real estate; both multi-family projects and a few SFR (Single family residence) projects.

We are not landlords and aren't flipping houses, etc. We are members or investors in single purpose LLCs or Joint Ventures set up to own a specific asset. Given the surge in people becoming renters and many not being able to qualify for mortgages, we felt it a good time to invest this way.

This type of investing has its risks, of course, as do all investments.

We believe, however, that the folks who make up the management teams and who are our fellow investors mitigate many of those risks.

We are achieving returns ranging from 8% to 12.5% thus far.

While this type investing is not for everyone, we just don't see the value in participating in Wall Street investing with things being as rigged as they are.

stockman · Senior Member

One obvious benefit of investing in real estate is that the value will never get to zero, which could happen to stocks and bonds.

My largest current investments are almost 100% dividend paying stocks, and a few bonds. My rate of return , barring any major disaster, will be about 6.2% of the value of the stocks on January 1 of this year. Since the price goes up and down all year this is the best way I could determine what percentage I was actually getting on my investment.

I am quite satisfied with my return, given the !% or so I get on a couple of CD's and the .3% the bank offers on savings. I am at least staying ahead of inflation with my stocks, but my money in savings is falling behind each day.

Yes, the risk is higher in stocks than real estate, but I have been managing my money myself for almost 20 years now, so I feel confident in my decisions. The value of the stocks may go down, but the dividends remain the same per share. If I choose to sell any of my holdings I just wait until the price is above where it was when I purchased it. If it takes a year so what, I am still getting my dividend.

stockman · Senior Member

sjmyler wrote:
"spend the money"

Better hope the creek don't rise and float away all your TP and soap.
You should know that investing without a plan is just a form of speculating.
A better solution might be to run, not walk, to find help from a gifted advisor who learns everything they can about your hopes, dreams, goals and capabilities. Then they will create a plan with and for you that will include an investment plan. Then and only then he will help you build a portfolio based on what your plan dictates.
Beware of salesman trying to sell you the perfect investment product before they have spent the time helping you create a comprehensive financial and estate plan.
As the great Satchel Paige said "It aint what you don't know that hurts you. Its what you know that just aint so."

I am very familiar with investing. I have been doing most of my investing myself, and have done better than what my so-called investment advisor did for me. (He was with one of the major investing firms in this country.) He did all kinds of analyses on my accounts telling me that I should do this or that. I have since moved all my assets into an online firm (Ameritrade) that I control myself. I have both my regular account and some IRAs in the account. I do not consider my investments speculating. I know what speculating is, I have done commodities trading, now that is speculation.

Yes if you buy stocks without investigating them, it is speculation. But with some research you can become familiar with what to look for when purchasing securities. Not everyone is interested in spending the time and effort to learn, but for those who do you can make some fair money on your investments with a little work, and by keeping your eyes and ears open as to what is going on in the world aroung you.

As for buying things with a long storage life, I stand by my statement. I am not telling anyone to go out and put all their money in that sort of thing, but buying things such as that, especially if they are on sale is a way to "make a few bucks". As for the creek rising and washing away all my stuff, where I am located that is never going to happen, unless God sends us another flood, and since He said that would not happen I feel quite secure in that regard. Remember the rainbow promise?.

GmaNancy · Newbie

Right now in the same places as yours are. However, we have considered pulling out and investing more into precious metals(tangible though, not on paper). I may sound like a paranoid radical...but I do not trust our government right now and fear we will be robbed of our investments 'for the good of the collective people'. It's happening around the world, and I am not confident that it will not happen here in the US. We will go back to diversifying once we feel safer about our future.

Bob Cash · Senior Member

We got out of the market some 12 years back and have gone with land and property investments to secure the nestegg

Property and precious metals are about the same, in that, they are only redeemed by the currency market at time of liquidation - we were concerned with gold as an investment mainly because of the FDR days and the confiscation of gold and silver by the government

It just plain does not occur to many people that you can take a 80-90% cash to equity "reverse mortgage" if you're in a slow market area or you can use a "self directed" IRA / 401K as your investment vehicle to buy investment property or cash flow business operations - talk to me if we can help

We chose Costa Rica because the taxes are still in the hundreds instead of thousands or ten's of thousands, and we can wear shorts year 'round - see more about our decision at www.La-Tigra.com/why

lonfu · Member

I have found that individual stocks that pay regular dividends seem to hold their value the best. Electric companies, oil companies are just a couple of examples. I always look for at least 4% dividend on the purchase price. I tried using brokers, and investment counslers but they are just guessing and I've had better results then they gave me. I never buy a stock that doesn't pay a dividend, when the market drops so do the price for the dividendless stocks. Most of the day speculators stay away from dividend stocks because the price is so stable and they can't make enough on the itty bitty capital price changes. I bought the ones I have now over a period of time when I saw that the capitol price droped to the low range. Almost all are up now, but they are still paying the same dividend percentage as when I bought them.

great1putt · Newbie

Not to sound negative...but the beating we have taken over the last 6 years, I will be working until the day they put me in the ground. There will be no such thing as full retirement within the next 20 years. Until the current antiquated tax code is blasted out of this country and Washington realizes their corruption and theft has killed the goose that laid their golden egg, full retirement will be achieved by a single digit percentage of the population. I have stock base with precious metals on the side in addition to some DRIP stocks and a 401k based in mutual funds. I have lost so much ground and continue to lose ground to the inflation rates from our fiat currency, the policies of the FED, and the greed of the politicians, Federal, state, and local!
Again, these fools don't realize they are killing the golden goose...and it will eventually get them. They are selling our country to the highest bidder, lands and natural resources included. They are letting multiple countries pass us putting us on a second tier. China just cornered 85 percent of worldwide gold production last year and India cornered 91 percent of silver production world wide last year. Meanwhile our dollar is not backed by anything solid and is only worth 10 cents.
I'm tired of taxation without representation (yes, we are back to this point), tired of carve out and pork barrel, tired of spending wildly overseas while neglecting our own and our economy, tired of seeing more and more companies and jobs go overseas (yea this is still happening due to the corporate tax rates), tired of regulation by every damn government bureau from local to federal (you are gonna have to get a permit at some point to use the bathroom, oh...wait...you already DO have to get a permit from a local bureaucrat to do plumbing work so technically...), tired of seeing peoples assets confiscated by some Govt bureau's SWAT team bust before being proven guilty in a court of law by their peers, tired of seeing rich idiots who have armed security around them tell me I don't need a gun to protect my family and property, tired of filling out form after form after form to send to a local, state, or federal agency for a small business single location entity that has all of maybe 3 or 4 employees, tired of listening to politicians get on TV and bald faced lie to everyone and dance around any and all questions, Tired of mealy mouthed pansies who are so dadgum politically correct and afraid they might insult some small group of people they sugar coat everything they say, tired of educators screaming union and tenure while not teaching our kids 1+1 = 2 but 1+1 might equal 103 but the kids might be uncomfortable trying to solve 1+1 so we will skip that lesson this week.......TIRED OF IT ALL. Enough is enough.
Off my soapbox now.....retirement...who is kidding who...HA!...what is retirement?

randalljarmon · Member

I reply just as an amateur investor who has been investing a long time. I do not promise any special insight of my own, but I might be able to add a little information about insight from others.

To begin with --- and it sounds trite --- the first rule of picking good retirement investments supposedly is to put your money in different baskets. The second rule supposedly is to pick safe baskets.

Then it gets harder.

One needs both income investments, which might include social security, pensions, annuities, bonds, CDs, and income stocks. The idea is to have part of your overall portfolio reliably throwing off enough cash that one can live through a market crash like we had in 2008. One would like to have stable principal, too. That means not losing money because of the crash --- though one might have to wait for the market to recover.

One also has to protect against loss of purchasing power through inflation. That likely means one needs to have some investments that can grow in value. Real estate can grow that way if you pick it well. So can blue chip stocks, assuming you pick them well. Gold sometimes might also protect against inflation, but I suggest being extra careful about gold.

So far I have said to have (a) investments that offer stable income and consistent principal and (b) investments that offer income growth and increasing principal (e.g. capital gains). The next questions are how much of (a) and how much of (b)?

One place to begin finding such answers is, I suggest, the Value Line Investment Survey. It has been around for decades and is available for free in many public libraries. Their Selection & Opinion, near its back page, suggests the percentage of a portfolio for (a) and the percentage for (b). These are just suggestions, of course. Whatever (a) and (b) you choose should let you sleep at night without worry.

Value Line does not recommend bonds. It does, however, follow income stocks, which mostly seems to mean it covers utility stocks, master limited partnerships (which have weird tax consequences that need to be understood first) and REITs. Value Line most throughly covers the stocks of big companies. Value Line also gives you an easy way to determine if a company is relatively safe (as opposed to absolutely safe) and relatively apt to do well in the next one to five years. Value Line analysts present their learned opinions, but do not give guarantees.

I do not mean to imply that Value Line is the only place to find useful information about retirement investments. However, it seems one good place to find useful information. Look for a second or third good opinion, I suggest, if you can.

Maybe the nicest thing about Value Line is that you can learn much about the stockmarket in a few days, even if you do not have a finance degree. Your public library likely has Value Line's instruction book on how to use Value Line. Spend an afternoon with that instruction book --- or even an hour --- and you can quickly decide, I imagine, if Value Line can help you find good places to invest your retirement money.

-- Edited by randalljarmon on Thursday 26th of February 2015 11:10:46 PM