291–300 of 341 posts
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My wife has health issues that mean many foods will cause her gastrointestinal pain or worse. Unfortunately many of the meat substitutes that vegans/vegetarians eat will hurt her.
Your wife is not the norm and it does not give us any general info about vegetarianism being supposedly unhealthy.
This is general information.
Work for a company that is protected and you will be okay. Food, soap, and other basic boring stuff will be in demand. Luxuries not as much, so games might be bad, or as cheap entertainment they might do good as people buy the games that will keep them all year to avoid the expensive entertainment they did instead. Really it is a guess as to what will do well. Most people have a job in bad times. The real problem is…
Paying off debt is usually good financial advice, but it is arguably the wrong thing to do if you expect higher and higher inflation (which you mentioned is your expectation). If you expect inflation to keep increasing, then one of the financially smart things to do would be to take as much debt as possible and purchase hard assets with the debt (such as land or commodities). For me personally, I wouldn't follow this…
If you know for sure inflation will be through the roof, but you will keep your job: then taking on more debt at a fixed low rate now, and investing in something that grows is the right thing. However this is risky. I can tell you what investments would have worked in the past, but it isn't hard to find historical advice that turned out bad. As such I would never recommend taking on more debt to invest even though the math seems to work. Though not paying off the house and instead investing in something else might be good advice.
Note that when those who retire early are surveyed most paid off the house early. Even though they know the math says index funds are a better investment, the peace of mind from not having dept is something they all say is important. In short the best financial advice isn't always the advice that works in practice. YMMV
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If you weren't just interested in derailing the conversation, you would have looked up how this stacks up with a better index. I did, so you might be cheered to know that the S&P 500, a cutting edge market-weight based broad index, dropped 20.2% from 1990-07-03 to 1990-10-11 compared to the DJIA's 18%.
Yes, but there's never any good reason to bring up DJIA unless you're a TV reporter who needs a big number, so I think it's always a good deed to complain about it.
Today we can update any index you might be interested in, in a few milliseconds. (I'm sure there are high frequency traders reading this who can give more accurate timings)
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> i don't think there are any places around the world where owning a car is cheaper than paying for public transit ( with the caveat that depending on how you measure the time spent could alter that) That's the world's biggest caveat. Investment in a modest car that stops you from spending 3 hours each way commuting over 4 separate bus routes from exurban home to exurban job is about as high a return on money as you'…
>Investment in a modest car that stops you from spending 3 hours each way commuting over 4 separate bus routes from exurban home to exurban job is about as high a return on money as you're ever going to see. I know your example is exaggerated but even so making decisions about where to live and work like that is on a parallel with making poor decisions about your finances.
That, of course, is why people do it. I wish it wasn't true, I wish things were like Switzerland where every remote mountain town still has fast and effective connections to the national transit system. But they aren't, this is America.
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> I avoid personal debt like the plague. If that means living in a small house, and driving an old car, then so be it. Going into debt that you can pay off and will make you a profit is good - because making a profit is literally the thing that gets you through bad times. (That's why having savings be 100% cash is riskier than investing - you are 100% guaranteed to not have it go up.) And recent years' zero-to-negati…
Your advice might be okay for good times (investing, buying land, houses). But in hard economic times, the global economy will be doing badly and therefore most investments will too, even housing (see 2008). Going into debt that you then invest is doubly risky: you have debt, plus you have a risky investment. Saving cash is actually indeed the best way to prepare for hard times.
1. Build an emergency fund. I have enough to cover about 12 months of all my expenses.
2. Avoid life style creep when you start making more money.
3. Invest pre-tax, take full advantage of 401k and IRAs (make sure your expense ratio is low in your selected funds)
4. If you need a car be reasonable, take efficiency and repair costs into consideration
5. Learn how to do basic home/car maintenance
6. Learn how to cook
The idea of emergency fund is that you are not forced to sell during hard times. It is extremely likely that total market will recover and go higher than before.
Saving cash beyond emergency fund is like setting it on fire. Every year inflation is eating it away.
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For people who struggle with their finances it's not just the gym membership. It's the gym membership, media subscriptions, daily latte, oversized car(s), holidays abroad, eating out daily, mortgage payments on a McMansion, new phone every year, overflowing wardrobe and on and on. Most people live pay check to pay check.
What you're describing is a lack of impulse control, not anything related to a gym membership specifically.
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>Investment in a modest car that stops you from spending 3 hours each way commuting over 4 separate bus routes from exurban home to exurban job is about as high a return on money as you're ever going to see. I know your example is exaggerated but even so making decisions about where to live and work like that is on a parallel with making poor decisions about your finances.
Many people have circumstances that don't allow them to choose the exact place they live. Also living in less desirable areas often has a lower cost of living - offsetting the cost of a car.
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> I avoid personal debt like the plague. If that means living in a small house, and driving an old car, then so be it. Going into debt that you can pay off and will make you a profit is good - because making a profit is literally the thing that gets you through bad times. (That's why having savings be 100% cash is riskier than investing - you are 100% guaranteed to not have it go up.) And recent years' zero-to-negati…
Debt is leverage. When times are good you are great, when they are not and the repo man cometh, they are awful. The banks always win via bailout or not. Staying debt free is the only safe place, you have flexibility.