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Ask HN: I've saved up $80k USD. What should I do with it?

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Re: Ask HN: I've saved up $80k USD. What should I do with it?

#51
post #10

Short answer: Dump it all in VFIAX and ignore it for about 30 years. Alternately, wait for the housing market freefall that is scheduled to hit about 180 days from now, and buy a foreclosure or two. EDIT: Cosigning the above recommendation about maxing out a Roth IRA each and every year as well, and of course maxxing out any company-matched 401(k) options.

The problem (for me) with index funds is that you end up participating in stocks for companies you may not want. For example, I don't want a penny of my money to go to Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc. Here's the VFAIX top ten holdings:

Microsoft Corp Apple Inc Amazon.com Inc Facebook Inc A Berkshire Hathaway Inc B Alphabet Inc Class C Alphabet Inc A Johnson & Johnson Visa Inc Class A Procter & Gamble Co

It has always blown my mind that the answer for "retirement" now is to put your money in the online casino.

As a father of two young kids, the last thing I want to do is contribute to the erosion of any sense of privacy my kids may have in the future. Using Facebook as a tool for retirement is just as dumb to me as using Facebook for anything else.

Re: Ask HN: I've saved up $80k USD. What should I do with it?

#52
post #10

Short answer: Dump it all in VFIAX and ignore it for about 30 years. Alternately, wait for the housing market freefall that is scheduled to hit about 180 days from now, and buy a foreclosure or two. EDIT: Cosigning the above recommendation about maxing out a Roth IRA each and every year as well, and of course maxxing out any company-matched 401(k) options.

I've heard that the decrease in prices is expected for business housing, not so much in residential. What are your thoughts on that?

I hear a lot of things. I personally believe that the net result of all of this in a few (3-5) years when the worst part of it shakes out is that a lot of people who used to have equity will now be renting, but living in basically the same areas/levels: this is going to result in a very large net equity transfer to those who have cash on hand or cash flows in the next few years, at the expense of wage slaves who get totally fucked because their employers collapse over the summer and unemployment skyrockets.

Lots of large companies are going to do big layoffs to survive. Many others are going to dump their entire workforces when they go under entirely. Large industries like travel and tourism and entertainment and gambling and the related services for same are going to get scaled back for years. Money for the non-wealthy (and by wealthy I include pretty much everyone who knows pointer math or web programming, as even having $-20k in assets if you're able to make $100k+ puts you far better off than most) is going to become harder and harder to come by. I expect this to result in a lot of evictions when the courts reopen, and lots of foreclosures about 3-6 months after the layoffs peak in 3-4 months. All of the figures I am guessing at here are +/- ~10 weeks and are sketchy guessing at best, because who the fuck knows what's going to happen the rest of the year with any potential second or third waves of disease, or governmental closure orders, or even the outbreak of another world war.

It sounds like you have savings and income. Personally, with all of this uncertainty, I'd guard both as carefully as you can. Millionaires can afford to take bigger risks right now, normal people with nest eggs generally cannot, as it's not certain that the jobs will be as plentiful or high-paying in the next ten years as they were the last.

If in doubt, stick with the index fund, and just "set it and forget it". If you want to get more actively involved (or if you don't plan to change cities much and don't already own a home), real estate is almost always a good long term investment as well.

My advice would be markedly different if you were asking about $8M or $800k and not $80k, but $80k isn't a ton of money these days (I'm guessing it's less than a year of your gross income) so I personally would go lower-risk for the first few hundred k before ramping up the potential for higher returns.

Re: Ask HN: I've saved up $80k USD. What should I do with it?

#53
I take it you are a young person... First max out your company 401K with as much contribution to the ROTH option as you can afford... invest it in the lowest fee broad market matching index fund (Hint: S&P500) you can find. OK... now hopefully you are down with this and you still aren't eating into that 80K... If you don't need this money for a house, Well... over the long haul investment in the broader stock market "historically" doubles investments every 7 years. So, I'd suggest you open a cheap online brokerage account and first invest as much as you can into a ROTH and drop both ROTH and excess into an (again S&P500?) index mutual fund with the lowest expense ratio that you can find... and... try not to look at it again for the next 30 years except to convert as much each year into ROTH as possible. After 30 years you will hopefully look back into your account and have about $1.5M in that account with... being able to pull some significant amount of that investment out _tax free_. If you do need some of it for a house try to avoid 30 year loans and elect for 10-20 year loans.

Re: Ask HN: I've saved up $80k USD. What should I do with it?

#54
You could look into investing it into crypto money. It obviously is risky, there is no doubt about that, but can yield you very good returns, even in the current crisis. There are a large variety of options depending on the risk-level you are willing to take.

If you are interested in trading, I can warmly recommend starting here: https://hackernoon.com/all-my-trusty-crypto-trading-wisdom-i...

If you don't want to go that deep, I can recommend the crypto.com app/platform, one of the most approachable options right now imo with more or less "safe" earning options for which you do not need to know anything about trading (my referral code: aenfe3qkjz): https://crypto.com/

Re: Ask HN: I've saved up $80k USD. What should I do with it?

#55
post #51
post #10

Short answer: Dump it all in VFIAX and ignore it for about 30 years. Alternately, wait for the housing market freefall that is scheduled to hit about 180 days from now, and buy a foreclosure or two. EDIT: Cosigning the above recommendation about maxing out a Roth IRA each and every year as well, and of course maxxing out any company-matched 401(k) options.

The problem (for me) with index funds is that you end up participating in stocks for companies you may not want. For example, I don't want a penny of my money to go to Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc. Here's the VFAIX top ten holdings: Microsoft Corp Apple Inc Amazon.com Inc Facebook Inc A Berkshire Hathaway Inc B Alphabet Inc Class C Alphabet Inc A Johnson & Johnson Visa Inc Class A Procter & Gamble Co It has always b…

Choosing to invest or not invest in Facebook does not change a single thing about whether or not society as a whole chooses to use Facebook and whether or not, via that use, Facebook becomes powerful and further erodes societal values placed around privacy. Facebook would still be Facebook (and thus dangerous) even if it were privately held.

Facebook is Facebook because they have an app that people love to use, and that gives them the power to sell and control placement in the communication between friends and acquaintances back to those same communities. They're not powerful because of their share price.

Index invest away. I have Facebook blocked at my router but I still own them via index funds.

Re: Ask HN: I've saved up $80k USD. What should I do with it?

#56
Right now is a very risky time to invest. It could be that it turns out to be a good time, because stocks are about 20% below the all-time high. But there could also be a second crash, when investors realize the real impact of the economic crisis caused by Covid-19. In addition to that, there's the risk of inflation caused by government bailouts. What I'm doing right now is keeping about 1/3rd in gold ETF as inflation protection, about 1/3rd in stocks ETFs and the rest in cash. Once the whole thing is over, I will probably move back to stock ETFs.

Re: Ask HN: I've saved up $80k USD. What should I do with it?

#57

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Re: Ask HN: I've saved up $80k USD. What should I do with it?

#59

Whatever you do, don't follow the advice of posters here at HN. If even one of them has valid advice, it is coincidence.

This is basically liar paradox [1] :)

If it's true, then they shouldn't listen to you. But then they can follow advice of anyone, including yours.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar_paradox

Re: Ask HN: I've saved up $80k USD. What should I do with it?

#60
post #10

Short answer: Dump it all in VFIAX and ignore it for about 30 years. Alternately, wait for the housing market freefall that is scheduled to hit about 180 days from now, and buy a foreclosure or two. EDIT: Cosigning the above recommendation about maxing out a Roth IRA each and every year as well, and of course maxxing out any company-matched 401(k) options.

Why VFIAX over VOO? does buying a foreclosure mean buying a house for cheap after the owners were unable to pay for it?
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