Now that were officially the Communist States of America

Concrete Helmet

Hook, Line, and Sinker
Lifetime Member
Jul 29, 2014
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What's the strategy?
Pay everything off and try to hunker down for the next 6-8 years?
Pull everything out of the markets, buy gold, bitcoin and silver?
Sell RE portfolio before March crash and hope to buy back in in 2 years?
Down size personal holdings and possibly sell off profitable business before regulations and taxes steal your hard work?

What's your plan...

Edit....I thought of one more..
Do you stay in the market and hope the Government forgives SDL's and lowers rates while subsidizing silly milly's first home purchases and continues along with banks buying massive amounts of equities everytime the market wants to drop more than 200 points like they did on Monday at about 1pm....saving the Robin Hoodies stimulus money?
 
Last edited:

Theologator

Enchanter
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Aug 11, 2015
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A friend pointed out that with interest rates at essentially zero, governments and businesses have no brake on spending. I’ll add that the markets are inflated because where else can you park you money? That was all true under Trump and the pandemic spending spree, and will be pushed further now. But we’ve got to rebound from the pandemic. So yes, thrift, and don’t over extend. Play the long game. Selling off can box you out of the rebound, so hang on where you’re not leveraged and/or the value is truly there. I can’t trust Bitcoin. And don’t listen to Glenn Beck when he gets all doomsday. I’m going to refi our mortgage and shorten the term. Other than that, we’ll ride it out.

We are exposed by some of our decisions, habits and circumstances but very much protected by others. I don’t think the sky is falling. If it does, I’ll have plenty to keep me busy.
 

Theologator

Enchanter
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Aug 11, 2015
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To your edit: The market is global and resilient. Inflation is a looming issue with our Monopoly money printing, so parking it elsewhere isn’t really very safe. Buy smart, hold value and when the correction comes buy the bargains. Steady wins long term.
 

TLB

Just chillin'
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Jan 6, 2015
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My (simple) view hasn't changed = get out of debt where possible, and don't add any debt. There are some spends we were anticipating, and maybe those get deferred where possible. 2022 has son's Bar Mitzvah ($5k event, maybe it gets a little smaller?) and daughter is of age for a car (she pays half, but total will be under $2k since it IS her first car), wife turns 50 (bottle of wine and send her off on a ladies week at the beach for under $150), and we have our 20th Anniversary (trip to Glacier National Park maybe gets kicked an extra year out).

Goal is to get out of credit cards in 2021 (if bonuses are still a thing, which I doubt), pay off the last current car loan. Maintain ~12% retirement investment from paychecks, but NOT start up the Roth's for another year due to fear over gov't changes to most retirement funds AND to focus on debt payments. House addition and new deck get pushed another few years out. Retirement 401k is in stocks, primarily. I figure to ride it out there and suffer along with whatever happens to the rest of America. I feel I won't be any worse off as I've always viewed it as a risk to crash at any point anyway.
 

BMF

Bad Mother....
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Sep 8, 2014
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I'm holding some 'risky' stocks that I think I'm going to dump, but I'll hold my blue chips (like Apple, Amazon, etc). I'm not sure if I'll dump any of my mutual funds (I dumped a large percentage before the election, so I'm only holding about 15% of my portfolio in mutual funds). If the market tanks, I won't lose too much.

I'm going to sit on the sidelines with any aggressive investing unless I see a good buy opportunity.

As discussed in other threads, we're moving this year and plan to rent (in Florida). So the real estate market concerns me.

My only hope is that Joe Manchen is the cancel out vote in the Senate when the dems go ape-sh*t w/ things like packing the court or adding DC/PR as new states....and we can ride it out until 2022 and win back the House.
 

GatorCatsi

¡No más tacos gratis!
Lifetime Member
Jun 2, 2016
6,800
7,990
What's the strategy?
Pay everything off and try to hunker down for the next 6-8 years?
Pull everything out of the markets, buy gold, bitcoin and silver?
Sell RE portfolio before March crash and hope to buy back in in 2 years?
Down size personal holdings and possibly sell off profitable business before regulations and taxes steal your hard work?

What's your plan...

Edit....I thought of one more..
Do you stay in the market and hope the Government forgives SDL's and lowers rates while subsidizing silly milly's first home purchases and continues along with banks buying massive amounts of equities everytime the market wants to drop more than 200 points like they did on Monday at about 1pm....saving the Robin Hoodies stimulus money?
Amazon product
 

Detroitgator

Well-Known Member
Lifetime Member
Jul 15, 2014
28,237
46,747
What's the strategy?
Pay everything off and try to hunker down for the next 6-8 years?
Pull everything out of the markets, buy gold, bitcoin and silver?
Sell RE portfolio before March crash and hope to buy back in in 2 years?
Down size personal holdings and possibly sell off profitable business before regulations and taxes steal your hard work?

What's your plan...

Edit....I thought of one more..
Do you stay in the market and hope the Government forgives SDL's and lowers rates while subsidizing silly milly's first home purchases and continues along with banks buying massive amounts of equities everytime the market wants to drop more than 200 points like they did on Monday at about 1pm....saving the Robin Hoodies stimulus money?
Why would you want to pay off anything financed with a low, fixed, interest rate? Actually, if you know you are going to have income to cover that debt, you should actually be trying to lock in as much as you can because you can pay off your principal amount/loan with inflated dollars. Now, the flip side of that is that I wouldn't rush into real estate yet for all the reasons we stated.

Honestly, the one in bold is the one to consider because interest rates will still be at incredibly stupid lows historically even if they rose to 5% in two years (which they won't, and if they do, we're in apocalypse mode anyway). That said, no good way to time that, you'll just have to best guess based on available data.

For historical perspective, a HS friend posted this on Facebook three days ago...

Lori & I are cleaning out old files. I had mortgage paperwork from 1991 with a 9.5% rate!
1f61c.png

We refinanced in 1994 at $8%!
1f602.png

I’ve always had good credit so these were competitive rates.
1f633.png
 

BMF

Bad Mother....
Lifetime Member
Sep 8, 2014
25,399
59,220
Why would you want to pay off anything financed with a low, fixed, interest rate? Actually, if you know you are going to have income to cover that debt, you should actually be trying to lock in as much as you can because you can pay off your principal amount/loan with inflated dollars. Now, the flip side of that is that I wouldn't rush into real estate yet for all the reasons we stated.

Honestly, the one in bold is the one to consider because interest rates will still be at incredibly stupid lows historically even if they rose to 5% in two years (which they won't, and if they do, we're in apocalypse mode anyway). That said, no good way to time that, you'll just have to best guess based on available data.

For historical perspective, a HS friend posted this on Facebook three days ago...

Lori & I are cleaning out old files. I had mortgage paperwork from 1991 with a 9.5% rate!
1f61c.png

We refinanced in 1994 at $8%!
1f602.png

I’ve always had good credit so these were competitive rates.
1f633.png

I tell people all the time; my first house (1997) my interest rate was 7.125%. I refinanced it less than a year after I bought it for 6.75% and I remember saying, "I can't believe I got a mortgage for less than 7%!"

People under 40, 45 years old have no clue how good the rates are right now....but it's caused artificial inflation of the housing market.
 

Concrete Helmet

Hook, Line, and Sinker
Lifetime Member
Jul 29, 2014
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Why would you want to pay off anything financed with a low, fixed, interest rate?
1. Because between business and personal expenses we spend nearly 100K a month. The first 2 years of the GFC,2008-2010, were a YUGE loss for the company and required selling off around a million in investment assets to keep a quarter of the staff and pay our bills...Wasn't a lot of fun.....I wasn't working there at the time but had 2 jobs of my own and between working and chasing down my personal rental tenants to get them to sign promissory notes and sweating bullets while being 200k under water on them.
Re72328cc28c53efe359d755fa5ec98ed

2. If stuff is paid off you can stretch from other areas to keep your life easy and expenses down...you can always reborrow what you want/need if the rates are still low or investment opportunities present themselves....(it won't tap us out as we are about 65-70% equity in both personal and company RE portfolios)...

3. Most important to me will be taking that money OUT OF CIRRCULATION which will hurt the economy and make me feel like I'm doing my part to get rid of this communist regime :lol:
 

Gatormac2112

The Voice of Reason
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Sep 7, 2014
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My parents had a mortgage with a percentage in the teens back in the 70’s
 

LoyalGatorFan

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Jul 10, 2019
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Random question....what happened to the Politics forum? It now shows being Private...
 

FireFoley

Senior Member
Lifetime Member
Nov 19, 2014
9,013
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My (simple) view hasn't changed = get out of debt where possible, and don't add any debt. There are some spends we were anticipating, and maybe those get deferred where possible. 2022 has son's Bar Mitzvah ($5k event, maybe it gets a little smaller?) and daughter is of age for a car (she pays half, but total will be under $2k since it IS her first car), wife turns 50 (bottle of wine and send her off on a ladies week at the beach for under $150), and we have our 20th Anniversary (trip to Glacier National Park maybe gets kicked an extra year out).

Goal is to get out of credit cards in 2021 (if bonuses are still a thing, which I doubt), pay off the last current car loan. Maintain ~12% retirement investment from paychecks, but NOT start up the Roth's for another year due to fear over gov't changes to most retirement funds AND to focus on debt payments. House addition and new deck get pushed another few years out. Retirement 401k is in stocks, primarily. I figure to ride it out there and suffer along with whatever happens to the rest of America. I feel I won't be any worse off as I've always viewed it as a risk to crash at any point anyway.

Save that Gelt, save that gelt :) A Shekel a day will keep the creditors away. Good luck with all that's going on
 

Detroitgator

Well-Known Member
Lifetime Member
Jul 15, 2014
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Save that Gelt, save that gelt :) A Shekel a day will keep the creditors away. Good luck with all that's going on
On that note, Ally Bank has informed us/all demand note account (formerly GM/GMAC Demand Note) holders that they are closing that down. It was the last place where I could be 100% liquid and earn a decent return. In the good 'ole days prior to 2008, it would earn anywhere from 5-8%. Even a year ago, I'd get 1.5% if balance greater than $90K. It's now at 0.5% and they are redeeming.

We are being funneled into one thing....
 

FireFoley

Senior Member
Lifetime Member
Nov 19, 2014
9,013
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On that note, Ally Bank has informed us/all demand note account (formerly GM/GMAC Demand Note) holders that they are closing that down. It was the last place where I could be 100% liquid and earn a decent return. In the good 'ole days prior to 2008, it would earn anywhere from 5-8%. Even a year ago, I'd get 1.5% if balance greater than $90K. It's now at 0.5% and they are redeeming.

We are being funneled into one thing....

Thanks for this info. I am constantly looking for Money Market/Savings accounts that offer a decent yield and of course they are/were all online type banks. Anyway I have been suffering the same fates and just had a bank drop my rate from .90 to .25, unless I up the balance to 500K. I am wondering though if we can get a continuous rise in longer rates (I know short rates are anchored) if some of the banks might up their time deposit rates or even their CD rates?
 

Detroitgator

Well-Known Member
Lifetime Member
Jul 15, 2014
28,237
46,747
Thanks for this info. I am constantly looking for Money Market/Savings accounts that offer a decent yield and of course they are/were all online type banks. Anyway I have been suffering the same fates and just had a bank drop my rate from .90 to .25, unless I up the balance to 500K. I am wondering though if we can get a continuous rise in longer rates (I know short rates are anchored) if some of the banks might up their time deposit rates or even their CD rates?
Given that with COVID they reduced the fractional banking requirements to ZERO percent, I would say no, not a chance in hell... the banks have no interest in holding deposits unless required to do so, it costs them money. I truly think the game officially ended in 2008, and like a soccer game, we're in that "extra time" or whatever the fuk they call it!
 

jeeping8r

Your car may go fast, Mine will go anywhere
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Dec 18, 2015
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Ox get the memo that his little moderated political forum will be shut off by the powers that be?
 

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