How do you invest your money?

Knight said:
No strategy more like dumb luck.

In 1973 went from a low paying job, no benefits & a lot of part time work to a job that had promise of good wages & benefits. My 1st. introduction to investing I was able to enroll in a payroll plan to buy company stock at a discounted price. That & start a matched 401k up to about 8% retirement account. In the 401k I had to chose from options I knew nothing about so I chose without a clue. Luck was with me my choices were good ones.

Early 1980 my wife started with a major corporation, luck again in the picture. Because we had rough years she helped with DIY projects that saved us money. She applied for the highest paying blue collar job, plant maintenance. A rare thing in the 1980's a lady mechanic. Same deal after her 401k deductions all but $25.00 of her weekly pay went to buy stock in the company she worked for thru payroll at a discounted price.

For both of us the 401k's were converted into Traditional IRA's & self directed IRA's.
Luck again in 1992 our oldest son was working in Las Vegas living in an apartment. He agreed to live in a home we wanted to buy for our planned early retirement. The mortgage amount was about $150.00 a month less than his apartment. He was able to save & invest. We had paid off the mortgage on the 5 bedroom home we had that sat on 8 acres of land. Money was accumulating nicely. More luck. In 1995 I was offered retirement at age 54 with a great management "go away" package. In 1995 the housing market was a sellers market. We sold for 3 times what we bought for.

LUCK LUCK LUCK sums up our investing.
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1. Did you convert your traditional IRA to Roth IRA later on? I guess not.
2. You sold your home in 1995 for 3 times what you bought for. Where did you live after 1995? From 2010 to 2022, the real estate value grew 4 times in may areas in the U.S, did you also capture that luck? I guess not.
 

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OldOld said:
They all said they are fiduciary and don't get commission from the product, meanwhile, try to sell me annuities.
Welcome to the real world.
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i doubt it .

there is no decent financial guy that would ever go thru the expense of licensing and training and not get paid for selling a plan.

that just makes zero sense .

unless they work for a house like fidelity they are going to use that to make big dollars selling plans.

annuities being sold are within the range of being a fiduciary
 
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before i retired we saw a professional team of advisors.

it consisted of a financial advisor, an estate attorney , and a tax specialist..

i didn’t see them for investing advice.

when we went , we learned a lot .despite the fact i thought i knew all i needed to know

we learned that at the time new york had a very low estate tax exclusion.

if you went over by just 5% you didn’t pay on the overage , you lost the entire exemption and the estate paid from dollar one .

the estate attorney set us up with special disclaimer trusts that allowed us to pass 2x our state limit .

so it was well worth going to see these pros
 

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outlander said:
No portfolio. Money and gold saved in banks and hidden in places. One of my kids knows what's going on. I won't need to spend it and I want my children to get a nice little payout when I croak.
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We've done somewhat the same thing. We've never spent our life-time as "money grubbers". For some folks, "chasing the buck" IS their way of life.

We've enjoyed a wonderful life, now reaching our 90's. Close to our kids, grands, and great grands. Have a decent amount put aside for them, but to chase the almighty dollar to get to some ?? magical amount has never been what life's about, at least in our case.
 
OldOld said:
1. Did you convert your traditional IRA to Roth IRA later on? I guess not.
2. You sold your home in 1995 for 3 times what you bought for. Where did you live after 1995? From 2010 to 2022, the real estate value grew 4 times in may areas in the U.S, did you also capture that luck? I guess not.
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After 1995 we lived in Las Vegas in the home we bought in 1992. We planned for early retirement so when I was offered a retirement package in 1995 to retire at age 54 it was a no brainer. As posted my son lived in & paid the mortgage until we moved & paid the balance of the mortgage. Our son wanted to move out so with the money he saved & 20k for a down payment on a condo he was happy we are happy. We don't hoard money we enjoy life. We plan on leaving our sons a substantial amount but when our sons "need" not "want" something we'd rather help them now.

No change in the IRA's & no reason to use the money building in those until we were forced to begin the MRD disbursements. Even now those put back close to what is taken out for MRD's. I don't know how long that will last but I'm guessing both my wife & me will be dead for quite a few years so our sons will have lots to piss away.

The years between my retirement age of 54 & early draw on Soc. Sec. we had money left over from the sale of that home & the money spent to pay off the mortgage. Really helpful was the sale of several thousand shares of Kraft stock.

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we sold our home in 2003 .

we decided to rent and take that lump sum plus other money we had and make a substantial investment in manhattan real estate actually buying what amounted to 9 co-op apartments over looking central park plus commercial lease rights on some businesses in the building .

the problem was that when the building converted to coop any insiders who don’t buy remained rent stabilized tenants .

so rents were break even and you cannot just get the tenants out so you can sell these 7 figure apartments.

so we were able to buy for cents on the dollar these apartments from investors out of state who were dissatisfied with the rents .

so we bought the package and offered 100k to any tenant who moved out.

my thinking was , since these are original tenants they are boomers .

odds are they didn’t buy even as insiders because they couldn’t afford to , so no way can they afford to live by central park once the pay checks stop and they retire .

so over the next 10 years 7 out of 9 sold their leases back and we sold the apartments for seven figures .

these remaining two were sold to an investor group for cents on the dollar and we were done ..

the commercial lease rights were eventually sold to big nyc developers THE ASHKENAZY GROUP.

we had a 10% stake and real estate mogul bernard spitzer had a 90% stake in the lease rights .

bernie sold them to ASHKENAZY for more than 18 million dollars in one of nyc’s biggest lease rights sale ever .

today we can buy multiple homes like we had if we wanted to from deploying the money from our last home not back in another house but into more lucrative investments.


today it’s silly for us to buy again , it’s just the two of us now .

we thought about it but to put 600-700k in a home is silly. at this point .

if we did that the cash flow we get on that 600-700k is like 45k a year .

that would mean having way less cash flow as an owner vs just renting like we do .

once that lump sum is considered and what it generates that will stop , owning becomes way more costly for us and makes no sense anymore at this age .

so we now have all this money not only paying our rent but totally paying all our bills while still growing.

so it isn’t about owning a home as much as it is if you don’t own a home but have the money to do so , what else are you going to invest in .

most renters have lacked the money to buy or invest their whole lives so they are never going to be owners .

but many who do reach a point where they can sell and have hundreds of thousands of dollars. free if they rent and can put that money in to more lucrative opportunities if they wanted to .

so big difference between being a poor renter vs being a renter who is deploying their money in better opportunities
 
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mathjak107 said:
we sold our home in 2003 .

we decided to rent and take that lump sum plus other money we had and make a substantial investment in manhattan real estate actually buying what amounted to 9 co-op apartments over looking central park plus commercial lease rights on some businesses in the building .

the problem was that when the building converted to coop any insiders who don’t buy remained rent stabilized tenants .

so rents were break even and you cannot just get the tenants out so you can sell these 7 figure apartments.

so we were able to buy for cents on the dollar these apartments from investors out of state who were dissatisfied with the rents .

so we bought the package and offered 100k to any tenant who moved out.

my thinking was , since these are original tenants they are boomers .

odds are they didn’t buy even as insiders because they couldn’t afford to , so no way can they afford to live by central park once the pay checks stop and they retire .

so over the next 10 years 7 out of 9 sold their leases back and we sold the apartments for seven figures .

these remaining two were sold to an investor group for cents on the dollar and we were done ..

the commercial lease rights were eventually sold to big nyc developers THE ASHKENAZY GROUP.

we had a 10% stake and real estate mogul bernard spitzer had a 90% stake in the lease rights .

bernie sold them to ASHKENAZY for more than 18 million dollars in one of nyc’s biggest lease rights sale ever .

today we can buy multiple homes like we had if we wanted to from deploying the money from our last home not back in another house but into more lucrative investments.


today it’s silly for us to buy again , it’s just the two of us now .

we thought about it but to put 600-700k in a home is silly. at this point .

if we did that the cash flow we get on that 600-700k is like 45k a year .

that would mean having way less cash flow as an owner vs just renting like we do .

once that lump sum is considered and what it generates that will stop , owning becomes way more costly for us and makes no sense anymore at this age .

so we now have all this money not only paying our rent but totally paying all our bills while still growing.

so it isn’t about owning a home as much as it is if you don’t own a home but have the money to do so , what else are you going to invest in .

most renters have lacked the money to buy or invest their whole lives so they are never going to be owners .

but many who do reach a point where they can sell and have hundreds of thousands of dollars. free if they rent and can put that money in to more lucrative opportunities if they wanted to .

so big difference between being a poor renter vs being a renter who is deploying their money in better opportunities
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You did good congratulations on wise choices.
 
Trade said:
I follow the Will Rogers rule of investing.

“I’m not so much interested in the return ON my money as I am in the return OF my money.”

— Will Rogers
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the problem with will rogers is most of his sayings are humorous but wrong .

like he said only buy stocks that go up , if they aren’t going up don’t buy them .

he said buy land they aren’t making anymore of it .

boy was he wrong , we have an entire complex here called battery park city built on land fill where the water once was .

as a matter of fact if it wasn’t for return on my money i wouldn’t be retired today since just the return of my money would have left us to far behind and return on my money was extremely important

so following most of these mantras can be harmful to your wealth
 
mathjak107 said:
the problem with will rogers is most of his sayings are humorous but wrong .

like he said only buy stocks that go up , if they aren’t going up don’t buy them .

he said buy land they aren’t making anymore of it .

boy was he wrong , we have an entire complex here called battery park city built on land fill where the water once was .

as a matter of fact if it wasn’t for return on my money i wouldn’t be retired today since just the return of my money would have left us to far behind and return on my money was extremely important

so following most of these mantras can be harmful to your wealth
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Will Rogers never met mathjak107.
 
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mathjak107 said:
we thought about it but to put 600-700k in a home is silly. at this point .

if we did that the cash flow we get on that 600-700k is like 45k a year .

that would mean having way less cash flow as an owner vs just renting like we do .

once that lump sum is considered and what it generates that will stop , owning becomes way more costly for us and makes no sense anymore at this age .

so we now have all this money not only paying our rent but totally paying all our bills while still growing.

so it isn’t about owning a home as much as it is if you don’t own a home but have the money to do so , what else are you going to invest in .

most renters have lacked the money to buy or invest their whole lives so they are never going to be owners .

but many who do reach a point where they can sell and have hundreds of thousands of dollars. free if they rent and can put that money in to more lucrative opportunities if they wanted to .

so big difference between being a poor renter vs being a renter who is deploying their money in better opportunities
Click to expand...
If $600-700k is all you can afford, it is not going to get you a nice home in most major metropolitan areas in the U.S., this is more like a condo/town house price (HOA fees + multi-levels, with or without elevators). In California, $600-700K is more like a studio or 1 bed room condo price.
But if you have a total asset of $6-7millions, your potential home purchase of $600-700k only accounts for 10% of your total asset, so why not own your home and know no landlord can ask you to move.
 
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OldOld said:
If $600-700k is all you can afford, it is not going to get you a nice home in most major metropolitan areas in the U.S., this is more like a condo/town house price (HOA fees + multi-levels, with or without elevators). In California, $600-700K is more like a studio or 1 bed room condo price.
But if you have $6-7millions, your potential home purchase of $600-700k only accounts for 10% of your total asset, so why not own your home and know no landlord can ask you to move.
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this is a home in sun city hilton head in south carolina we were thinking about . but to many negatives for us to make the move.
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here in nyc we have rental protections and no landlord can ever ask us to move since we have guaranteed renewal

as i mentioned above , we offered our tenants 100k to move so we could sell these co-op apartments at market
 

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