Retirement Planning - Lessons Learned

[MossRoad]

 

[MossRoad]

 

[MossRoad]

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[MossRoad]

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[Hay Dude]

15 and 50 year chart shows gold did better.:confused3: You think anyone is planning on living 100 years :laughing: iD say 50 years is the best retirement long term realistic scenario.
I mean none of us are experts, so whats your point? You can show a chart and I can show a chart.
You think gold is a bad investment, good for you!
I think gold is a great investment because I dont like monthly statements and fiat currency, especially with what I see going on and government leadership.

If the economy collapses, Id rather have gold than monthly statements and fiat currency every day of the year. Gold is worth owning as part of a portfolio to hedge against inflation and thats all I ever said. I have 100’s of thousands in mutual funds and individual stocks as well as gold, silver, REITs and more.

Just because you are a Dave Ramsey deciple dont mean hes right.

 

[JethroB]

Interesting graphs Moss. When the world economy collapses for good seeds and water may be the valuable commodities. And a mule. Oh, and a little land. And a shotgun,,, the list goes on.

 

[MossRoad]

15 and 50 year chart shows gold did better.:confused3: You think anyone is planning on living 100 years :laughing:
I mean none of us are experts, so whats your point? You can show a chart and I can show a chart.
You think gold is a bad investment, good for you!
I think gold is a great investment because I dont like monthly statements and fiat currency, especially with what I see going on and government leadership.

If the economy collapses, Id rather have gold than monthly statements and fiat currency every day of the year.

I posted all of the years I could bring up in that chart so no one could say I was sugar coating it, and to show that over the long haul, and I mean long haul, there are much better investments than gold. Yeah, I'd like to live to be 100. I'll be happy to beat 78. We've never made more than median wages, yet (knock on wood) we've been able to build many times the median net worth for our age. We're fortunate to not have had catastrophic health issues and fairly stabile employment. We're in it for the long haul.

 

[MossRoad]

Interesting graphs Moss. When the world economy collapses for good seeds and water may be the valuable commodities. And a mule. Oh, and a little land. And a shotgun,,, the list goes on.

Yep. We heat with wood primarily and can a lot of veggies. A friend raises cattle and I barter with labor for meat.

 

[MossRoad]

...
Just because you are a Dave Ramsey deciple dont mean hes right.

I'm not a Dave Ramsey disciple. I listened to him for about 3 months on the radio if he was on many years ago, and he made a lot of sense helping people get on a good path towards financial safety. I occasionally read his column in the paper a couple times a week. That way I don't have to listen to his voice.

 

[newbury]

If you have the means, having a mortgage in retirement is no different than having a mortgage in your working years.

Plus I found the mortgage gave us great flexibility to snap up bargains. During the 2008 downturn we snapped up a small foreclosed house in Fulton for $25K cash, just to store our stuff in which we are still doing to some extent. Taxes are minimal. Zillow shows it worth $71k today. Maintenance is lawn mowing.

Amen! Built a garage addition just to consolidate the basement, shed, rented storage shed items into one place for industrial sized de-cluttering and sell-off of too much stuff. Spent the better part of Saturday just going through boxes of saved items from my father's estate.... he died in '95! It's easy to become a slave to your stuff. If you spend more time dealing with your stuff than using/enjoying your stuff, you have too much stuff.... stuff.

Bought a place with about 5,000 sq ft of sheds with good concrete floors, just about lined the interior walls with floor to ceiling pallet racking. It's almost full now. But for most any project I can just walk around and scrounge up the material. Built a 10x12 shed last summer basically from scratch, had to buy a dozen 2x4x94" for $1.97@ and also bought 4 corner fasteners for ~ $5@
2 weeks ago our son came down with his 15yr old son. Wanted to build a forge. Was going to buy an outdoor grill. Well I had a few old SS sinks, lots of landscape blocks, left over piping etc. He had 2 railroad spikes and bought some charcoal. 15 yr old was able to make his own knife blade.
Lots of generational bonding for the cost of 2 bags of Walmart charcoal.

That's what my dad did for years. He once told me his will was simple, just divide everything among us 4 kids. And you are the Executor. Uh oh. :shocked:.
It took me 20 years to convince him to be more specific and keep me out of what would have been a very hot seat. Even then there were some rough spots with a couple of family members who thought they were "entitled" to certain items. A tractor being one.

My wife is the Attorney in the extended clan. Her mother (age 97) is one of 12 children who were all successful doctors, teachers, dentists etc. but no lawyers. There were about 8 funerals, all calm natural deaths of people who led good happy lives. And they all left moderate to large estates and she was an executor, clean up person for all.
One Aunt left about 50 gorgeous handmade quilts - all in great demand by many various offspring. We had to photograph send USPS mail and fairly split up. One Uncle had been an actual rocket scientist at Redstone arsenal from the 1960's to about 1990. Tons of memorabilia to fairly distribute, once again photograph and send out mail. He also had a habit of depositing money in what seemed to be every bank between Fulton MS and Huntsville AL, with few paper trails. That was a nightmare for her to track down and the one estate took more than a year to settle.
Those experiences drove it deep into our plans for our eventual estate distribution.

Here's a fun fact from a recent Vanguard investors newsletter:

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Thus, disproving how much it matters to us peons which party is in power.