Sell

[scaredyclassic]

My favorite FLAMING LIPS song sings it well..

Do you realize
That you have the most beautiful face?
Do you realize
We’re floating in space?
Do you realize
That happiness makes you cry?
Do you realize
That everyone you know someday will die?
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes
Let them know you realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn’t go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round
Do you realize?
Ah-ah-ah
Do you realize
That everyone you know someday will die?
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes
Let them know you realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn’t go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round
Do you realize
That you have the most beautiful face?
Do you realize?

[flyer]

Yes, scaredy, no one can deny the body, as we know it, has a termination date. No amount of money anyone acquires will change that. However, there are many theories, metaphysical, religious, yes, even scientific, etc., wrt the continuation of existence in many forms, beyond this realm, and those are for each of us to embrace as we choose. (or not)

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=flyer]Yes, scaredy, no one can deny the body, as we know it, has a termination date. No amount of money anyone acquires will change that. However, there are many theories, metaphysical, religious, yes, even scientific, etc., wrt the continuation of existence in many forms, beyond this realm, and those are for each of us to embrace as we choose. (or not)[/quote]

The Buddhist friends I give money to every month in Escondido explained that there is no Me separate from the entire universe, so my constituent parts will never die, but merely be transformed. Sounds reasonable.

I was walking the other nite with my youngest and said I was ready to die anytime, I had done enough, but that I was not quite prepared to suffer. He said to wait a bit because he still needed me. I didn’t get into the issue of whether we actually had independent selfs.

[flyer]

There are definitely many different theories concerning the essence of being. It sounds like you’ve found yours, and I’m glad your son let you know how much he cares about you. A reason well worth living for.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=flyer]There are definitely many different theories concerning the essence of being. It sounds like you’ve found yours, and I’m glad your son let you know how much he cares about you. A reason well worth living for.[/quote]

Well, he used the word need, not love
But I’ll settle for need

[Coronita]

Finally got around to doing my august numbers. I’m not doing as well this year versus last. I guess I went too conservative too early. Not the 50-60% the rest of you folks are getting… Oof

Ytd 21.65%, mainly due to lucky bets with Pfizer and Fuji Films and horseshit speculation on Avigan will be useful in Asia the fight against COVID that someone talked about awhile ago among my circle of friends. It’s a crapshoot, who knows. same folks speculated on Moderna before it took off, which I missed the boat…(or I should say, I got out of the boat way too early, like always) …indexes are ok. I’m getting crushed by PG&E… Things have slowed down quite a bit. 3 months prior is 3% . 1 month prior was @ 0.96% I’m at 43% cash/mm right now at the moment. probably also not a good decision.Probably will end up negative in Sept, knowing me

[sdrealtor]

FWIW my numbers are net worth all assets including RE. if you add that in yours will be much higher also. On investment accounts we are about the same YTYD

[plm]

21.65% YTD is very good until you see that sp500 is doing 22.56% But its all relative, 21.56% is better than what I’m doing so far. At least I’m no longer negative like I was back in March.

I just don’t have any control of my account. Being a long term holder I don’t want to sell anything and pay the taxes on the gains. So only tiny changes from buying different stocks with the dividend payouts. So I’m a passive investor but not with an index fund.

[Coronita]

[quote=plm]21.65% YTD is very good until you see that sp500 is doing 22.56% But its all relative, 21.56% is better than what I’m doing so far. At least I’m no longer negative like I was back in March.

I just don’t have any control of my account. Being a long term holder I don’t want to sell anything and pay the taxes on the gains. So only tiny changes from buying different stocks with the dividend payouts. So I’m a passive investor but not with an index fund.[/quote]

I think long term I can’t beat the indexes. But even so, I don’t think I want to camp out in just one or a few indexes. Indexes are great when the markets are moving up. But I’m trying to move stuff so it’s more balanced.. That said, some of my other funds have a large overlap with what’s inside the index funds.

Like some of the “income” funds invest mainly in dividend paying stock that also happens to be part of the S&P500 index or others. So my understanding is that one got to be careful that even if your goal was to allocate away from what’s contained in index funds, you got to make sure what you pick up doesn’t end up picking some of the same stocks.

Fidelity contrafund is similar, and does investments in a lot of high flyers. Contrafund is pretty popular among Fidelity 401k plans, along with the Magellan funds, which I think are now closed.

So in my 401k I have allocations to contrafunds, but since there’s so much overlap with some index funds, I’m light on indexes in those 401k accounts…I’m in a unique situation that I negotiated with Charles Schwab, so I can pretty much buy any Vanguard fund inside Charles Schwab and they’ll waive all fees they normally charge for funds not theirs….I wasn’t able to get them to waive the fees for Fidelity funds. The issue is Schwab doesn’t have access to Vanguard voyager class shares. So that’s why I still keep around a Vanguard accounts along with Fidelity and Schwab.

I guess things matter less now that everything is trying to move to an ETF. and all three are $0 commission.

[plm]

[quote=Coronita][quote=plm]21.65% YTD is very good until you see that sp500 is doing 22.56% But its all relative, 21.56% is better than what I’m doing so far. At least I’m no longer negative like I was back in March.

I just don’t have any control of my account. Being a long term holder I don’t want to sell anything and pay the taxes on the gains. So only tiny changes from buying different stocks with the dividend payouts. So I’m a passive investor but not with an index fund.[/quote]

I think long term I can’t beat the indexes. But even so, I don’t think I want to camp out in just one or a few indexes. Indexes are great when the markets are moving up. But I’m trying to move stuff so it’s more balanced.. That said, some of my other funds have a large overlap with what’s inside the index funds.

Like some of the “income” funds invest mainly in dividend paying stock that also happens to be part of the S&P500 index or others. So my understanding is that one got to be careful that even if your goal was to allocate away from what’s contained in index funds, you got to make sure what you pick up doesn’t end up picking some of the same stocks.

Fidelity contrafund is similar, and does investments in a lot of high flyers. Contrafund is pretty popular among Fidelity 401k plans, along with the Magellan funds, which I think are now closed.

So in my 401k I have allocations to contrafunds, but since there’s so much overlap with some index funds, I’m light on indexes in those 401k accounts…I’m in a unique situation that I negotiated with Charles Schwab, so I can pretty much buy any Vanguard fund inside Charles Schwab and they’ll waive all fees they normally charge for funds not theirs….I wasn’t able to get them to waive the fees for Fidelity funds. The issue is Schwab doesn’t have access to Vanguard voyager class shares. So that’s why I still keep around a Vanguard accounts along with Fidelity and Schwab.

I guess things matter less now that everything is trying to move to an ETF. and all three are $0 commission.[/quote]

Just going to stick with SP500 index fund for my 401k. I don’t know enough to choose different funds, I figure the top 500 US companies would be better than most funds. As for my brokerage account, not trying to diversify, just buy stocks that go up the most. Doesn’t matter much if you don’t sell. It’s more praying that the stocks you own do well.

[Escoguy]

[quote=sdrealtor][quote=Coronita]Yeah, well I was one of the people that actually took some money off to the side to be a little more cautious. But you know when I did that, it wasn’t significant enough to save my accounts when the markets declined…since when the markets declined the rest of my portfolio took a hit…at the same time, when the markets climbed fast, my portfolio didn’t climb as fast…Slow going up fastcoming down still…Story of my life….I should have just left things alone…

50-60% is impressive. I think my 1 year underperformed @ 27%

50-60% would have been nice. no early retirement for me…[/quote]

Im sure you did great. Part of that roughly 60% was leveraged real estate though it wasn’t highly leveraged. Someone highly leveraged on real estate would’ve done amazing also. I’m sure we know at least one or two of those also[/quote]

As an accountant by profession, I almost have this instinct to track net worth/values/change in net worth, but for my personal funds/assets, I take a slightly different approach.

I do mark securities/stocks to market and combine that with liquid funds/change in debt to get a monthly/year to date net change.

For property, I track two values, a core equity value which is probably 30% below current market but more of a “if the world goes to hell value”.

I have a side calculation which I call “unbooked equity” or unrealized gains which is closer to the current market. I do slowly bring up the “go to hell value” over time to book a portion of the market gain. This practice is inspired by the accounting for German insurance companies which for many years held real estate at the acquisition cost which created “hidden reserves”. Of course, Warren Buffet would figure this out long ago. Still it does make me think of that summer back in Munich as an auditor after the wall came down.

If I go off the mark to market value, the 14 month gain since June 2020 is a solid 33% but overall lagging the market as I’ve kept about 10%-30% in cash to buy more property (10% current).

If I factor the “unbooked equity”, things look much better, and I come in at 53%.

I need to keep some perspective here, the amount is over $2M in gains in 14 months which is probably more than I will spend on discretionary items for a few decades. It certainly begs the question if going to work still makes sense.

My normal target return going forward is only about 4% which may well be too conservative. Eventually all the stimulus measures will peter out and the economy and real estate will converge at some natural growth rate which I estimate at about 1.5%. I’m not saying sell or even change the allocation, but I think the past 14-18 months have had greater returns than the next 5-6 years combined. Hope I’m wrong but am making long term consumption and spending plans based on what I think is a sustainable rate.

[Coronita]

This is a really interesting discussion on how to properly determine net worth and evaluate performance, particularly on things that have not been realized.

I’m not an accountant so for the most part I don’t understand this, lol.

Perhaps, I’m way oversimplifying my goals, but I’m not as concerned about total net worth or appreciation of my net worth also long as I can achieve a steady stream of income from sources other than a job based on what I have, and maintain those stream(s) of income for decades to come.

Ideally, I’d like to have a steam $150k-$200k/year income stream assuming all my major expenses have been paid off (housing, kids education). Some of this comes from rental, but ideally also from other income bearing investments.

If I have a crapload of money, I wouldn’t care how low this return was (up to the point that it would be ideal to at least be above the rate of inflation). And would rather pick the lowest and safest returns that meets that steady income stream and beats inflation slightly in exchange for some more predictability of being able to be consistent 20-30-40+years from now. How I go about doing this, I’m trying to figure this out. I think $90-100k comes from rental income, that I understand could vary and go up and down to, but to some extent is more constant than other things. What I’m trying to get a handle on is, how get the remaining $50-100k/year from other sources.

These unusual 22%+ S&P500 gains are nice, but I wouldn’t count on this being typical for the long term.So I’d like to take some of these usual larger gains these past few years and put them into something more predictable and “stable”… Real estate aside, I think I need about 4-5% consistent return on everything else, with an asterisk. 4-5% on “everything else” would allow me to meet my objectives IF those returns could be used right now..The problem is part of that “everything else” is retirement accounts that cant be touched for another 12 years minimum. So gains in those accounts aren’t going to be very useful in the case of an early retirement. Between retirement and non-retirement, it’s a 50/50% split.

So not sure how to convert some of these short term wins into long term consistency, albeit at a lower return rate. I already tried to do this by reducing my exposure to the domestic stock market, but I don’t think what I’m doing really helps. Because while on UP days, my accounts aren’t rising as fast as someone else fully vested, on down days, my accounts aren’t necessarily going down less than others that are fully vested….they also still take some sizable hits….

I’m trying a little experiment with my kid’s 529 account. I recently exchanged 80% of my kid’s 529 account from traditional indexes into a time based fund-of-fund with a target date. 80% of the 529 went to this Vanguard Target Enrollment 2024/2025 Portfolio, which does a portfolio allocation based on a need to use the funds in 2024/2025.

The returns so far are a lot lower than what was in index funds, but I’m hoping that lower return buys a lot more stability for the next 3 years. I’m not as concerned about chasing the highest returning funds. The funds thus far has grown to $300k since making regular monthly contributions starting in 2006, and if more is needed, I could dip into other sources. Just want more predictability now that we are getting closer to needing to use it.

Same idea could be said about my holdings if my goals are early retirement.

[gzz]

“ It certainly begs the question if going to work still makes sense.”

Pedantic alert: It raises the question!

I am in the same happy boat, I saw my net worth passively grow more than past 1.5 year than all my labor income my first 12 years in the workforce, age 16-28, and all my savings from 16 to 34.

I enjoy my work and have long term commitments to clients and staff. My earning ability and skill level is at its peak and early retirement seems wasteful. There’s also a feeling of keeping up with my peers from school, though I realize that’s foolish. It isn’t so much want to be on top, but I still want to at least keep up with the average, which I have done so far but wouldn’t if I retired.

A factor that is no longer present is that 5-10 years ago I wanted to help family members who were economically struggling. The booming economy lifted all their boats and now I am happy to see them pay off their mortgages and buy new cars.

Finally, working is more enjoyable when you don’t have to anymore.

[scaredyclassic]

I find myself in a position today where I could never work again and enjoy the same lifestyle even accounting for high medical insurance with no worries, even for scaredycat.

The problem for me is I could not afford large future expenses I might want to make. I couldn’t afford to pay cash for a kids medical school. I couldn’t give large cash down payments for houses. I couldn’t help out with free cars and stuff. I also need to send money to the Escondido Buddhists…

I’d like to be able to do all those things. If I kept working, I could, and not feel impact about future anxiety. Also, I sometimes like work and don’t want to be a useless old man who no one listens to. Worse, I could turn into an old guy who talks about prior work days. Ugh. I hate old guys like that

Therefore although I do not feel like working on Tuesday, or this weekend, I’ll be heading in later today.

Even if I were to die tomorrow, I would feel about this life direction it is correct

[svelte]

[quote=scaredyclassic]I find myself in a position today where I could never work again and enjoy the same lifestyle even accounting for high medical insurance with no worries, even for scaredycat.

The problem for me is I could not afford large future expenses I might want to make. I couldn’t afford to pay cash for a kids medical school. I couldn’t give large cash down payments for houses. I couldn’t help out with free cars and stuff. I also need to send money to the Escondido Buddhists…

I’d like to be able to do all those things. If I kept working, I could, and not feel impact about future anxiety. Also, I sometimes like work and don’t want to be a useless old man who no one listens to. Worse, I could turn into an old guy who talks about prior work days. Ugh. I hate old guys like that

Therefore although I do not feel like working on Tuesday, or this weekend, I’ll be heading in later today.

Even if I were to die tomorrow, I would feel about this life direction it is correct[/quote]

Sounds like you are in a similar boat as I am, scaredy. Have hit my goals early but not sure I am ready to retire.

My original goal was to retire at 65, but I’m beginning to question whether I want to stay in that long. My wife and I have been talking about that.

The house is close to being paid off. We could live better than anyone in either of our families – ever! – even if I retired now.

The problem is – once I exit the workplace, if I decide a year or two down the road I shouldn’t have it would probably be hard to reenter. It is probably a one-way door.

So for now, I decided to stay. It will afford us more $$ to do with what we want in retirement – in reality it will be more money to pass on to our kids. My wife’s still working anyway, so even if I retired it would not mean more travel right now. Inflation has kicked up and if that continues, it could be that we’ll need that extra few years on income to keep pace with inflation. I’ll probably be re-evaulating every six months or so.

I’ve also been returning to genealogy and recently updated the family tree with the ages they all died. It’s all over the board as one might expect, but out of the 28 ancestors nearest us in the family tree (through great-grandparents):

– 4 passed in their 90s (93, 93, 90, 90)
– 5 passed in their 80s (89, 83, 82, 82, 81)
– 12 passed in their 70s
– 2 passed in their 60s
The other 5 passed before that.

How much time do we have left? How much of it do we want to spend in retirement? The answers are unclear at this point.

[Author]

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