Best Posts in Forum: Business, Investing & Finance

I saw this article yesterday on MSN. Good read. I agree w/ that you have to take out the religious aspects of it (although I still tithe and give to charity - about 5% of my income total, which is less than the 10% Ramsey suggests; per the bible). Glad to see so many young people getting their sh*t together. I always kick myself for being a financial retard in my early/mid 20's.

I can honestly say, Dave Ramsey turned my life around financially (also w/ a little bit from Clarke Howard). I was working a 3rd job in the late 90's as a transport paramedic and was in the ambulance 12+ hours a day listening to AM radio (usually sports, financial, or political stuff). I got turned on to Ramsey and it financially turned my life around.

I haven't had a car payment since the year 2000. I bought my house in Arlington for over $400K and put 20% down (plus closing costs), I built a vacation/rental cabin and paid cash for it, and I have a healthy savings/investment/brokerage account. It's taken 20 years, but I look back on it and it all started w/ the part-time job and listening to Dave Ramsey on the radio.

 

Ummmm.....you do realize those banner ads are based on your search history, right?

 

I've a got a great plan.....Lottery....I pay in $20 a week and one day it will make me millions.

 

I would relax on the vacation budget. I would have not put myself in a 1.5M mortgage. I would have done something different with the vehicles. It's great they are saving $36,000 a year in a 401k... but I would make every attempt possible to put away WAY more than "just" that.

 

I know this douchebag that started one. It's OK, but he's certainly squeezed a good amount from me in the process. All I got in return was a special banner with sparkles.

 

This spells it out better

 

Is that an exponential curve? Do we need to flatten the curve?

 

My 19-year old daughter, a college student who started her first job early this year making $80 gross/week,asked me "what percentage should I start saving for retirement, and how much toward an emergency fund?" just after her first paycheck. You couldn't have knocked the smile off of my face with a baseball bat.

 

I will try to give an elementary explanation and an elementary example, and will not go into details b/c of the current rate levels etc.

An inverted yield curve is based on the U.S Treasury rates. U.S Treasury rates go from anywhere from 1 day (the shortest) to 30 yr. bonds (the longest). Generally speaking when you loan your money to the U.S. Gov't (which is what you do if you buy a treasury) the longer the term usually gives you a higher rate, which makes sense b/c the longer you tie up your money the better rate you should get. This is basically how old school banks make money. You having a savings account and they pay you an overnight rate. They then take that money and lend it long term, say for a morgtage. But if they have to pay more to you than they can loan it out for, they can't make money. This won;t happen in reality, but it is one of the things that was happening in 2003-2008 and was part of the credit crisis that caused the modern day depression. So when the shortest rate is the lowest and progressively gets higher the longer in time, this is called a normal yield curve. An inverted yield curve is when any of the shorter duration rates is higher than any longer term rate. For example the 3 month T-Bill has had a much higher yield than the 2, 5, and 10 year T-notes for quite a while now, thus the yield curve has been inverted for a long time now. However today for a brief moment, the 10 year T-Note had a rate lower than the 2 year T-note, thus an inversion in the 2-10 spread. The reason it is all over the papers is that this particular inversion is closely followed by many and often seen as a good indicator of a recession to come. I personally think that the 3 month to 10 year is a better tell, but that is another topic. So in short an inverted yield curve is when a shorter term maturity instrument carries a higher interest rate than a longer term maturity instrument in that same family.

Oh and the simple answer as to why the panic is that it has been that recession indicator 6-24 months down the road.

 

CNN got to the bottom of this scheme. Good work. I’m a little disappointed that they didn’t work Trump into the sentence though.

 

Honestly, and I'm over generalizing, but NOTHING, not a SINGLE thing, has been done with GME that hasn't been happening since the inception of stock markets... nothing. The only difference this time is who did what to whom, and they don't like it.

 

I was thinking about this as I made made career in the financial markets but am no big supporter of the Wall Street muckity muck, Government Sachs types, etc. and really do not have a huge problem if the couch potatoes want to push stocks one way or another. But what I don;t want is this. When the GME's KOSS's, et al of world go back to single digits, I don;t want the Pocohontas Warren's and the Bernie Sander's of the world complaining that these "innocent" people were robbed and should get their money back!

 

I initially retired @ age 60 as a widow & received 71 1/2% of my late husband's social security, but I retired from full time work and only worked part-time. I fully retired @ age65 in 2003 w/full SS benefits on my account which was in excess of $2,000/mo. net. I had no debts as home/car, etc. paid off & had an employer-funded lucrative pension which I rolled over into Morgan-Stanley nor have I ever touched the principle.

From 2003 to date, I have enjoyed double-digit gains on my pension investments as my portfolio was initially somewhat aggressive with 70% stock/30% fixed. I reduced this to 60/40 four years ago and on my 80th birthday further reduced to 40/60%. "Money" magazine states you should not be invested in percentage of stock more than your age, less one hundred which means I should have no more than 20% in stock. I am not willing to go that low in this current economy. I think counting on an average of around 3.5 to 4% is a bit more realistic than 6%, but as long as the economy is doing so great, I would be more aggressive until there is a downturn. In essence, stockpile it while you can.

Obviously if I see the worm turning toward a (God forbid) Democratic president in 2020, I would greatly reduce stock investment percentage. Regardless, retirement is somewhat scarey and you hope not to outlive your money & to be able to handle the unexpected expenses.

 

Then don't do it!

FWIW, I wouldn't touch GME right now. The "smartest" play right now would be to set up conditional orders for its inevitable crash to reality. That said, good luck trying to short sell it, I doubt anyone on here is using a trading platform that would have any available short positions. You could buy puts, but, "fire bad!" It's now below its 21, 50, and 100 moving averages, so it's likely rolling over, but I would stay away... ALL the algos are on it now.

 

Nerdy side note: the type of boiling where you see little bubbles forming off the bottom of the pot is called "nucleate boiling". The surface temp of the pot is above the saturation temperature of the water. Maximum heat transfer is happening at a super efficient rate and the temperate of the water is increasing at its fastest rate possible.