I don't think traditional retirement savings is going to work

Funny, All this planning for a future on a doomer site. SHTF? A paid for piece of dirt and shelter. Being debt free is the best.
I come at this from a lower income angle. Everything you take for granted may just go away.

 

Correct !

Im just finishing my ranch build , This has been planned & paid for (materials ) , Were FARM / ALR stasis , im thinking any money invested into retirement with the .GOV is toast . 4 Months in :

 

Lots of people thought they really knew energy and invested big in Enron.
The bottom line is if you pick and choose your own stocks, you may do well, maybe very well. But you are gambling as you might also loose big. You don’t have enough time in a week to adequately get to know a hundred or more stocks such that you are adequately diversified so that if several tank it is no big deal. I will temper that if there is a company or two or an industry you know very well such that you are a bit shy of being an insider trader knowing when to buy or sell, that is a different situation, but even then you still don’t want all your eggs in that one basket and still need diversity to offset risk.

Indexes are for fools and lazy investors? The research shows that over the long haul fund managers only rarely out perform indexes. And if you are trying to pick winners and losers yourself, then you are effectively a fund manager. And the so called pros can’t consistently beat indexes over the long haul, how will you as a very part time investor? Read the numbers below:

Stock-Picking Fund Managers Are Even Worse Than We Thought At Beating the Market

Index Funds vs. Mutual Funds

https://money.usnews.com/investing/...ly-managed-funds-really-pay-off-for-investors

Retirement investing, much of it in index funds, some in managed, some in farm land and a couple other things has worked very well for us as we approach retirement. Another 7-9 years at our current rate and we’ll be able to coast into many years of retirement with not much change to our spending and lifestyle.

AT

 

this is not advice but in my opinion, the stuffing cash in the mattress that our grandparents did is the right way, only the dollars are now made out of imagination so you have to trade them for money (metal) to save.
And further, it is none of the government's business what I save or not.

 

Also have to be prepared for nothing to happen.

Mattress stuffing is fine. But just remember those first dollars, the oldest dollars you save will have lost around half their buying power by the time you use them.
It's like negative work.

 

"Stuffing the mattress" might have been a workable idea 80 years go when banks were not secure and other investments were not available, at least not to the average person.

But today, simply saving (via mattress or any other means) vs. investing is fiscal foolishness to the point that anyone who exclusively saves (and does not invest) deserves to be screwed into the life of a pauper and never truly retire.

Unless you are fabulously rich and have a mountain of cash, you'll never be able to save enough (by saving alone) to live your Golden Years.

If your company matches 80% on your 401k contributions, is anyone with half a working brain cell going to leave that money on the table out of principle? How paranoid does one have to be to take a pass on someone offering to give you, tax deferred, eighty cents for every dollar you put up?

Saving has its place of course...everyone should have liquid cash in case of a crisis. But really, "stuffing the mattress" as a retirement plan is volunteering for poverty.

 

Anyone who has a plan where they match or do a partial match should be taking advantage of it.
My employer matches $ for $ up to 6% of my pay that I put in.
And that's all I put in.
My nearly 20 year old dot gov one, they didn't match any thing.

Probably what I am going to do it clean out the dot gov one, hold it as cash until rhodium, palladium, iridium or ruthenium and maybe platinum does a swan dive off a cliff and buy up an gluttonous amount after it hits bottom and bounces.
Resell when it rebounds.

 

Look around, in your Dad's day a good home was a stick built 2 bedroom, one bath with single telephone in the hall way. Car was a simple in line 6 or a small V8, no AC in the car until the late 60s. No AC in the homes, maybe a swamp cooler and not all homes had insulation and windows were single pane.
60% of the families in the 50s had only one car. Men mowed the yard with a manual push mower. Most men changed their oil and worked on their cars to keep them up to snuff. Engines in the 40s and 50s cars seldom ran more than 50,000 miles with out a complete overhaul. Car pooling to work was the norm.

One in 20 employees had a pension plan, Full Vesting was up to 20 years, most were 10 years and that took guts to hang onto a job you didn't like. Eating out was not a family thing, most kids and their folks took their lunch in a brown bag or tin lunch kit. Folks did not "eat out at noon".

And if you had real skills that allowed you to compete with a former boss then you might find your pension plan came with platinum handcuffs.

Just a short example of how it was. And why our modern world and waste cause a reduced retirement funding.

 

I think maybe y'all missed the part about trading dollars for money to stuff in the mattress. Inflation is irrelevant then. Our grandparents had dollars that were made of money.
I do participate in the 401k to achieve full matching, because it's free money, but that's not an important part of my plans, the savings are (and the savings are not in dollars)

The point of my message was, all the ways they want to convince you to 'invest' are traps, one way or another they're going to steal that money and you won't get to use it like you've been promised.
And again, this is NOT advice, but my opinion.

 

Makes for a lumpy mattress.

 

I'm going to have to move on this sooner than expected.
The $7,000 and 2 ounces of platinum I was expecting is actually going to be 9 ounces of platinum and $500 because the people at library are morons.

 

My advice is that if you are in the TSP leave that thing alone. My TSP is killing it right now. If Trump gets re-elected I may be able to retire a few years early.

 

TSP is doing pretty good. Everything is in the c fund.
But when I retire I could be looking at energy prices being up to 5x what they are now. By 2050 gasoline, propane and diesel prices could be 5x what they are now. Natural gas could easily be 3x or 4x what it is now.
Now if I could continue to make 10% to 20% per year every year that still wouldn't be enough.
If everything goes perfect I double my money every 10 years. Then demand push inflation drives the price of everything up by around double that (worse case scenario).
So making an honest 10 to 20% a year just isn't going to cut it and that's only if we can go another 30 years don't get another moron like Obama in office, yeah no chance of that. We get Obama 2.0 in office next thing you the stock market crashes then stagnates for most of their term, while they confiscate all the proletariat retirement to protect us from being too stupid to invest on our own or at least implement wide sweeping changes that limit it so you have no moderate yield or better investment options because they are too risky.
The way I see it, I keep doing what I'm doing and grantee I run out of money and work my self to death, do something different, maybe loose my ass. But there is a good chance I can save a liveable anount.
If I don't do anything I'm screwed, if I change it up maybe I get screwed and it's 100% my own fault and I at least get a cool story out of it.

 

I wouldn't get a lick of work done with that view !

 

I should add I withdrew a few thousand dollars from TSP back in 2012 to put a new roof on. I had enough on hand to do it as long as "I didn't find any problems".
HA! I spent every cent I took out on "problems" and half ass shortcuts I discovered.
Moral of the story is the process takes 10 or 11 days to get the money wired from TSP to your account.
I am going to have the money on hand or accessible the next bank business day.

 

I did what I thought was right, got out a year early instead of a day late.

 

You will only be able to coast, if the market doesn't change. And the market will change, it's managed so a few people make all the money. It's why I don't invest in Index funds. You don't know that the data is real and true 'market value' is established if you know the market value of what you are buying. Indexed funds are manipulated all the time.

Anyone remember Bernie Madoff? 2008 he was a respected fund manager who hadn't done a trade in 15 years and people lost millions when his son's outted him. Where was the f'ing SEC? they never called and verified one of his trades because his 'reputation' was so good. HBO is running a movie on him if you are not a reader but it's well worth reading the book

The Wizard of Lies

I maintain, index funds are for lazy investors.

 

The View was Hazy on that day due to burning of stumps .
That pasture area is 450A , that has been cleared to burn piles & seeded @ 50 % .

This has been a 3 year todate werk/money pit .

I need an income when I quit my work as I do this year till 2020 .
They will not let me work after 70 in my trades , so TYG.

Sloth the new farmer

 

Research says the right answer is both: Index funds are not bad / are not for the lazy. They are a good foundation and the right answer for the vast majority of people. But then if you know what you're doing and put the time into company research, picking specifics on top of that foundation with play money can work well (e.g. a TSLA bet)

 

I received a small inheritance from my parents. I was still working for CAT(35yrs at that time). I wanted to hold the money until CAT stock dropped (as I knew it was going to) Well the advisor my XYL found kept trying too sell me investment funds. When CAT stopped free falling in '08 it was worth less than a third of what it's worth right now, and the money had been spent for my late wife's daily/weekly expenditures, I tried to hold expenses way below my income, no luck. As it was I doubled my 401k by putting it in, you guessed it, A Cat stock fund through work. I was an hourly employee but I had watched Cat cycle for all those years. I actually advised my CPA and he ignored me. His loss.