491–500 of 531 posts
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- Make sure my debts are paid, and ensure long term stable income Totally. No need to carry a car loan, mortgage, Credit card debt anything anymore.
some would say that depends on the cost of borrowing. i know high net wealths that borrow any time they can if the rates are low enough.
i invested close to the ETH ICO. just $10k or so, but that gave me a windfall of $3.5m (I sold in early to mid-December). im not super conservative with my money (i.e., i don't do t-bills, and other "super safe" investments). i am just dollar cost averaging into index funds, like ive always done. I anticipate that I'll get anywhere from 5% to 15% per year, compounding. i also have pre-tax income of roughly $500k. i s…
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when you have $8mm, sitting on your hands for a year costs you ~$250,000.
If you make rash decisions based on your perception of opportunity costs at that kind of sum, it's a good first step for losing it all. I'm also surprised by the attitude of 5% gain is easy and guaranteed. It's not. Neither treasurey funds nor real estate yield anywhere near 5% and we are many years in a bull market. Expecting 5% yearly ROI in the market over the next decade is optimistic.
I agree. Having most of his capital in the stock market or real estate is a great opportunity to lose money in the next 5-10 years. Holding cash and investing it when the market is down is a good idea. Buffet currently does that because Berkshire thinks [1] that most of the stocks are overvalued (he waits for the next crash to buy them when they're cheap).
Other assets which are stable in value (e.g. gold, inelastic resources) are also a good idea.
[1]: https://www.businessinsider.de/warren-buffett-berkshire-hath...
OT: I would get myself a New Zealand citizenship/permanent residency and buy real estate there ($500k-1m NZD). Many millionaires are currently heading to Australia and NZ because they expect that the inequality will get to the point where society will turn aggressive. A little bit paranoid, but they try to be better safe than sorry. Plus New Zealand is a wonderful place to live and the real estate price will rise in the next years because of growing fear. [2]
[2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-rich-new-zealand-doo...
Bicycle workshops were where all of today's big auto makers got started. The Wright Brothers also got started in a bicycle workshop.
So what would happen if you made the largest individual purchase of bicycles in history and gave them away to some war torn part of the world? You could choose a town in Afghanistan where the road/rail connections were not great and choose a demographic - all 16 year old people in the town. The bicycles could be reasonably decent and fit for purpose. There need not be any strings attached, however, your 'sponsored' town would be different to other towns due to the bicycles.
In five years time would the economy of that town grow in ways that neighbouring towns did not? Would there be bicycle workshops and innovation? Would people be better educated? Would your 'bikes not bombs' development model inspire others?
You need not even visit your chosen war-torn town to get things started. You could get some post-traumatised veterans to go out there and do the swords to ploughshares bit, setting up bikes properly and making sure that everything was distributed as per the 'experiment'.
A few years ago the bicycle company Kona made an interesting bike for Africa, it enabled Western buyers to buy two 'Africabike' models at full retail with another 'Africabike' being donated to Africa. Somewhere in Africa, a long way from the news headlines are doctors able to do their rounds in a fraction of the time due to their steeds. This is conventional 'charity'. You can forget the 'charity' part and instead just see if you can stimulate a whole economy, albeit at a town size level, just by adding bicycles.
I am sure that in years to come the people of this to-be-decided town would welcome you and your family as kings, even if the bicycles did end up wrecked after a few years.
You might laugh at this suggestion, however, I have helped a local homeless guy with a bike (and a radio). He has too much pride to be 'homeless' but he is, even if I don't see him that way. The bike enables him to do dog-walking gigs and gardening jobs that were too far away to get to when walking was the only option. There is a small virtuous circle enabled this way, not everyone can find a person to walk their dog whilst they are working, not everyone is fit enough to keep their garden in order. My friend is not stuck as a beggar. He contributes to the local economy, earning money fair and square. The bike enables this transformation.
There is quite a lot in it for me too - I don't have to shuffle by my homeless friend, ignoring him out of fear I might have to be parted with my 'spare' change. I also like to have a go at fixing things so my bike skills stay fresh. I also feel a lot safer in public areas due to being on first name terms with local homeless folk including aforementioned friend.
So my advice is to do the bike thing at a larger scale for enlightened self-interest reasons.
In your specific case, I’d consider investing a small chunk of the proceeds in a qualified opportunity zone fund. The tax incentives are massive, but there are a lot tradeoffs that you’re unfortunately probably not in the best place to fully work through right now :(
1) it's all about what to do with the money 2) it's all about you
Rule of thumb in practice is don't take advice from someone who hasn't taken the time to understand more than what you shared. If you ask non-anonymously for advice to a professional with proper standards, you should get questions in response.
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$150k net for 50+ years is upper middle class at most in America? Jeez some people are in a bubble. Reminder this is assuming he completely stops working and does basically nothing with the money except match inflation.
According to this : https://www.thebalance.com/definition-of-middle-class-income... 150k is just the limit between upper middle class and high income, and most politicians use 200ke as the definition of high income. You might have a different definition of upper middle class, but mine has following