Pains & Struggles of Investing

So you are saying they are trying to get in or out to make more money, when the funds might say, for instance May 31- to May 30 year to year to determine fund status earnings or losses?
Yes ...whatever the time frame is they want to use you have investors trying to time their buy and sells ....timing rarely works well so when they track the money flow they always find investor returns show most who time or get scared out get less than the fund does
 

I began in the 80s very conservatively with bond funds.
I had access to all the financial resources but played it safe right through the bull
market. I didn't have the money to invest. A bought a few stocks. Att is the best.
Then I inherited a stock portfolio that I monitor. I trust no one to manage
them. I also have an IRA, and recommend a healthcare fund, You can even invest
in the mutual fund itself.
 
I began in the 80s very conservatively with bond funds.
I had access to all the financial resources but played it safe right through the bull
market. I didn't have the money to invest. A bought a few stocks. Att is the best.
Then I inherited a stock portfolio that I monitor. I trust no one to manage
them. I also have an IRA, and recommend a healthcare fund, You can even invest
in the mutual fund itself.
AT&T lagged terribly the last 10 years...a simple s&p 500 beat it by a mile and with far less risk since taking on individual company risk is always way riskier than investing in 500 stocks or in a total market fund with 3200 stocks
 

I began in the 80s very conservatively with bond funds.
I had access to all the financial resources but played it safe right through the bull
market. I didn't have the money to invest. A bought a few stocks. Att is the best.
Then I inherited a stock portfolio that I monitor. I trust no one to manage
them. I also have an IRA, and recommend a healthcare fund, You can even invest
in the mutual fund itself.
Are you talking about a specific healthcare fund or mutual fund itself? If so, which one?
 
Looking at the newsletter I have been getting for more than 30 years , they have an excellent sector portfolio that has had outstanding sector portfolio performance.... they have less then 20% in healthcare..they always use 5 to 6 sector funds in the portfolio
 
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Looking at the newsletter I have been getting for more than 30 years , they have an excellent sector portfolio that has had outstanding sector portfolio performance.... they have less then 20% in healthcare..they always use 5 to 6 sector funds in the portfolio
What have you been averaging per year?
 
What have you been averaging per year?
The insight growth model has averaged 11% a year since 1987 ....of course for retirement I shifted to their growth and income model which is 60/40 as well as the near term money is in their income model portfolio which is 25% equities....but I was in the growth model for decades .

The growth portfolio started in 1987 and 100k is 3.1 million today , that is 11% ....the sector model was started in 1988 and is 4.4 million today ...a total market fund for comparison is about 2.7million
 
Started 40 years ago. Learned s a few rules the hard way. 1. Don't invest in something you don't understand. 2. Don't chases winners. 3.Don't buy all at one time, spread you money out over time. 4. Diversify so when one market goes down another may go up. 5.Your money will never make you well off if it does not work for you. 6. Be patient as you are in for the long haul through market swings good and bad. 7. Never be greedy.
 
Started 40 years ago. Learned s a few rules the hard way. 1. Don't invest in something you don't understand. 2. Don't chases winners. 3.Don't buy all at one time, spread you money out over time. 4. Diversify so when one market goes down another may go up. 5.Your money will never make you well off if it does not work for you. 6. Be patient as you are in for the long haul through market swings good and bad. 7. Never be greedy.


the only one i am not thrilled with is stretching out buys ... markets are up 2/3's of the time and only down 1/3 so it puts the odds of doing better dollar cost averaging in as opposed to lump sum against you .

after all if putting money in over time actually worked better we would all reach our desired allocations , sell everything and start from zero again buying in again over time. you can see that would not work well at all .
 
8. Don't lose sight of why you saved and invested, enjoy it now!
Really like what you said Aunt Bea. Money is all about "convenience". Its profoundly inconvenient to be poor. With that said, if you don't enjoy the fruits of your labor then they just better put bigger pockets in your shroud, because you sure think you're going to take it with you. LOL!
 
Our preferred method of growing money has been real estate. Undeveloped to developed land has the greatest potential for asset growth and its done very well for us. It certainly does help to be in an area of continually expanding growth potential, though.

Do think its best to stay with what you like and as fmdog says "don't invest in something you don't understand. I might add enjoy your investing..."go with your gut feel". Its been very good for us. Fun, even! Funny but true story...we once bought a piece of property at a "midnight" sale...got a call from a local that his evil aunt was going to give it to her kids if she couldn't sell it, and he wanted part of it, so we paid cash for it - it had an AG exemption on the property, and not long after the 2 lane road became a 4 lane road. Built a building on it , divided it and sold it out.

We love the acreage and house my husband (an E.E.) built, so life is good, huh. Go with what interests you. Its your business, because nobody else pays your rent, huh.
 
i grew a lot of money in what was really a real estate business . but a business is not something i want in retirement . we want passive investments only now that can be sold , swappwed and spent all with the click of a button
 
i grew a lot of money in what was really a real estate business . but a business is not something i want in retirement . we want passive investments only now that can be sold , swappwed and spent all with the click of a button
Yep, ditto on that. There's a time to plant and a time to harvest. And a time to sit on the back deck and survey your kingdom...lol.
 
Are you talking about a specific healthcare fund or mutual fund itself? If so, which one?
You can invest in the mutual fund itself, such as T Rowe Price funds, in general. Price has a reliable
healthsciences fund that covers many pharmaceutic and research companies, usually very well.
Schwab also has a healthcare fund.
 
You can invest in the mutual fund itself, such as T Rowe Price funds, in general. Price has a reliable
healthsciences fund that covers many pharmaceutic and research companies, usually very well.
Schwab also has a healthcare fund.
Thanks a lot Victor...will check it out.
 
One thing that surprised me is that annual spending can fluctuate so much in retirement. When we first retired, we spent most of our annual income. Travel and home improvement projects took bug chunks. But in recent years, we are finding that our spending has dropped significantly and we wind up saving 10 to 15% of our after tax income in CD's. We don't travel as much, we have the house fixed the way we want it, we don't go out to eat as often, and aging pets tend to keep us home. I strongly suspect that our pattern of spending could change that in a heartbeat if one of us got seriously ill, so staying on safe side brings me a level of comfort. In this day and age, I feel safer putting these funds into CD instead of stocks and bonds, but at some point ultra low returns may change that.
When I do my taxes (Turbo Tax), the IRS always asks what we did with our IRA/401K withdrawals. I always check that we spent it since they have the idea that we should all be flat broke when we leave the planet. I find this to be a bit invasive and reason that yes we did spend the MRD, …. but we saved some Social Security.
 
One thing that surprised me is that annual spending can fluctuate so much in retirement. When we first retired, we spent most of our annual income. Travel and home improvement projects took bug chunks. But in recent years, we are finding that our spending has dropped significantly and we wind up saving 10 to 15% of our after tax income in CD's. We don't travel as much, we have the house fixed the way we want it, we don't go out to eat as often, and aging pets tend to keep us home. I strongly suspect that our pattern of spending could change that in a heartbeat if one of us got seriously ill, so staying on safe side brings me a level of comfort. In this day and age, I feel safer putting these funds into CD instead of stocks and bonds, but at some point ultra low returns may change that.
When I do my taxes (Turbo Tax), the IRS always asks what we did with our IRA/401K withdrawals. I always check that we spent it since they have the idea that we should all be flat broke when we leave the planet. I find this to be a bit invasive and reason that yes we did spend the MRD, …. but we saved some Social Security.
Study after study shows that seniors with discretionary spending seem to spend in a smile shape ...they spend a lot during the early go go years of retirement...then spending starts to slow and fall off as they no longer do or buy a lot of discretionary things ...then it ramps up again in the later no go years from healthcare expenses ..

The studies showed that spending can taper off so much that inflation adjusting every year is not even needed as what is no longer spent covers a lot of what went up
 
Study after study shows that seniors with discretionary spending seem to spend in a smile shape ...they spend a lot during the early go go years of retirement...then spending starts to slow and fall off as they no longer do or buy a lot of discretionary things ...then it ramps up again in the later no go years from healthcare expenses ..

The studies showed that spending can taper off so much that inflation adjusting every year is not even needed as what is no longer spent covers a lot of what went up
Yes, and like Pecos said, when you first retire, think you tend to travel and fix up the house more. When first retiring think you tend to do repairs or remodels put off during work years. Then you say, "hey, don't care about this or that enough to have all these workman in here day in and day out for a couple weeks." Its profoundly inconvenient.
 
when you are underfunded and have little discretionary spending there is little that you will be stopping so those people are effected far more by inflation then those who do have quite a fair amount of discretionary spending and tend to slow down .

that is not to say that many of us won't just pick up spending later on by doing more for the kids or grand kids , that is an option .
 
Hey Everyone!

Thought It might be interesting to hear stories of how you got started investing for yourself and maybe share what problems you've encountered or struggles your currently dealing with when it comes to investing your own money.

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I started about 60 years ago...learned a lot .. sometimes at a cost. At that time there were no discount brokers like we have had for the last 30 years or so.


I found that I did the best when I did my own research and subscribe to several publication.

I have used four big brokerage firms and find they are interested in churning my account for big commissions I know use TD Ameritrade.
 


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