you could can get big returns if you are interested in risky investments but it would require a lot money to begin with for you to invest. day trading is not to bad, and less worse if you play with options and is NOT as risky as people think IF (that is a big if) you stick to your strategy and sell on whatever your strat is. you can earn .5%-1% return by just following bollinger bands. but to make that worth anything you would need a high sum of money to invest… 1% on 1000$ is nothing but 1% on 100k a day is pretty serious.
NEVER INVEST WITH SAVINGS! You might as well throw all that money on the craps table in Vegas (right now at least). You wouldn’t have better odds at a gain!
The way both L and I saved for our house is that we cut all the “extra” things out our budget
Eating Out
Eating Out at Lunch (buy food for the week and take leftovers for lunch)
Take the best Gas car for the longest trips, only go out once to stores
Amazon that shit if you dont need it right now (saves on Gas)
Cut out all the “extra” things you dont need or considered “entertainment”
@Unreal you mention buying shoes almost everyday on twitter/FB/SRK, take that money monthly and times it by 12…you dont need them and have to look at the bigger picture. There were TONS of stuff I wanted to do but never could cause we were saving for house and wedding. (Koop…you remember the tC talk about what I wanted to do…yeah?? Didn’t happen) We put ~15% down on the house and worked the interest rates. I know around here (my neighborhood) they are building 5 houses right now on my street (Next time you or Koop come down…yall are going to be shocked)
So true. I overdo it. My net worth increases something like $1,000 every 22 days on average, but I am wearing 5 year old jeans with little holes that I bought at Walmart for $15. And I know I waited till they were on sale, too. I am way too cheap.
Ok so maybe you don’t have to be this extreme to get rich, but you will need to control your costs at the very least. Once you develop those habits hopefully you’ll be able to stop and enjoy some of the rewards down the road.
great and excellent point. Right now I stash away $450-500 a month into my account. That is about the cost of a car note and insurance. I invest some of this but not much of it. I had a convo with a friend whom said something very stupid to me. "you’re old to not have a car"
I was like really? you’re too old not to have ownership, you’re too old where you don’t even have the slightest idea on what your money is doing with your pension. You’re too old where you can’t even save 5 percent of your money in your account. I tell people my savings tactic all the time “1 hour of work each day goes to savings” It is about 12 percent of your money. That is it. please spare me the melodramatics of raising kids, bills etc. Everyone has bills, everyone whom have children have to deal with decisions.
One thing I have done recently to curb my spending is that when I have to pay rent, utilities, student loans, internet (not as important), I would place the amount owed or im paying in my savings account until it is time to make that payment. A little extreme but it has worked for me so far. If I was paid $1000 for example and rent is $730 the money is stashed away and I only have $270 to work with. So obviously spend it wisely.
My boy posted this on Google+ and I found it interesting to say the least. I wonder how high the percentage of people are to living “paycheck to paycheck”. My wife and I made a rule that we should always have 6+ months of savings (total amount of monthly bills x 6) in our are account so that if both of us lose our jobs we can have 6 months of living until we get back on our feet, or if something happened medically we wouldn’t be gassed at the bill (worked out when having our daughter).
Then I have my own rules in keeping ~7-10k in the back for personal reasons…never know when you need a G or two in case someone gets in trouble or if you want to get away on a random weekend (hop a flight on a friday night and go somewhere with no plans…you feel like a made man when you do that)
Watch the video before you read below. This guy is giving away the real secret for how I get rich:
This is one of the most brilliant pieces of commentary I’ve run across in a long time. It’s not necessarily in the quality of the companies you are buying, but that is important. Where you make huge profits is in being ready for the disaster by hedging, having a planned asset allocation, and acting quickly to capitalize.
Maybe it’s not practical for the average person here to simply hold onto cash, but the point he is really trying to hammer home is that you need to be prepared for the markets to act stupid, because they always do at some point. Maybe it’s not next week, or next year, or even 10 years from now, but I can promise you that it will happen again someday. Build a reserve fund in something with stable value, something that has generally not moved in the same direction as stocks do. Cash is perfectly fine for that purpose, but if you have trouble controlling your urge to spend the cash, I like the Vanguard Total Bond Index (BND) or Series I savings bonds even better.
My strong recommendation is to always have at least 30% of your total worth ready to act on a panicked market. I used to go with 25%, but I found out as an added bonus many retail stores run great sales after market corrections. Just saying, you could take that extra 5% and get some new kicks or a TV or whatever.
People being too heavy on stocks and not leaving sufficient cash is not a problem that a lot of people on this forum likely have. Well, not the combination of the two at least.
some say that no stock is a bad stock, it’s when you chose to buy and sell that makes it good. if you are making short term or daily investments i totally agree. you can still make money when the market is down depending how/when you buy, then you also have stocks that act inversely with the market that are a little less risky (check out TYP for an example). so i agree to an extent that it’s not really the quality. long term through quality may be more of a relevant factor.
Oh come on now, have some faith in SRKers. Maybe they are undisciplined now, but everyone can improve if they want to. Maybe if nothing else they’ll learn some things here that they can use later.
There are certain things I buy without ever having the intention to sell them, though that really depends on how the market acts. Even if Coke is the best brand on earth, I’m probably not going to hold it if it’s trading at 40 times earnings. Of course, it always depends on bond yields too. But definitely if making your goal “being prepared for disaster”, then you can pick up nearly anything you want for the right price just by waiting.
It was all just thinking - not really a decscion stand point yet. We are just dumping the money in a savings account shrug still doesn’t feel feasible, but thats another story…I want to save up at least 15% if not 20% but for 300k houses thats a SERIOUS grip and what we can put in wil ltake us forver and a day to get that.
Just looked at my credit union and did a 30yr mortgage with 100% finance monthly payments came to $1,520.00 ball park figure…salty about that really…might need to re-finance calls up the CPA/Accountant/Bookeeper/Mother that I sleep with…
Well we have a couple things we are ‘fighting’ against. Property tax is a BITCH in PG county…so if we stay in PG (Montegomery has become a possability) - especially are two top picks of Ft Wash & Bowie - property tax will eat our money up - I refuse to be stupid and get a house thats super nice and the nget burned on taxes/insurance., the other problem is the houses we like are right at ‘that line’ of what we could afford - so we’d be going in on broke mode for a while.
I’m not doing that. I don’t want to run ANY risk of us fuccin up, so I want us to come to the table with a huge chunk of money - even if we don’t use all of it upfront. I’m not going to be stupid about buying a house like I was with my first car. I really hate the fact that we own right now though. Just for the record - toownhouses are a fuccin joke. I don’t know who thought they were a great idea. Shit is a big condo - don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. How the hell they gonna limit how many vehicles we own :smh:
There are probably some tax benefits of something like that. You may actually get good advice from a Vanguard adviser if you talk to them about it, or I would check with your HR to see if they can help you choose. I’m certain you have many unique financial situations in your life and it would be inappropriate to try to work or plan that out here.
That can/will happen with SFH has well, HOA has rules and best believe they will keep you up to code. Grass length, cars in driveways/street, no blocking the sidewalk with cars…
I believe you can have your property tax rolled into your monthly payments…I have yet to pay a bill from Wake County, but I know Lauren worked that deal.
Factor in:
Property Tax
State Tax
Insurance
HOA Fees
Yeah you can have it rolled into it, but it doesn’t change that its an absorbent amount of money. A stack a month on JUST property tax is the norm in Ft Wash. Hell its pretty sad that with the whole foreclsoure thing - there are houses where the proeprty tax is more than the mortage.
As for the vehicle thing - its the whole we have two parking passes and a visitors pass. Thing. I’m sorry thats apartment shit. I understand limited spaces, but to be a dick about how I use my visitor? GTFO. It’s not like I can add on a garage or anything. We are fighting them now on some other shit. I absolutely abhor where we live - which makes having to save up for 5 years+ frustrating as hell. But because we own combined with the market crash combined with Amber refinancing when she got her car - we’d be taking a heavy loss on the house as is.
Hell there are so many tings I want to do financially but her money as a teacher with no aspirations ofgoing into administration - won’t stretch so it falls squarely on me to do it all. So anyone in on robbing a bank or something? I need a winning lotto ticket or something. I still havne’t been able to save up half a years salary. Caught a HUGE break on the babysitter though…huge. $25 bones a day. Awesomness haha.
Work out the spreadsheet to see how much you can put into savings. Can’t go off of ball park figures, especially when trying to make a major move dealing with a house.
Quick and dirty way
+Take your monthly income (after taxes…that every income is on the check)
Bills (only the bills you NEED; water, power, HOA, Insurance, Car note)
Other Bills (TV, Internet, Gym membership, additional life insurance, food)
Credit Card Bills
Fun Stuff (estimate “fun” purchases, Music, Video Games, clothes, etc)
