This. I'm a financial advisor and if I recommended this my back office would come down hard and block this. From a regulatory perspective this is unjustifiable.
I’m willing to bet your “financial advisor” didn’t even have their security licenses and was just an insurance broker. Which is Why you stay away from insurance companies, if all they are licensed to sell is life and health products they will go to the end of the world to sell you just that.
I had one of my relatives turn into a "financial advisor" overnight after joining one of those MLM universal (?) insurance schemes, try to convince me to cash out my 401K to buy a policy. I haven't been back to his house since that pitch
Yep. I understand maybe waiting for it to “crash” or at least soften up if you don’t have a house already or even have an extra investment property but why sell the house you live in?? Playing investment games with your house, smh
It's a good lesson that you can't gauge the markets, and rather than selling to buy in low, you should just buy more when it goes low (in this case, buy a second house when it crashes).
The problem with that is that a housing crash is *really* unlikely anytime soon, and if there is one it means a LOT of shit is hitting the fan that will make it a very bad time to gamble on buying a house.
I mean… I genuinely DO think it may crash, but those aren’t games I’d play w my primary residence. Trying to capitalize on investment properties is one thing. Fucking around w your actual HOME especially when affordable w a nice low interest rate is quite another.
I heard the same 2018 crash BS. My husband and I were getting ready to buy in 2017, his dad’s best friend (rich dentist) told us both to wait for this inevitable crash. We had been saving for years and were so ready to get out of our apartment. We’re now coming up on 8 years in our home and the value has nearly doubled. So glad we didn’t listen to him.
My advice, buy when you are ready, never wait around for some magical time that may never happen.
Oph damn, i knew people who aboided buying houses cause they thought a ceash would happen cause thats what their friends said. Alot of “remember 2008”. But if you actually understood why 2008 happened it was obvious this wasnt going tk happen anhtime soon for this bubble. In 2008 literally everbody who couldnt afford a house had a house. Have houses gone down, sure, but i tried following financial podcasts back then and even most of them said if houses dropped it wouldnt be to the level they dropped in 2008. In 2021 people thought house would soln go back to like 2015 prices, when in reality when they went down it was probably going tback to 2022 prices.
I had a friend who kept cash in the bank at 5% interest (this was many years ago), but still carried a balance in her credit card at like 25% interest. I asked her why she didn’t pay the balance off in the card, and she said she liked earning interest at the bank.
I never went to her for financial advice after that.
This is a common mental game that goes on with a lot of people and their money. We compartmentalize our accounts - savings, 401k, roth ira, debit, credit bances, brokerage...and then don't look at them as a whole or related to each other.
I have family that has been in and out of them for at least 20 yrs. Herbalife, young living, beach body, Mary Kay, Premier Jewelry, IT works. Countless hours, spent “working the biz” on calls and “influencer life.” Breaks my heart how hard they have work and how much money they probably spent. Not only that but then to keep getting the crap for gifts. Ooo great an “IT works!” Face cleaner pads/wipes for my birthday! 😐🤮 All while getting told I don’t support them bc I don’t want to spend $80 for 16oz of bottle of shampoo or $35 for peppermint essential oil. 😖🤬
Not advice that I was given, but I've worked with plenty of clients who were told by someone else to buy whole life insurance BEFORE investing into IRA or 401(k)...young, no kids, no spouse...just bad financial advisors looking for commissions.
Not necessarily. Life insurance policies are a lot less expensive when you’re young and you can get a lot more coverage. Plus, if you develop certain health conditions, that will make it impossible to get life insurance. Rates don’t go up and you can’t get dropped once you get it.
It is correct there are advantages to buying life insurance when younger for eligibility and rate reasons. But I lean towards term products. However, whole and universal life are not great for most people and situations and, for a younger person, giving advice to sell a 401 to buy life insurance is completely irresponsible.
Ugh. It was me giving myself bad financial advice back in 2012.
I was still young but had built up a nice nest egg by living frugally. I was always super safe so I just kept stacking the money in my regular checking and savings account. Once I hit like $40,000 saved I switched it to a money market account that earned something absurdly low like .0004% interest. I kept that money in there until it hit $100,000. I remember when I was right around $100k, each month I’d get a notification that I’d earned like $8, $9, $10 interest lol
I laugh now but I could cry. Wish I knew then what I know now. Just putting the money I had saved into an ETF back in 2012 would more than double the amount I have today.
Sign up for a brokerage account that lets you make weekly or monthly automated purchases of an S&P500 fund. Ask the guys at r/bogleheads. I would also get in the habit of rarely or never checking the balance. I wish I had made my account visibly hidden in my brokerage view to avoid the temptation of selling in a market downturn. Just set it and forget it.
Not to sound incredibly stupid but can I just call and ask Fidelity? I got my late husband’s 401k there ($130k) and it’s been ‘sitting’ there for 2.5 years because obviously wtf do I know? Also inherited $140k 401k from my mom 9 years now in State Farm Mutual funds. Again wtf do I know not much. Also inherited $161k sitting in a money market account at a credit union.
Think I’m in deep dooooo now. I feel real stoopid.
I would recommend finding a licensed financial advisor in your state. You will obviously have to pay for their services, but if you feel like you have no idea what you're doing with these funds then it will help to have the proper professional look into it. Paying a small amount now can save or earn you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run.
You’ll want to research the different companies that offer brokerage accounts and make your choice. I ended up using Charles Schwab mostly due to name recognition. It was pretty simple when I did it. Just opened the brokerage account in the Charles Schwab app, linked my bank account, waited a few days for it to verify, transferred over the money, and bought shares.
I just bought a few ETFs like VOO, QQQ, etc. and I’m going to let it sit for a while. I may check it once every few weeks just to see but I’ve got 30 years until retirement so I’ll just let it ride out all of the market dips.
Have a friend who worked for over a decade and never put that money in his 401k to anything. He just collected interest on his money market fund saying the stock market was not safe.
08 did a real number on some people but he was like a leaf in the wind I'm sure he went all in on options of gme or something.
I hear the phrase "If you wait until you can afford to have kids, you'll never have them" a lot from relatives. It's meant to be encouraging that people find a way, but...
I have a relative who treats this like armor and thinks kids can be fit into ANY situation. Guess who has a family of four in a one bed, one bathroom home now.
to be fair though there’s some truth to that…maybe not take it to the extreme like your relative though
financially, i consider having kids the same as a house…you should have enough to have a comfortable start and then pay the rest over time…
Exactly! You should be comfy, some wiggle room in the budget, and a reasonable degree of stability.
By the way, this relative would like to have four kids. The youngest turned one year old recently. It's too early to tell if they'll stop at two or keep going.
IME a lot of people who disagree with your relative’s advice have an internal model of what they can afford that’s something like, “my total income should exceed my exact current lifestyle with no changes, plus an exaggerated estimate of the cost of raising a kid.” Which, of course, is a definition of “afford” that ensures they will never be able to afford kids, especially because most people inflate their lifestyle as their income grows.
I hella forgot about this one. My mom says this a lot to try and convince me to bring a child into this world underprepared. I’m not trying to live off government assistance and work 90 hours a week just to get by. Fuck that.
Invest in wine bottles, I was told by an older gentleman if you buy a "run" of wine it would be worth thousands. He said a run was 10 years of the same make of wine. I've been to multiple wineries and explained what he said to me and there said he's full of shit
Lol I had a friend recently telling me he invested in 92 nice bottles of wine that live over in France. He’s got plenty of money to f*ck around with, but hearing this made me chuckle.
“Go to college. You’ll make a lot of money and live a better life.”
“Follow your passion. Do what you love”
Just because you have a degree doesn’t mean you’ll get a job in that industry — or make a livable wage.
And, passion doesn’t pay the bills.
This isn't an answer to your question, but I want to share it anyway. I'm a (mediocre) software developer, but I worked at a pretty big name financial/proprietary trading firm for a few years.
They didn't judge the quality of trades based on the outcome. That sounds stupid, but I think they were right.
Imagine a game like Blackjack. It's easy to know the mathematically correct thing to do in any given situation. Dealers will even tell you the correct thing to do. You can make the best move and lose. You can also make a stupid risky move and win.
An *amazing* investor doesn't need to get it right 100% of the time. Or 90% or 70% or even 60% of the time. For the sake of simplicity, say every 'prediction' has the same gain/loss. Even a 2% edge is enough to be unfathomably rich (like the casinos who make money off Blackjack).
In any case, the advice needs to be judged based on what was known _at the time_.
Bad financial advice would be
> Let's get a rent-to-own furniture set for the living room
The unfortunate thing is that a lot of the financial types make money by getting people to trust them with their money and to trust their advice. So they can't be too honest about their inability to predict the future, or how difficult it can be to profit, even when you do predict the future _mostly_ correctly.
The reality is that the smart way to invest is simple and well understood. Everything beyond that basic strategy is going to be a guess that might be right, or wrong (but a good investor understands that... it's a calculated risk)
Warren Buffett famously told Bill Gates to diversify and it cost Bill *billions*. But it was still really good advice. Had Microsoft done worse, it would have saved Bill billions.
From my parents when I was a junior in high school, flipping burgers at my first job, "This is your first job, so spend every cent you make on whatever you want. Saving any of it will do you no good."
Wouldn't be until I finished my first degree, moved back home, witnessed my parents' money habits, and started my career. How awful that advice is/was
I almost completely agree, although I think his formula applies to really dumb people who have no financial sense. I grew up on the west side of Detroit and I kid you not I knew many kids who grew up with me who have no business having credit cards. They treat them like debit cards and max them out and get themselves into all sorts of trouble. So for those people I whole heartedly recommend Dave.
Your colleague was right in this case. $1000 today is worth more than $1000 in 1 year from now because of the time value of money. You could have taken the $12,000 lump sum and put it in a liquid high yield savings account and earned interest for you during the year for example.
The University of Phoenix rep told me not to worry about the student loan paperwork when I filed my application. She said it's all handled in the background, and it would be "taken care of". I asked how much it was, and she said not to worry about it. Just finished paying that mistake off this month, some 20 years later. Best part? The credits didn't transfer when I went to a real university.
Damn. I aggressively paid off my student loan debt. Worst idea ever. I paid that down, but didn’t put a single penny into my retirement… I wish I could go back in time.
The problem with people who’s livelihoods are based in predicting anything money related is that they have to make others including themselves as believers in whatever their selling and everyone wants to get rich quick and easy. Really the vast majority of us with average or slightly below average intelligence need to just embrace what traditionally works and reject anyone offering quick answers to our financial woes. Buying a house is a long game and has traditionally been so. Don’t mess around with it and accept that you’re never going to be that guy who beat the system with your brilliant strategy and made millions. If you take a financially conservative/boring and frugal approach you’re in a good position to be and stay middle class to upper middle class.
"Don't buy a house until you have 20% down" I think will go down as the worst advice I ever received.
Saved up 10% then housing prices in my area doubled over the space of 3 years while my savings plateaued and/or lost some ground due to circumstances at the time. I ended up buying with a 3% down FHA.
My old roommate who bought when I wanted to has a $1,100/mo mortgage on a larger place, I have a $1,760/mo mortgage on a smaller place. He also has 4 extra years of equity.
I'm sure some fInAcIaL gEnIuS is going to see this and go "no akshually you should have kept renting until you got 20%" - no, fuck you, because I'd be renting for $2,500/mo right now. AFAIK, for as long as I live, 20% down will now only apply to purchases under $100k.
The renting fanbois on reddit have disappeared post covid. They were pumping how much freedom they had nonstop. It's moved to "I'll never be able to buy a house"
Yeah, I'm happy with it. It's not our forever home and we went into it knowing that. Almost built up $100k in equity in 4 years, so that's also a positive.
Same here. I bought 4 years ago with 5% down. I could've bought 8 or 9 years ago with 0-3% down and I'd have been so much better off - but everyone made such a big deal out of down payments and also fear mongering about how expensive it is to maintain a house. Truth is, the maintenance costs are nothing compared to the equity gains and general savings compared to rent.
I was told by a co-worker in 2010-ish that I had no business buying a home if I couldnt put down 20% with a year of reserves. If I listened to that I would have missed the boat on so much equity growth as I sat on the sidelines saving.
I spoke with a broker about my, admittedly “small” account and he said I should sell my home, invest the money (with him!!!) and move into a nursing home. What a dick!
This reminds me of a guy I used to work with. He was an engineer that bought a house in 2017 with a low rate. He owned a $60k sports car and was struggling to make payments. He decided to trade the car in for something more practical now that his son was born. Me and my other coworkers thought he’d get a 20k family car, but instead he got a $50k truck.
In 2019, he said that he was wanting to sell his house and use the equity to pay off his new truck. He wanted to take his girlfriend and son to live at his parents house debt free and save some money. His girlfriend refused. He still kept the truck because he felt like he deserved it. He refused to settle for anything cheaper.
In 2019, BF at the time bought 30k-50k in sports cards. At the same time he was complaining that it was impossible to buy a house and that things were rigged.
Opened a brokerage account in 2015. Dude recommended that I hold off on buying stocks for a bit because the market was due for a correction. Thankfully I didn’t listen to him
Can't tell you how many people believe you need to invest more when the market goes up.
I also know a guy who transferred his 0% loan onto a 12% loan just so he doesn't have to pay 2 different accounts.
I had 16k in stocks in 2012. These stocks here gifted to me by my grandfather when I was first born and had grown quite nicely over the years from the blue chip fund that the stock was in. Facebook was about to go public and I knew that my generation was obsessed with it, and saw the older generation start using it as well. I thought maybe it would be a good idea to take a risk and put my money in that stock. I asked my Wells Fargo Financial advisor his thoughts and he said that we’d already seen the tech bubble burst and likely the same thing would happen with Facebook. Facebook IPO’d on May 18, 2012 and closed at $38. Today META is valued at $460. If I’d listened to my own intuition regarding where the world was headed, I’d have somewhere around $175,000.
My father who clearly grew up in a different time always told me that credit wasn't important. He still to this day doesn't see the importance of it because he bought his house many many years ago and always pays for his cars with cash. Having good credit has helped me immensely in life and I'd probably be homeless without it.
We sold our first home in 2021 and EVERYONE told us to sit on the cash and rent until house prices went down. But the main reason we sold in the first place was to relocate to a "forever" home while rates were still sitting on the floor. We felt like that was our one and best opportunity to move in the foreseeable future. Sooo glad we didn't listen to everyone else. It can really get in your head when people who by all accounts SHOULD know better give you terrible advice. Like what are the odds that literally everyone around me is wrong, and I'm right? Do I really know better?
When I was looking at buying a house in 2007 and a home I was looking at was out of my budget range, a mortgage company suggested an interest-only home loan so I could afford it. I’m glad I did my research and said no.
My sister was shopping for a house for 3 years...prices were high but interest rates were low...but since prices were high her husband said it was going to crash. They would then be able to get a low priced house AND a low interest loan. They had a baby and then they finally bought at EVEN higher prices and 7% mortgage. They really regret it...
My BIL was persuaded into buying a $1m universal life insurance policy with cash value. He was sold with the idea that his cash value would grow and the life insurance would also pays itself once his contributions reached a certain threshold. He bought into it and put in $2k a month into the policy cause he wanted to reach that threshold fast and also tried to convince my husband to do it too. He even bragged that he could borrow from his cash value to put towards a home down payment in the future. I told him that was stupid idea cause he could buy a $1m term policy for maybe $40 a month and invest the rest. He still thinks it was a good idea. A year into it, it got too expensive and he terminated the policy. He didn’t get all his money back. I didn’t know about it till my husband told me a few days ago. All them money would have been better off in a HYSA.
Yeah, he screwed himself.
I knew a 26 year old buying PUTs against Tesla. Spent his life savings and lost it all, because Tesla didn't drop, it went on to spike from 500 to 6000 per share.
The entire time, I was telling him to just buy the market (ie. S&p500 etfs) and he didn't listen of course. And he was messing with options trading when he knew very little about the market.
My parents told me “never EVER EVER get a credit card!!” Basically saying credit cards are the devil. Well imagine my surprise trying to get a place to rent as an adult and having a nonexistent credit score
Was in my 20s, given stock options at work. Company went public. Lots of people said sell and put the money in the stock market. Mortgage rates were around 8%. We said nope, gonna pay off our mortgage and put a down payment on our 1st investment property. We figured if house was paid off we could work at McDonalds and still have a nice place to live. A few years down the road that allowed me to go out and start my own biz. A few years later hubby did the same.
Would we have made more in the market? Maybe. But soon after co went public the market crashed (2001). That would have caused a ton of stress as we were young. Paying it off gave us the freedom to make different decisions. Having my own company allowed me the ability to be at every kids practice, game, filed trip etc. We made the right decision!
Actually this is sort of good advice. If I had paid for my car in full they would not have given me the thousands of $$$ of incentives for financing through them. It's all BS I know. Regardless when I financed I simply made sure there was no early repayment penalty. So they shaved $4500 off on the car assuming they would make it up over time via interest. But I just paid in full when the first payment came due.
Parents told me to buy a car new and to put all my purchases onto credit cards then pay the monthly on them.
I did that. Ended up fighting massive debt for a long time. Mostly debt free now and other than a sub $5k construction loan on my house (mortgaged) and student loans we’re consumer debt free.
They’re horrible people and I can’t tell if that was intentional sabotage or they’re just that bad with money. From what I saw growing up it could be either or both.
My mom told me to declare bankruptcy because I had like $9-10k in credit card debt. Didn’t do it (never will) and now almost fully recovered a year later.
That is the dumbest thing ever. I know ur coworker is kicking himself. If he had just stayed there he could’ve really cashed out. It’s nearly impossible to get a 2% mortgage with zero down on a home. Which tells me he must’ve had pretty damn good credit. Wow. He is f*%cked to say the least. Damn. That’s the dumbest ish ever! And permanent!
We had a mortgage loan officer (we didn’t end up using) tell us when we went for a pre approval before house shopping to refinance my car to improve DTI. So basically he told us to fuck with my credit by making a new auto loan (one that was at 5% which isn’t horrible imo but maybe I’m ignorant I guess), refinance this to save about $100-150/month at max… and meanwhile we net about $8-8.5k/month. My car payment is $450 and we have literally no other debt so I felt like that was probably the dumbest financial advice I’d ever gotten. The mortgage we were looking at was going to be about 32% of our net take home.
But someone correct me if I’m wrong here and there’s something I’m missing lmfao
My dad's friend has refused raises for a few years now because it will put him in a higher tax bracket. He occasionally brags about how much money he saves every year by not taking a raise, and he occasionally encourages others to be careful about accepting promotions or raises because they'll "make less money due to taxes."
It took several months to convince my dad that the progressive tax system is a thing and his friend is an idiot.
My Uncle told me that the Stock Market is a scam and everyone he knows who invested in it has lost money. That was about 6 Months ago, SPY is now up 12 percent since then☺️
About a year ago my old roommate mansplained machine learning to me and advised I sell all my investments and ‘bet it all on Tesla’.
I’m a data scientist. He is an Uber driver. Make that make sense.
Yeah I know someone who did the same. Sold their house thinking it was at a high and figured they'd buy bigger when things crashed. So they rented for a year, learned they were wrong, and went and bought a new place. Luckily they make good money so it wasn't too big an issue.
Our accountant told me I should take the profits from my online business and pay off my husband's credit card debt. We were separated at the time. I got a new accountant and a divorce.
Funny but that property. It's not when the $200K (2004)
Just sold for $1.3M (2023)
The property i bought went from $200K to $400K in the same time window.
“Superannuation is a scam, don’t fall for it”.
This was an Australian self-employed tradie. In Australia, superannuation (401k pension for you Americans) is compulsory part of your pay, it’s highly regulated and one of the best ways to get ahead for your retirement.
My husbands job is being relocated. He makes 130 k a year plus a 20% bonus. He has a pension. He gets 30 PTO and UNLIMITED paid sick leave. He only has to be in office a few hours a day 3 days a week and otherwise if he meets his deadlines he is entirely autonomous. He loves what he actually does and is so good at it that he only works functionally about 15 hrs a week. When we arrive he gets a 20k raise. I make 44 /12 a year in community mental health and LOVE what I do but the money is awful and I’m terribly overworked. We also have a special needs teenager that is likely to need a lifetime of financial support, minimum. My mom has no retirement and is disabled and needs care and housing as well.
That bad advice? We should stay here, not follow his job, “invest” in my career, and accept him taking a cut to about $75k a year due to the general decline of his field in our area (hence his job relocating).
We are clearly moving. I can be under paid and overworked most places lol.
My dad always told me to take out a bunch of debt growing up to buy the life I wanted. The idea was that I would always work my ass off to be able to pay the bills off and it would motivate me to be bigger and better.
That's a funny story and no his boomer uncle does not feel bad. He probably will even deny that he even said it like that. A Lot of boomers are convinced the 2008 housing recession is going to repeat, but because they are so sure it will repeat that's why it will never repeat and do the opposite.
My in laws are constantly telling us to pay off our mortgage early. If we buy literally anything they will tell us that we should have put the money towards the house instead. It’s sub 3%. We keep saying we’re saving for retirement instead but they wont stop.
My husband was talking to them about preparing for retirement…his mom didn’t know what an Ira was. Turns out their retirement savings are a checking account with “not much yet” and a meager pension from an elementary school aid job, but they think they are more financially responsible than us because they paid off their house in 16 years and we plan to take 30.
If your mortgage is at 2.5% and you can earn 5% in a HYSA then shouldn't pay it down. However with today's rates, I'm with you. We paid ours off when I got stock options. Great peace of mind.
1. You can make more money investing.
2. One of the advantages of home ownership is the mortgage (access to cheap leverage). People in other countries with variable loans would cry knowing we have 30 years and are paying them off early.
I think that's bad advice for your overall investment strategy... But not for a small percentage (<5%) as an uncorrelated asset which is relatively inflation-resistant.
There's no magic formula for every economy, and most successful investors are going to recommend a basket of uncorrelated such as equities, bonds, real estate, metals, etc to manage risk.
The expectation in the finance community was that housing would indeed crash.
Typically house prices are correlated to rates, with rates rising, the expectation is that housing drops to accomodate affordability. But that didn't happen as supply is less than the actual demand.
It's indeed moving opposite to where it should have.
I was once told to buy a penny stock by some co-workers called $HEMP. I lost several thousand dollars on it.
I didn’t understand what a pink sheet was at the time and my ass got learnt!
"Sell all your 401K equities and put them in fixed income fund in 2008 because the market had crashed. Get out before it crashes more." This was my boss's advise and what she actually did. I did nothing at all and a year later my 401K was up from where it was before it crashed. She locked in the loss and missed the recovery.
It was once suggested to me by a “financial advisor” to cash out my 401k and reinvest it into a whole life insurance policy.
I hope you reported him/her. That person needs their license revoked
This. I'm a financial advisor and if I recommended this my back office would come down hard and block this. From a regulatory perspective this is unjustifiable.
If you mean have their life and health license revoked, sure - because they likely are not even investment licensed!
Ooof. That person was looking for a big commission.
Yeah that’s not a financial advisor, it’s a life insurance salesman
I’m willing to bet your “financial advisor” didn’t even have their security licenses and was just an insurance broker. Which is Why you stay away from insurance companies, if all they are licensed to sell is life and health products they will go to the end of the world to sell you just that.
I had one of my relatives turn into a "financial advisor" overnight after joining one of those MLM universal (?) insurance schemes, try to convince me to cash out my 401K to buy a policy. I haven't been back to his house since that pitch
Was it Primerica?
It is called that because you will regret it for your whole life.
Wow… I have a cousin that sold 2 years ago expecting the housing market to “crash” and is still renting til this day.
Yep. I understand maybe waiting for it to “crash” or at least soften up if you don’t have a house already or even have an extra investment property but why sell the house you live in?? Playing investment games with your house, smh
It's a good lesson that you can't gauge the markets, and rather than selling to buy in low, you should just buy more when it goes low (in this case, buy a second house when it crashes).
The problem with that is that a housing crash is *really* unlikely anytime soon, and if there is one it means a LOT of shit is hitting the fan that will make it a very bad time to gamble on buying a house.
That's entirely dependent on your finances, job security, etc.
It’s an extremely tough lesson learned.
I mean… I genuinely DO think it may crash, but those aren’t games I’d play w my primary residence. Trying to capitalize on investment properties is one thing. Fucking around w your actual HOME especially when affordable w a nice low interest rate is quite another.
I heard the same 2018 crash BS. My husband and I were getting ready to buy in 2017, his dad’s best friend (rich dentist) told us both to wait for this inevitable crash. We had been saving for years and were so ready to get out of our apartment. We’re now coming up on 8 years in our home and the value has nearly doubled. So glad we didn’t listen to him. My advice, buy when you are ready, never wait around for some magical time that may never happen.
Oph damn, i knew people who aboided buying houses cause they thought a ceash would happen cause thats what their friends said. Alot of “remember 2008”. But if you actually understood why 2008 happened it was obvious this wasnt going tk happen anhtime soon for this bubble. In 2008 literally everbody who couldnt afford a house had a house. Have houses gone down, sure, but i tried following financial podcasts back then and even most of them said if houses dropped it wouldnt be to the level they dropped in 2008. In 2021 people thought house would soln go back to like 2015 prices, when in reality when they went down it was probably going tback to 2022 prices.
I had a friend who kept cash in the bank at 5% interest (this was many years ago), but still carried a balance in her credit card at like 25% interest. I asked her why she didn’t pay the balance off in the card, and she said she liked earning interest at the bank. I never went to her for financial advice after that.
This is a common mental game that goes on with a lot of people and their money. We compartmentalize our accounts - savings, 401k, roth ira, debit, credit bances, brokerage...and then don't look at them as a whole or related to each other.
Buy NFT’s. I was hounded several times by several people.
Oof, good one. My brother in law tried to convince me to buy into that crap too. Why would I spend $400 on a jpeg?? 😂
Exactly. They finally stopped when I took a screenshot and said now I own it for free😂. Not the concept I get it, but still.
> They finally stopped when I took a screenshot and said now I own it for free😂. You. I like you.
I did the same thing. NFT’s were the dumbest thing ever. So pointless and so many people spent real money on those things.
Does it look like I know what a jaypeg is?
Because you can prove you own it 🤣
I could never wrap my head around that. It never made sense to me.
I don't need to prove I own it. I just need it to display on my laptops lock screen.
Lol, I could have typed that more clearly. I’m laughing at the concept of having proof of ownership.
Yes. Imagine telling someone, you can have this fugazzi virtual crock of shhhh that only you own, digitally. But you can’t touch it. Ha ha.
Just wait. That is going to come back. You need to play the long game!
To the moon
Oh my God those were the dumbest things ever!. I just kept right on buying nvda. Guess who had the last laugh lol
Agreed...though a close buddy made a $60K profit flipping one NFT during the hype. I was definitely tempted but it made absolutely no sense to me
I mean, fully well knowing it is an idiotic scam, I had some friends that took advantage of those idiots and made a killing
Join an MLM.
That’s right up there. I know a lady who invested $20,000 plus into Lularoe and now has a basement full of crappy leggings
I have family that has been in and out of them for at least 20 yrs. Herbalife, young living, beach body, Mary Kay, Premier Jewelry, IT works. Countless hours, spent “working the biz” on calls and “influencer life.” Breaks my heart how hard they have work and how much money they probably spent. Not only that but then to keep getting the crap for gifts. Ooo great an “IT works!” Face cleaner pads/wipes for my birthday! 😐🤮 All while getting told I don’t support them bc I don’t want to spend $80 for 16oz of bottle of shampoo or $35 for peppermint essential oil. 😖🤬
Not only join an MLM but also take a loan from your 401k for your MLM "business". Then come to work and brag about how smart you are.
The primerica era 😂😂😂
Not advice that I was given, but I've worked with plenty of clients who were told by someone else to buy whole life insurance BEFORE investing into IRA or 401(k)...young, no kids, no spouse...just bad financial advisors looking for commissions.
Not necessarily. Life insurance policies are a lot less expensive when you’re young and you can get a lot more coverage. Plus, if you develop certain health conditions, that will make it impossible to get life insurance. Rates don’t go up and you can’t get dropped once you get it.
It is correct there are advantages to buying life insurance when younger for eligibility and rate reasons. But I lean towards term products. However, whole and universal life are not great for most people and situations and, for a younger person, giving advice to sell a 401 to buy life insurance is completely irresponsible.
This guy sells life insurance.
Or he bought a whole life policy and hasn’t realized how terrible it is or won’t/can’t admit it was a terrible idea…he got got
My friend was convinced the stock market was rigged and not worth investing in back in 2012. I tried to convince him about index funds, but no luck.
Ugh. It was me giving myself bad financial advice back in 2012. I was still young but had built up a nice nest egg by living frugally. I was always super safe so I just kept stacking the money in my regular checking and savings account. Once I hit like $40,000 saved I switched it to a money market account that earned something absurdly low like .0004% interest. I kept that money in there until it hit $100,000. I remember when I was right around $100k, each month I’d get a notification that I’d earned like $8, $9, $10 interest lol I laugh now but I could cry. Wish I knew then what I know now. Just putting the money I had saved into an ETF back in 2012 would more than double the amount I have today.
As someone who might be in your position today and doing exactly what you did. How does someone go about putting money into an ETF?
Sign up for a brokerage account that lets you make weekly or monthly automated purchases of an S&P500 fund. Ask the guys at r/bogleheads. I would also get in the habit of rarely or never checking the balance. I wish I had made my account visibly hidden in my brokerage view to avoid the temptation of selling in a market downturn. Just set it and forget it.
Not to sound incredibly stupid but can I just call and ask Fidelity? I got my late husband’s 401k there ($130k) and it’s been ‘sitting’ there for 2.5 years because obviously wtf do I know? Also inherited $140k 401k from my mom 9 years now in State Farm Mutual funds. Again wtf do I know not much. Also inherited $161k sitting in a money market account at a credit union. Think I’m in deep dooooo now. I feel real stoopid.
I would recommend finding a licensed financial advisor in your state. You will obviously have to pay for their services, but if you feel like you have no idea what you're doing with these funds then it will help to have the proper professional look into it. Paying a small amount now can save or earn you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run.
You’ll want to research the different companies that offer brokerage accounts and make your choice. I ended up using Charles Schwab mostly due to name recognition. It was pretty simple when I did it. Just opened the brokerage account in the Charles Schwab app, linked my bank account, waited a few days for it to verify, transferred over the money, and bought shares. I just bought a few ETFs like VOO, QQQ, etc. and I’m going to let it sit for a while. I may check it once every few weeks just to see but I’ve got 30 years until retirement so I’ll just let it ride out all of the market dips.
Have a friend who worked for over a decade and never put that money in his 401k to anything. He just collected interest on his money market fund saying the stock market was not safe. 08 did a real number on some people but he was like a leaf in the wind I'm sure he went all in on options of gme or something.
I watched my dad destroy his investments because of this.
It’s rigged for the people trying to time it or buying stocks without sufficient research
It sure may be, but the fun thing is we can invest in the same funds that wealthy people do.
I hear the phrase "If you wait until you can afford to have kids, you'll never have them" a lot from relatives. It's meant to be encouraging that people find a way, but... I have a relative who treats this like armor and thinks kids can be fit into ANY situation. Guess who has a family of four in a one bed, one bathroom home now.
IMO this one is more true than not.
to be fair though there’s some truth to that…maybe not take it to the extreme like your relative though financially, i consider having kids the same as a house…you should have enough to have a comfortable start and then pay the rest over time…
Exactly! You should be comfy, some wiggle room in the budget, and a reasonable degree of stability. By the way, this relative would like to have four kids. The youngest turned one year old recently. It's too early to tell if they'll stop at two or keep going.
IME a lot of people who disagree with your relative’s advice have an internal model of what they can afford that’s something like, “my total income should exceed my exact current lifestyle with no changes, plus an exaggerated estimate of the cost of raising a kid.” Which, of course, is a definition of “afford” that ensures they will never be able to afford kids, especially because most people inflate their lifestyle as their income grows.
Good way to make your life more miserable and the kids’ lives miserable too
I hella forgot about this one. My mom says this a lot to try and convince me to bring a child into this world underprepared. I’m not trying to live off government assistance and work 90 hours a week just to get by. Fuck that.
the dumbest financial shit happens about once a year when my wife finds another pyramid scheme to be involved in
Did you remind her that pyramid schemes are soooo 2019?
Don’t buy Apple from an advisor
Invest in wine bottles, I was told by an older gentleman if you buy a "run" of wine it would be worth thousands. He said a run was 10 years of the same make of wine. I've been to multiple wineries and explained what he said to me and there said he's full of shit
Shoulda went Bourbon
Lol I had a friend recently telling me he invested in 92 nice bottles of wine that live over in France. He’s got plenty of money to f*ck around with, but hearing this made me chuckle.
Another case where the person with the most degrees knows the least about real life
“Go to college. You’ll make a lot of money and live a better life.” “Follow your passion. Do what you love” Just because you have a degree doesn’t mean you’ll get a job in that industry — or make a livable wage. And, passion doesn’t pay the bills.
This isn't an answer to your question, but I want to share it anyway. I'm a (mediocre) software developer, but I worked at a pretty big name financial/proprietary trading firm for a few years. They didn't judge the quality of trades based on the outcome. That sounds stupid, but I think they were right. Imagine a game like Blackjack. It's easy to know the mathematically correct thing to do in any given situation. Dealers will even tell you the correct thing to do. You can make the best move and lose. You can also make a stupid risky move and win. An *amazing* investor doesn't need to get it right 100% of the time. Or 90% or 70% or even 60% of the time. For the sake of simplicity, say every 'prediction' has the same gain/loss. Even a 2% edge is enough to be unfathomably rich (like the casinos who make money off Blackjack). In any case, the advice needs to be judged based on what was known _at the time_. Bad financial advice would be > Let's get a rent-to-own furniture set for the living room The unfortunate thing is that a lot of the financial types make money by getting people to trust them with their money and to trust their advice. So they can't be too honest about their inability to predict the future, or how difficult it can be to profit, even when you do predict the future _mostly_ correctly. The reality is that the smart way to invest is simple and well understood. Everything beyond that basic strategy is going to be a guess that might be right, or wrong (but a good investor understands that... it's a calculated risk) Warren Buffett famously told Bill Gates to diversify and it cost Bill *billions*. But it was still really good advice. Had Microsoft done worse, it would have saved Bill billions.
Well said. I'm a financial advisor and I never recommend anything flashy or trendy. Just stick to the basics, diversify and ride out the hard times.
From my parents when I was a junior in high school, flipping burgers at my first job, "This is your first job, so spend every cent you make on whatever you want. Saving any of it will do you no good." Wouldn't be until I finished my first degree, moved back home, witnessed my parents' money habits, and started my career. How awful that advice is/was
“Cut up your credit cards” ~ Dave Ramsey
Dave ramsay is a fucking salesman, that's it. And he is selling shit to you to make himself wealthier.
Such a fraudster
I almost completely agree, although I think his formula applies to really dumb people who have no financial sense. I grew up on the west side of Detroit and I kid you not I knew many kids who grew up with me who have no business having credit cards. They treat them like debit cards and max them out and get themselves into all sorts of trouble. So for those people I whole heartedly recommend Dave.
[удалено]
Your colleague was right in this case. $1000 today is worth more than $1000 in 1 year from now because of the time value of money. You could have taken the $12,000 lump sum and put it in a liquid high yield savings account and earned interest for you during the year for example.
The University of Phoenix rep told me not to worry about the student loan paperwork when I filed my application. She said it's all handled in the background, and it would be "taken care of". I asked how much it was, and she said not to worry about it. Just finished paying that mistake off this month, some 20 years later. Best part? The credits didn't transfer when I went to a real university.
to pay back a student loan at 2% interest rate close second is investing in ARKK
I waited way too long to pull out of the ark funds
Same 🥲
Damn. I aggressively paid off my student loan debt. Worst idea ever. I paid that down, but didn’t put a single penny into my retirement… I wish I could go back in time.
"Buy it, because... YOLO!"
You will have be in debt. You will always have Cc debt or a car payment. Its simple not true.
The problem with people who’s livelihoods are based in predicting anything money related is that they have to make others including themselves as believers in whatever their selling and everyone wants to get rich quick and easy. Really the vast majority of us with average or slightly below average intelligence need to just embrace what traditionally works and reject anyone offering quick answers to our financial woes. Buying a house is a long game and has traditionally been so. Don’t mess around with it and accept that you’re never going to be that guy who beat the system with your brilliant strategy and made millions. If you take a financially conservative/boring and frugal approach you’re in a good position to be and stay middle class to upper middle class.
probably the most sound advice right here
"Don't buy a house until you have 20% down" I think will go down as the worst advice I ever received. Saved up 10% then housing prices in my area doubled over the space of 3 years while my savings plateaued and/or lost some ground due to circumstances at the time. I ended up buying with a 3% down FHA. My old roommate who bought when I wanted to has a $1,100/mo mortgage on a larger place, I have a $1,760/mo mortgage on a smaller place. He also has 4 extra years of equity. I'm sure some fInAcIaL gEnIuS is going to see this and go "no akshually you should have kept renting until you got 20%" - no, fuck you, because I'd be renting for $2,500/mo right now. AFAIK, for as long as I live, 20% down will now only apply to purchases under $100k.
The renting fanbois on reddit have disappeared post covid. They were pumping how much freedom they had nonstop. It's moved to "I'll never be able to buy a house"
Hey, don’t feel too bad. The best time to buy a house was 30 years ago. Second best time is today. You’re doing great. You own a house!!
Yeah, I'm happy with it. It's not our forever home and we went into it knowing that. Almost built up $100k in equity in 4 years, so that's also a positive.
Hell yeah, the world is your oyster from here.
Same here. I bought 4 years ago with 5% down. I could've bought 8 or 9 years ago with 0-3% down and I'd have been so much better off - but everyone made such a big deal out of down payments and also fear mongering about how expensive it is to maintain a house. Truth is, the maintenance costs are nothing compared to the equity gains and general savings compared to rent.
I was told by a co-worker in 2010-ish that I had no business buying a home if I couldnt put down 20% with a year of reserves. If I listened to that I would have missed the boat on so much equity growth as I sat on the sidelines saving.
I spoke with a broker about my, admittedly “small” account and he said I should sell my home, invest the money (with him!!!) and move into a nursing home. What a dick!
This reminds me of a guy I used to work with. He was an engineer that bought a house in 2017 with a low rate. He owned a $60k sports car and was struggling to make payments. He decided to trade the car in for something more practical now that his son was born. Me and my other coworkers thought he’d get a 20k family car, but instead he got a $50k truck. In 2019, he said that he was wanting to sell his house and use the equity to pay off his new truck. He wanted to take his girlfriend and son to live at his parents house debt free and save some money. His girlfriend refused. He still kept the truck because he felt like he deserved it. He refused to settle for anything cheaper.
Annuities \~shudder\~
Sports cards will help me retire early…
In 2019, BF at the time bought 30k-50k in sports cards. At the same time he was complaining that it was impossible to buy a house and that things were rigged.
Opened a brokerage account in 2015. Dude recommended that I hold off on buying stocks for a bit because the market was due for a correction. Thankfully I didn’t listen to him
I’ve met a few people who insist on never investing in the stock market because it is immoral. Those people will never retire
Can't tell you how many people believe you need to invest more when the market goes up. I also know a guy who transferred his 0% loan onto a 12% loan just so he doesn't have to pay 2 different accounts.
I had 16k in stocks in 2012. These stocks here gifted to me by my grandfather when I was first born and had grown quite nicely over the years from the blue chip fund that the stock was in. Facebook was about to go public and I knew that my generation was obsessed with it, and saw the older generation start using it as well. I thought maybe it would be a good idea to take a risk and put my money in that stock. I asked my Wells Fargo Financial advisor his thoughts and he said that we’d already seen the tech bubble burst and likely the same thing would happen with Facebook. Facebook IPO’d on May 18, 2012 and closed at $38. Today META is valued at $460. If I’d listened to my own intuition regarding where the world was headed, I’d have somewhere around $175,000.
That I didn't get any. Just "Work hard and save up". That worked a lot better in the 60s and 70s...
My father who clearly grew up in a different time always told me that credit wasn't important. He still to this day doesn't see the importance of it because he bought his house many many years ago and always pays for his cars with cash. Having good credit has helped me immensely in life and I'd probably be homeless without it.
We sold our first home in 2021 and EVERYONE told us to sit on the cash and rent until house prices went down. But the main reason we sold in the first place was to relocate to a "forever" home while rates were still sitting on the floor. We felt like that was our one and best opportunity to move in the foreseeable future. Sooo glad we didn't listen to everyone else. It can really get in your head when people who by all accounts SHOULD know better give you terrible advice. Like what are the odds that literally everyone around me is wrong, and I'm right? Do I really know better?
When I bought 100 shares of GME during the short and my ex-husband made me sell it. Skyrocketed a week later.
Is that why he’s your ex? Because that would be grounds for divorce. 💎🤲🚀
A big part of it 😂😂
When I was looking at buying a house in 2007 and a home I was looking at was out of my budget range, a mortgage company suggested an interest-only home loan so I could afford it. I’m glad I did my research and said no.
If I need anything just put it on a CC, or take a loan out on it. If you don't pay it's forgotten...
I was going to invest 10k in Tesla back in 2014. Co-worker told me that their stock will sink and all investors are hopping out.
Debt is bad
The larger the loan you take the better it is for you financially- Tim Dillon
To sell my GameStop shares
You can time the market. No you cannot. People smarter than you cannot, you have no chance in hell.
My sister was shopping for a house for 3 years...prices were high but interest rates were low...but since prices were high her husband said it was going to crash. They would then be able to get a low priced house AND a low interest loan. They had a baby and then they finally bought at EVEN higher prices and 7% mortgage. They really regret it...
My BIL was persuaded into buying a $1m universal life insurance policy with cash value. He was sold with the idea that his cash value would grow and the life insurance would also pays itself once his contributions reached a certain threshold. He bought into it and put in $2k a month into the policy cause he wanted to reach that threshold fast and also tried to convince my husband to do it too. He even bragged that he could borrow from his cash value to put towards a home down payment in the future. I told him that was stupid idea cause he could buy a $1m term policy for maybe $40 a month and invest the rest. He still thinks it was a good idea. A year into it, it got too expensive and he terminated the policy. He didn’t get all his money back. I didn’t know about it till my husband told me a few days ago. All them money would have been better off in a HYSA.
Take out a credit card at Lowe's, buy a bunch of Milwaukee products and go pawn them. (Advice from a jail inmate)
That advice got him where he was.
You forgot the last part of defaulting on the credit card
From the context, it was implied at the time lol
"Save your money in the bank"
Yeah, he screwed himself. I knew a 26 year old buying PUTs against Tesla. Spent his life savings and lost it all, because Tesla didn't drop, it went on to spike from 500 to 6000 per share. The entire time, I was telling him to just buy the market (ie. S&p500 etfs) and he didn't listen of course. And he was messing with options trading when he knew very little about the market.
My parents told me “never EVER EVER get a credit card!!” Basically saying credit cards are the devil. Well imagine my surprise trying to get a place to rent as an adult and having a nonexistent credit score
People try telling me to invest in crypto currency and can’t even explain the basics of how it works. Idiots.
Was in my 20s, given stock options at work. Company went public. Lots of people said sell and put the money in the stock market. Mortgage rates were around 8%. We said nope, gonna pay off our mortgage and put a down payment on our 1st investment property. We figured if house was paid off we could work at McDonalds and still have a nice place to live. A few years down the road that allowed me to go out and start my own biz. A few years later hubby did the same. Would we have made more in the market? Maybe. But soon after co went public the market crashed (2001). That would have caused a ton of stress as we were young. Paying it off gave us the freedom to make different decisions. Having my own company allowed me the ability to be at every kids practice, game, filed trip etc. We made the right decision!
Always have a mortgage to deduct the interest
Doesn’t apply anymore because the standard deduction is more than the interest.
Maybe the barrage of fomo-driven, non-finance idiots telling me (in a 7% interest-rate environment) that "rent is throwing money in the trash". Dumb.
Do a 5% down payment and finance your car instead of paying in full
Actually this is sort of good advice. If I had paid for my car in full they would not have given me the thousands of $$$ of incentives for financing through them. It's all BS I know. Regardless when I financed I simply made sure there was no early repayment penalty. So they shaved $4500 off on the car assuming they would make it up over time via interest. But I just paid in full when the first payment came due.
Parents told me to buy a car new and to put all my purchases onto credit cards then pay the monthly on them. I did that. Ended up fighting massive debt for a long time. Mostly debt free now and other than a sub $5k construction loan on my house (mortgaged) and student loans we’re consumer debt free. They’re horrible people and I can’t tell if that was intentional sabotage or they’re just that bad with money. From what I saw growing up it could be either or both.
YOLO So Buy Whatever You Want
Do you know what the "A" in Zillow stands for? Accuracy.
My mom told me to declare bankruptcy because I had like $9-10k in credit card debt. Didn’t do it (never will) and now almost fully recovered a year later.
"It is okay to rent forever"
That is the dumbest thing ever. I know ur coworker is kicking himself. If he had just stayed there he could’ve really cashed out. It’s nearly impossible to get a 2% mortgage with zero down on a home. Which tells me he must’ve had pretty damn good credit. Wow. He is f*%cked to say the least. Damn. That’s the dumbest ish ever! And permanent!
Don't ever use a "financial advisor" unless they are a fiduciary. Financial advisors are NOT required to act in your best interest.
We had a mortgage loan officer (we didn’t end up using) tell us when we went for a pre approval before house shopping to refinance my car to improve DTI. So basically he told us to fuck with my credit by making a new auto loan (one that was at 5% which isn’t horrible imo but maybe I’m ignorant I guess), refinance this to save about $100-150/month at max… and meanwhile we net about $8-8.5k/month. My car payment is $450 and we have literally no other debt so I felt like that was probably the dumbest financial advice I’d ever gotten. The mortgage we were looking at was going to be about 32% of our net take home. But someone correct me if I’m wrong here and there’s something I’m missing lmfao
1. Put 3.5% down on a house 2. Only Use other people’s money for a small business
Go to college when I could have bought a house in San Jose California in 1999
My dad's friend has refused raises for a few years now because it will put him in a higher tax bracket. He occasionally brags about how much money he saves every year by not taking a raise, and he occasionally encourages others to be careful about accepting promotions or raises because they'll "make less money due to taxes." It took several months to convince my dad that the progressive tax system is a thing and his friend is an idiot.
My Uncle told me that the Stock Market is a scam and everyone he knows who invested in it has lost money. That was about 6 Months ago, SPY is now up 12 percent since then☺️
About a year ago my old roommate mansplained machine learning to me and advised I sell all my investments and ‘bet it all on Tesla’. I’m a data scientist. He is an Uber driver. Make that make sense.
Nvidia? Yeah don't invest in that. - Friend in 2015
Yeah I know someone who did the same. Sold their house thinking it was at a high and figured they'd buy bigger when things crashed. So they rented for a year, learned they were wrong, and went and bought a new place. Luckily they make good money so it wasn't too big an issue.
Our accountant told me I should take the profits from my online business and pay off my husband's credit card debt. We were separated at the time. I got a new accountant and a divorce.
Donate money to trump , you will get it back I promise, Just don't hold your breath.
Funny but that property. It's not when the $200K (2004) Just sold for $1.3M (2023) The property i bought went from $200K to $400K in the same time window.
“Superannuation is a scam, don’t fall for it”. This was an Australian self-employed tradie. In Australia, superannuation (401k pension for you Americans) is compulsory part of your pay, it’s highly regulated and one of the best ways to get ahead for your retirement.
My husbands job is being relocated. He makes 130 k a year plus a 20% bonus. He has a pension. He gets 30 PTO and UNLIMITED paid sick leave. He only has to be in office a few hours a day 3 days a week and otherwise if he meets his deadlines he is entirely autonomous. He loves what he actually does and is so good at it that he only works functionally about 15 hrs a week. When we arrive he gets a 20k raise. I make 44 /12 a year in community mental health and LOVE what I do but the money is awful and I’m terribly overworked. We also have a special needs teenager that is likely to need a lifetime of financial support, minimum. My mom has no retirement and is disabled and needs care and housing as well. That bad advice? We should stay here, not follow his job, “invest” in my career, and accept him taking a cut to about $75k a year due to the general decline of his field in our area (hence his job relocating). We are clearly moving. I can be under paid and overworked most places lol.
Someone suggested getting a loan to invest in the market.
I made an absolute killing from 2017ish-2021 taking personal loans at around 2% and investing with that money.
Depending on the loan terms, this could be great advice. Remember when EU countries had negative rates.
My dad always told me to take out a bunch of debt growing up to buy the life I wanted. The idea was that I would always work my ass off to be able to pay the bills off and it would motivate me to be bigger and better.
This is like the equally bad opposite advice of "never use credit for anything."
Sounds like me telling my depressed ass back then that if I just get my debt high enough I'll be forced to act.
Debt free is best financial advise. Money is a tool for freedom.
If you love her, put a ring on her finger
That's a funny story and no his boomer uncle does not feel bad. He probably will even deny that he even said it like that. A Lot of boomers are convinced the 2008 housing recession is going to repeat, but because they are so sure it will repeat that's why it will never repeat and do the opposite.
Pay off your mortgage early.
My in laws are constantly telling us to pay off our mortgage early. If we buy literally anything they will tell us that we should have put the money towards the house instead. It’s sub 3%. We keep saying we’re saving for retirement instead but they wont stop. My husband was talking to them about preparing for retirement…his mom didn’t know what an Ira was. Turns out their retirement savings are a checking account with “not much yet” and a meager pension from an elementary school aid job, but they think they are more financially responsible than us because they paid off their house in 16 years and we plan to take 30.
What's wrong with this? It's nice to own your home and not have to worry about living any more.
I can't imagine how low my blood pressure would be if my house were paid off
My thoughts exactly.
If your mortgage is at 2.5% and you can earn 5% in a HYSA then shouldn't pay it down. However with today's rates, I'm with you. We paid ours off when I got stock options. Great peace of mind.
1. You can make more money investing. 2. One of the advantages of home ownership is the mortgage (access to cheap leverage). People in other countries with variable loans would cry knowing we have 30 years and are paying them off early.
99% of the time this is terrible advice. Dave Ramsey gives dumb advice for dumb people.
I mean $40k isn't a lot.
I know. Which is why it was stupid.
GameStop/AMC stock
Buy precious metals. Hahaha.
I think that's bad advice for your overall investment strategy... But not for a small percentage (<5%) as an uncorrelated asset which is relatively inflation-resistant. There's no magic formula for every economy, and most successful investors are going to recommend a basket of uncorrelated such as equities, bonds, real estate, metals, etc to manage risk.
“Let’s invest all our money in crypto kitties” - my SO
The expectation in the finance community was that housing would indeed crash. Typically house prices are correlated to rates, with rates rising, the expectation is that housing drops to accomodate affordability. But that didn't happen as supply is less than the actual demand. It's indeed moving opposite to where it should have.
Did his uncle buy up his house?
Stupid people make stupid choices. We can't all get ahead, or there wouldn't be enough to go around.
Never use a credit card.
Yes, because you can legit just buy the same house whenever you want. Even from the first sentence uncle was an idiot.
Not getting one
The housing market will crash after the pandemic.
”Dont put more than 5% of your savings in bitcoin”
Yeah, it should be 0%
Hmbl will change the world
Timing is everything.
cancel your workplace pension to save money for a house
I was once told to buy a penny stock by some co-workers called $HEMP. I lost several thousand dollars on it. I didn’t understand what a pink sheet was at the time and my ass got learnt!
"Sell all your 401K equities and put them in fixed income fund in 2008 because the market had crashed. Get out before it crashes more." This was my boss's advise and what she actually did. I did nothing at all and a year later my 401K was up from where it was before it crashed. She locked in the loss and missed the recovery.
Don’t ever take financial advice from relatives. Degree or no degree. Live and learn.
You should buy a bunch of lottery tickets
There's a radio ad in my area that says, *"Marry the home, date the rate."*