More like 'fuck other people over" money.
Rethinking 'Fuck You' money
91–100 of 172 posts
Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money
#92What about dividend paying stocks? Good companies are usually very reluctant to cut dividends even in bad times and with stock prices suppressed, this should lead to higher dividend yields. Probably not a total solution but should be looked at.
In theory, shouldn't all stocks be dividend paying? If your stock doesn't pay dividends, what makes it any different from baseball cards as an investment?
It's different from baseball cards because a given baseball card can't start paying dividends if all the people who own the card have a vote and decide it should.
I used to spend a lot of time playing Railroad Tycoon 2, and in that game a good way to get rich is
1. Put all your money in to a railroad you control.
2. Grow your railroad. As your railroad grows, the value of your stock in it grows. This causes your purchasing power to rise, allowing you to borrow money to buy more stock in your railroad.
3. Eventually you're in a ton of debt, but you've also got a ton of stock in your (presumably successful) railroad. Then raise the dividend paid by your railroad's shares and rake it in.
The problem with raising the dividend paid by your shares early on is that it will give your railroad less capital to expand with. So you only want to execute step 3 when your railroad is making more money than you know what to do with.
I think there's a good argument to be made that companies like Google know what to do with the money they're making.
Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money
#93Two words: permanent portfolio.
http://crawlingroad.com/blog/2008/12/22/permanent-portfolio-...
Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
My point isn't that my friend got a crazy good deal. My point is that arbitraging 12% rental income against a 5% mortgage rate is so easy right now you can do it by buying right off the MLS at market rates, in one of the most expensive(price to rent wise) cities in the US. The original poster was moaning about how hard it was in TODAY's environment to make money off of several million dollars in cash(!). I wanted to…
If what you say is true, why is all this free money still lying around? Is there some systematic reason for why hedge funds don't do it, or why too few people bid on courthouse auctions?
It's not free at all.
Buying a rental property off the MLS means you have to manage it, and is like starting a small business. This is fairly safe to do even for beginners, and is a good way to leverage a few tens of thousands and a good credit rating.
Buying at courthouse auctions is a completely different ball game, and requires you to
1. pay all cash(this eliminates 99% of competitors)
2. research title and liens on the property(if you screw up you might end up buying the second mortgage instead of the first and lose everything)
3. estimate the market price without being inside
4. be there on weekday mornings
5. have strong intestinal fortitude.
6. have heard about them in the first place and have taken the trouble to learn the system.
The above are why you can get discounts of 30% or more off of market price.
Properties need to be individually researched, fixed up and resold. Someone has to physically go attend the auction. It's MUCH too messy for hedge funds. It's ideal for individuals, or groups of individuals, with cash and local knowledge. More and more people are showing up at my local auction, and good deals are getting harder to find.
Are you in California? Go to your local county courthouse at 10AM on a weekday and look for a circle of homeless looking people holding large cashier's checks. Depending on the state, it might be once a month on a designated weekend. Let me know if you want more info.
Stop reading HN and get back to work on chapter 35.
Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Top money manager at major Wall Street firm != random people. It doesn't necessarily mean stocks are about to go down either (Wall Street has certainly been wrong too, eg. 2000 or 2007), but it's a far cry from having a shoe-shine boy tell you to buy stocks.
No, I think "top money manager at a major Wall Street firm" and otherwise unattributed actually is random people.
Bernard Lietaer (former central banker, successful currency speculator, one of the architects of what today is the Euro, and nowadays complementary currency advocate) starts most of his post-crisis conferences by asking the public to raise their hands if they believe that the worst of the crisis is past/ahead of us. Generally, most people will raise their hand to state their belief that the worst is still to come. Here's an example, in front of an audience of financial journalists:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfMbYllbN6c
(Skip to 2:40 for the actual start if you want.)
Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money
#96Does the rule that you should get out of the stock market when random people tell you stocks are sure to go up apply in reverse? If so, this is a pretty encouraging sign.
Top money manager at major Wall Street firm != random people. It doesn't necessarily mean stocks are about to go down either (Wall Street has certainly been wrong too, eg. 2000 or 2007), but it's a far cry from having a shoe-shine boy tell you to buy stocks.
But the shoe shine boy has no motive for lying to me. The "top money manager at a major Wall Street firm" may be lying to me in order to get me to do something that lines his pocketbook. For example, he may be front-running.
Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are not fucking terrified at the moment you're not paying attention.
There's nothing to be terrified of. Just live your life and do your best. If you're going to live your entire life with fear about retirement or debt, then by the time you reach retirement age you'll have lived most of your life in fear. Which is worse? Working during retirement age or living the vast majority of your life in fear? If things get really really bad you can always put a hole in your head or jump off a b…
> " If things get really really bad you can always put a hole in your head or jump off a bridge. So don't worry about it."
That philosophy might work if you're a single person.
That philosophy suddenly does not work so well if you have a spouse, children, and aging parents, perhaps sick or dependent families. Suddenly the whole "oh well, I can always just shoot myself" solution isn't so clean and practical.
Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why don't you just put your money in a global index fund instead? No one forces you Americans to invest your savings in your own country..in fact, that seems like a pretty bad idea in the first place, since this means that when the economy is bad and it is hard to find jobs is the same time it is a very bad idea to take money out of your investments. Seems pretty obvious to me that the American economy as a whole has…
Which country? Europe is worse-off than America, China likely has their own bubble. Japan has been in a funk for 20 years. Russia has recently been cracking down on political freedoms in a worrisome way, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to take your money out once you put it in. Same for many Latin American countries.
How about India? Indian economy has bounced back some time ago. Here is sensex over last 5 years.
http://in.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=^BSESN&t=5y&l=on&...
Risk-free return rate is still at around 8%: http://www.bajajcapital.com/gss/nsc.html
Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money
#99this may be good advice for people who have the potential to earn fu money. the corollary to average people seems to be that it's no longer possible to retire.
how did we go from an age in which average people could hope to retire, to one in which someone with 5M needs to worry?
Re: Rethinking 'Fuck You' money
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Top money manager at major Wall Street firm != random people. It doesn't necessarily mean stocks are about to go down either (Wall Street has certainly been wrong too, eg. 2000 or 2007), but it's a far cry from having a shoe-shine boy tell you to buy stocks.
No, I think "top money manager at a major Wall Street firm" and otherwise unattributed actually is random people.
Do you mean to imply that the post's author was lying, the person he was talking to was lying, or that a top money manager at a major Wall Street firm's opinion is just as good as that of a random person?
If the last one, I'm inclined to think that someone who thinks about something full-time is statistically more likely to guess correctly about it than someone who doesn't.