I did not invest the bulk of my assets in Jan, I invested a large amount at the bottom of the Feb correction and have been investing in chunks all the way up to now.
However, if you listen to the vast majority of Financial experts, including Vanguard founder Jack Bogle, you will notice that they frown upon timing the markets but rather adopt a long term strategy of “time in the market vs timing the market”. I learned a lot at the bogleheads forum from long term investors and noted that most regular people know nothing about investing or the markets. Waiting for a bottom is the absolute wrong thing to do when it relates to long term investing because markets are notoriously difficult to predict and more often than not you will time the top incorrectly and in addition time the bottom incorrectly too and lose on both ends.
Getting back to houses – it is good to have reasonable expectations but buying a home is a long term, very expensive and important purchase. I know some people who have bought the wrong type of home and have been extremely unhappy that they are paying so much money for a place and worse – are locked in to a contract that is very difficult and expensive to get out of (realtors commission etc.) that did not meet their basic requirements. They bought thinking they would just get into the door but it was more difficult to get out than they thought due to various reasons including rising values of homes and also a re-establishment of higher cost basis for taxes.
For me, I would like at least 1500sqft of living space so I can be future proof to some extent, a 2 car garage, a lower HOA ($250/mo or so is fine, some properties in OC have $500-700/mo HOAs which I find laughable!) so that if I pay off the home I don’t still have ridiculous monthly payments, no mello roos for the same preceding reasoning – some places have ridiculous atrocious mello roos for 30-50 years!!! location in a good area – I rent currently in a good area so why do you think I would significantly LOWER my standard of living and in exchange significantly RAISE my monthly payment? That makes no sense whatsoever.
To me a dream home is a pool, 2500sqft, 3 car garage, upper class neighborhood, probably some kind of view etc. A 1500sqft 3 bedroom, 2 car garage in a middle class neighborhood is not a dream home – give me a break! Yet, these “starter” homes still cost $800,000 with astronomical ongoing monthly expenses. No thanks, that is a BAD deal!
A final key fact is that I am a single income, so I can take less risk than say a dual income couple who has 2 distinct sources of income.
So, having my money in the stock market – yes I can sleep at night because I know I have a buffer and I know even if I lose some money upfront now it will rebound eventually. Buying a astronomically expensive house with astronomical monthly expenses, it would cause me tremendous stress and I would not be able to sleep at night… so at least for me the former is the choice I made, not the latter.
