Investing General Discussion

Sanrith Descartes

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We started with Edward Jones back in like 2005 or so using my deployment money to open IRA's. It wasn't until about 2014 when I finally got serious about saving that we dumped them.

On the plus side, it wasn't a ton of money (something like $80k by the time we left). On the minus though, that whole compound interest thing really fucks you when you get screwed early on when you're young.

I remember being in lots of American funds and they had massive fees. I want to say something like 5% upfront and who knows how much annually. We also had that churn thing where we were being sold by our advisor on moving to different funds every few years. So add some extra lost there.

On top of that I have a finance degree so I know how full of shit they are, and it's no wonder I hate advisors.
Dont even get me started on the ability of divorce to make retirement impossible. Pissing away decade/decades of investing years is the kiss of death for most people when that QDRO hits.
 
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Falstaff

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Dont even get me started on the ability of divorce to make retirement impossible. Pissing away decade/decades of investing years is the kiss of death for most people when that QDRO hits.
You know that doesn't happen to people here. They all marry tradwives.
 
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The_Black_Log Foler

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It will get worse when you calculate how much you paid him in management fees to underperform the S&P.

sci-fi film GIF
I don’t know if I even wanna dig into the past tbh. Don’t wanna start the new year with regret.
 

Sanrith Descartes

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Foler Foler you seem pretty legit on getting in to the investing arena so here are some serious words of advice. Its fucking hard to win. Like heroic mode Shattered Halls when you are under geared fucking hard to win. When I started posting in this thread years ago I understood business financials and macro economics but I didn't understand "investing". Investing is its own animal. There are so many different moving parts to it. My first few years at taking money out of indexes and investing myself I sucked balls. It cost me thousands in losses (not counting the opportunity costs of not being invested correctly). To be successful you need a sound investing philosophy, a quality understanding of how the markets work on a macro level as well as how markets work on a micro level (something as simple as the bid/ask spreads and market vs limit orders, to trailing stops for example), a solid basis of understanding of financial technical analysis tools and the ability to invest without emotion are just some bare minimum requirements to be successful.

Some of this shit sounds pretty simple but, the sound investing philosophy is crucial and yet not nearly as easy as it appears. There isn't a single answer you need to figure out. There is so much scamming/grifting out there and its all designed to make you think their strategy is a good one. You need to be able to sift through all that bullshit. This thread has years of posts to support how easy it is to get taken to the cleaners by pump and dump grifters or even honest people who generally believe their philosophy is a winning strategy.

At the end of the day, at a minimum 95% of all investors are better off buying the S&P and never looking at it until they retire. I have had three good years back to back, but 2020 was mainly about blind luck. I had closed out a pretty bad 2019 and was sitting on almost all cash from doing a portfolio reset when Covid hit. Having a pigpile of cash in March of 2020 made me look like Warren Buffett. My point is the odds are you best course of action is to invest 99% of all your money into an index and never look at it. Take that 1% left and have fun with it while learning investing. Expect to lose it all and be happy if you dont. Consider this the cost of education.

And you will still make more money than you will letting Chad the investment advisor handle your money for 0.75% of AUM each year.
 
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Sanrith Descartes

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I don’t know if I even wanna dig into the past tbh. Don’t wanna start the new year with regret.
Avoiding looking at data is not the basis for successful investing. Gotta analyze the bad with the good to know what works and what to avoid.
 
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The_Black_Log Foler

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Foler Foler you seem pretty legit on getting in to the investing arena so here are some serious words of advice. Its fucking hard to win. Like heroic mode Shattered Halls when you are under geared fucking hard to win. When I started posting in this thread years ago I understood business financials and macro economics but I didn't understand "investing". Investing is its own animal. There are so many different moving parts to it. My first few years at taking money out of indexes and investing myself I sucked balls. It cost me thousands in losses (not counting the opportunity costs of not being invested correctly). To be successful you need a sound investing philosophy, a quality understanding of how the markets work on a macro level as well as how markets work on a micro level (something as simple as the bid/ask spreads and market vs limit orders, to trailing stops for example), a solid basis of understanding of financial technical analysis tools and the ability to invest without emotion are just some bare minimum requirements to be successful.

Some of this shit sounds pretty simple but, the sound investing philosophy is crucial and yet not nearly as easy as it appears. There isn't a single answer you need to figure out. There is so much scamming/grifting out there and its all designed to make you think their strategy is a good one. You need to be able to sift through all that bullshit. This thread has years of posts to support how easy it is to get taken to the cleaners by pump and dump grifters or even honest people who generally believe their philosophy is a winning strategy.

At the end of the day, at a minimum 95% of all investors are better off buying the S&P and never looking at it until they retire. I have had three good years back to back, but 2020 was mainly about blind luck. I had closed out a pretty bad 2019 and was sitting on almost all cash from doing a portfolio reset when Covid hit. Having a pigpile of cash in March of 2020 made me look like Warren Buffett. My point is the odds are you best course of action is to invest 99% of all your money into an index and never look at it. Take that 1% left and have fun with it while learning investing. Expect to lose it all and be happy if you dont. Consider this the cost of education.

And you will still make more money than you will letting Chad the investment advisor handle your money for 0.75% of AUM each year.
I don’t think I’m gonna buy and sell like you, blazin and co. Not right now. Just gonna keep buying fxaix, keep poking around here and learning. Will reevaluate next fall if it’s time to move my AUM into my personal portfolio. Appreciate the help.
 
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TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
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You get Christmas cards for your guy? Lucky bastard.
My old Edward Jones account executive (account my dad setup for me when I was 18) still sends me a birthday and christmas card even though I pulled the majority of my money out of it almost a decade ago. But lots of it is because it is a small town and that entire office is manned by a dude, his mother in law and another relative. The mother in law is the mom of some classmates I went all through school with and know well. So she's probably the one doing it.
 
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Gravel

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In other news, ran a preliminary portfolio total (do it quarterly now) and we're looking to finish out 2023 at about the same net worth we had at the end of 2021. Which is pretty amazing when you consider we've taken out two whole years worth of living expenses and the market is at just about the same spot it was December 2021.

My last day of work was October 29, 2021.
 
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The_Black_Log Foler

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Do any of you use monarch or empower to help manage your money/budget? Apparently mint is getting axed next month.
 

The_Black_Log Foler

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I don’t want to open an account for loans n shit. Just looking for a place to aggregate accounts across banking and bonus points if it can do things like track expenses.
 

Furry

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Dont even get me started on the ability of divorce to make retirement impossible. Pissing away decade/decades of investing years is the kiss of death for most people when that QDRO hits.

I have the age where I will retire. I basically have my retirement tier list laid out. Yea it'd be sweet and all to retire well off in america, but I've travelled enough of the world that I've met retirees living on a few hundred a month... Or places in large cities where rent is 12 dollars a year. Sure one is better than the other, but even the very poor in america can be rich in the right place. Nobody who's spent their whole life in america has any idea what true proverty is.
 
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Sanrith Descartes

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I have the age where I will retire. I basically have my retirement tier list laid out. Yea it'd be sweet and all to retire well off in america, but I've travelled enough of the world that I've met retirees living on a few hundred a month... Or places in large cities where rent is 12 dollars a year. Sure one is better than the other, but even the very poor in america can be rich in the right place. Nobody who's spent their whole life in america has any idea what true proverty is.
Or just marry wealthy on marriage number two.
 
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karma

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Finally got my dated retirement funds (that returned an average of 6ish% yearly >< ) moved into my CS IRA account. Now to spend the money. So, this is my warning of incoming market crash, because as soon as I buy VOO we will start filling those gaps down in SPY!
 
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TJT

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Starting to research my personal asset tracker I want to put together. Mint and the other various apps that used to be free are going freemium and putting the useful shit behind paywalls.

Option 1:
  • Excel App utilizing newer features of Excel and REST apis offered by most things these days. Fidelity not having one will be annoying since it is so much of my assets though so this is a big issue.
  • Excel can run Python now with a few addons which makes all of this quite easy.
  • Don't have excel and they can straight up suck my dick at $6 a month to use that shit.
  • $150+ permanent(?) license.
Option 2:
  • Firefly III - A free and open source personal finance manager
    • This looks pretty dope and fills most of the gaps I would want.
  • Can deploy it via AWS on the near-free tier so it would be like $2 a month to sustain it.
  • Set it up on my Raspberry Pi as a better solution.
  • Budgeting features not as interesting as I don't particularly need that part.
Leaning towards 2 here.
 
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Sanrith Descartes

Veteran of a thousand threadban wars
<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
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Starting to research my personal asset tracker I want to put together. Mint and the other various apps that used to be free are going freemium and putting the useful shit behind paywalls.

Option 1:
  • Excel App utilizing newer features of Excel and REST apis offered by most things these days. Fidelity not having one will be annoying since it is so much of my assets though so this is a big issue.
  • Excel can run Python now with a few addons which makes all of this quite easy.
  • Don't have excel and they can straight up suck my dick at $6 a month to use that shit.
  • $150+ permanent(?) license.
Option 2:
  • Firefly III - A free and open source personal finance manager
    • This looks pretty dope and fills most of the gaps I would want.
  • Can deploy it via AWS on the near-free tier so it would be like $2 a month to sustain it.
  • Set it up on my Raspberry Pi as a better solution.
  • Budgeting features not as interesting as I don't particularly need that part.
Leaning towards 2 here.
Im just gonna throw this out there as someone who has used excel for years to track my assets. I know automation and apis are cool and all and the modern way to do things, but once you build the spreadsheet and all the formulas are in place updating it takes less than a minute.
 

TJT

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Im just gonna throw this out there as someone who has used excel for years to track my assets. I know automation and apis are cool and all and the modern way to do things, but once you build the spreadsheet and all the formulas are in place updating it takes less than a minute.
I spend all day automating this kind of data parsing for shit at work.

The very idea I would deal with manual uploads of anything is completely fucking preposterous.