[Coronita]

Personally, I think a lot of financial planners/advisors that have been giving the cookie cutter advise of “put away as much money into a tax deferred 401k or IRA” might be wrong for people who are well disciplined savers/investors… I think this cookie cutter advise might be for the majority of the american population that generally suck at saving/investing their money, and need some sort of disciplined and easy way to put money off to the side for their golden years…However, easy does not necessarily mean its the best and most tax efficient way for someone that is financially disciplined and doesn’t need to to be handheld to bi-weekly put money off to the side to save for their golden years.

For starters, many 401k plans just suck in terms of the high fees, the shitty investment options, and general lack of flexibility. Second, for 401ks and IRAs that are tax deferred, you don’t know how much taxes all that taxed deferred investing is really going to be 10, 20, 30 years down the road, and that seems to be a moving target. For many of you that are hard core savers, putting all that money off to the side and letting it compound all these years, you might end up having a very large required minimum distribution RMD when you reach your golden years, and your annual RMD income might end up being larger than your current AGI, putting you into a much higher tax bracket in your golden years than you currently are with your current AGI. Furthermore, I seriously doubt taxes across all tax brackets in the future will be lower than they are now, unless you are just poor. So for hard core savers/investors, it’s likely that not only will you be in a much higher tax bracket in the future, the taxes you pay in that bracket will be more than even if you were in the higher tax bracket now.

Which begs the question, what’s the point of putting so much money into the traditional tax deferred 401k and IRA anyway, versus just paying taxes now upfront on your earned income and use that money to invest in some more well known, quantifiable taxed asset in present day? Being a disciplined saver, you’re not going to piss away that money today anyway, so you might as well get the tax done on it, and work with it present day, where you know how it’s going to get taxed.

The one exception might be if your employer offers a matching 401k plan, like mine does. And then, yeah I guess it would make sense to contribute the least amount of money to the 401k as possible, just so you get the full match from the employer….or… some employers now offer both a Traditional 401k and Roth 401k, so if you’re hell bent on doing that maximum $19k/year deferral to a 401k ($19.5k/year starting in 2020, whoohoo), you could pay taxes on that $19k up front, and put it all into the Roth 401k part….and gamble that 10-20-30 years from now, our government won’t try to tap into the Roth401ks/RothIRAs that were supposedly not taxable at all…maybe….

I don’t know…

Kiplinger had a pretty good article toward the end about the elimination of the stretch ira. https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/retirement/T047-S001-how-the-secure-act-will-impact-retirement-savings/index.html

[Coronita]

The other sucky part is this. If the average rate of return for the vanguard acount was 5.1%, the gain would have been roughly $143k, instead of $222k. And to reach $222k would have taken closer to 14 years instead of 10. That sucks. Maybe me wonder how much better things might have been if I had been slightly more aggressive. Invest well, my friends.

[Coronita]

[quote=svelte][quote=flu]

My 2000 Audi had a LED display screen that started to pixelate and fail around the 10 year mark. I found an electronics guy that desoldered the screen and replaced it with a compatible screen that is still functional. The Mercedes had a similar issue that I didn’t bother having repaired. These original led screens where used for informational purposes only, so while they were an eyesore, were not critical to driving the car. [/quote]

Looks like where there’s a need, someone will step up with a solution. $150 if you supply the defective cluster.

https://www.germanaudiotech.com/products/audi-a4-s4-a6-s6-tt-instrument-speedometer-cluster-dash-pixel-repair-service%5B/quote%5D

Yup, that’s correct. I used one of these guys.

However, this also depends on how widespread the part is for the person to invest the time and money to do this.

Back to the LCD screen display issue on the Audi. The LCD screen used was on all Audis for a few uears. A4, S4 , A6, etc..

These new clusters however are almost model line specific. I don’t think the same cluster you find on the 5 series is the same as the 3 series.

In addition, I think car companies have intentionally designed for lack of serviceability for independent and home mechanics. For example, wrto Tesla, you can’t even buy parts from a parts counter to do your own repair.

[Coronita]

[quote=svelte]I’m torn on the statement that cars won’t age well because of the increasing electronics in modern cars.

On the one hand, that will certainly be problematic. I have a friend who, about two years ago, told me something went out in his 2009 Charger SRT8 and he couldn’t get that part from Dodge…it was an electronic part (seems like it was part of the dash cluster? can’t recall) and all that was available was a rebuilt replacement. The car was out of warranty but not that old by any means.

So that points to flu being right.

On the other hand, the average age of a car is now approaching 12 years old, an all-time high. If electronics are hurting their aging, then how can this be? Perhaps the average age will head south here in a few years as the technology laden cars age?

It will be interesting to watch.[/quote]

My 2000 Audi had a LED display screen that started to pixelate and fail around the 10 year mark. I found an electronics guy that desoldered the screen and replaced it with a compatible screen that is still functional. The Mercedes had a similar issue that I didn’t bother having repaired. These original led screens where used for informational purposes only, so while they were an eyesore, were not critical to driving the car. Fast forward today. Mercedes all use an LCD screen for everything, there are no mechanical gauges anymore. BMW and Audi lately have done the same thing. When that LCD goes bad, it’s not a simple instrument cluster “swap”. Even my latest car, with the center touch screen, some people have reported it delaminating 3 years later.

The airbag control module for my 19 year old Audi just recently started to throw a fault code. over time , it’s a known issue these airbag modules go bad when I’m a colder weather. Cost to replace them are $800, or roughly 40% the value of the car. I just use. $25 eBay air bag reset tool every so often. even if they are available electronics parts are incredibly expensive. They will run more than the car is worth.

[Coronita]

speaking of free.

https://qz.com/1772017/robinhood-fined-1-25-million-by-finra-for-trading-violation/

[Coronita]

recession or not. It’s like the same concept that one normally would do index funds over 5-10-15-20 years. The biggest advantage of an index fund was you could make really tiny $300 contributions each month and forget about it. You can do this with ETFs now too… And pretty soon, hopefully it will be easy to do this with your own basket of stocks. rather than moving a big chunk of it all at once hoping you times it right.

Times have certainly change. When I got my first trading account while I was a teen in 1990, it was like $72 from Pacific Brokerage to buy 300 shares of Intel. Then when I was in college, I was all giddy when Schwab offered a flat rate $49.95…. Then when I started working 96, trading commissions dropped to $29 flat fee when I bought my first shares of Qualcomm stock…Whohoo… And then it became $12.95, and $9.95 And then $4.95….And now it’s $0.

People these days are so lucky.. Well, technically they still charge you pennies for certain things like ADRs. But I think out of my 363 trades this year, 172 trades were after the no commission change went into effect, and I think I paid a total of $3.23 in fees. lol.

[Coronita]

For example, if you wanted.to build a Dog’s of the Dow portfolio, and you only have $10K to do it with, you could do so now with no trading commissions , by buying just a few shares of each company making up that portfolio.

There is no real “Dogs of the Dow” mutual fund, or at least not to my knowledge. And before if you had cash off to the side, it probably wouldn’t be enough to entertain the idea since many of the components that make up of the Dogs are really expensive and dealing with sub 100 shares and trading commissions would not make it worthwhile if you had to buy 20 different stocks with just a few shares. But now you can do that. Since trading commissions are now more or less $0.

So rather than parking so much in cash, maybe the strategy is to carve a tiny portion out, and to build your own fund. BYOF. increase the risk slightly, for increasing your chances of doing better than that 2% money market.

I am waiting for Schwab to update their trading platform so you can do just that. Specify you want to invest $10k across a basket of stocks, distributed by specified percentages…and do this at the end of every month….this gives regular people a huge upper hand. or I should say regular non-lazy people who are willing to do their own homework. Aim small, miss small.

[Coronita]

I really like how Schwab, ETrade, Fidelity, Robinhood, etc all have $0 commission trades. Now it’s easy to do a timed /slow drip investment to individual stocks similar to what one could do for index or low cost mutual funds.

For example FedEx and Berkshire Hathaway are great examples. Now you can buy 50 share or 100 share increments or lower and not get killed by trading commissions… heck you could even buy 10-20 shares. some of the stock I track, I’m getting lazy to track so I just buy 1 share so it would show up in my portfolio panel where I can see it. lol.

I think that in itself gives people just starting out the ability to do a slow and steady investment into pretty.mich anything without getting slapped with so many fees. Also allows me to switch from traditional index funds that have a 1 day buy/sale period to ETFs that could be bought/sold during market hours.

No more big one hand plays into individual stocks , which could open yourself up to significant risk if you guess wrong. You can literally drip invest into individual stocks without needing to use those special brokerage/firms specifically for drip investing. imho this is a game changer because for example, you could build yourself a portfolio by directly buying the same stocks that a particular mutual fund does, with roughly the same percentages as the find does….without forking over management fees that are buried into the fund….you couldn’t do this before without getting killed by trading commissions.

[Coronita]

Lol. Seems like I struck a nerve. What was that thing you said about being trolled? Easy there. Don’t want to be responsible for a heart attack or stroke with your expletive tirade. Maybe your 201k will look more like a 401k next year. Good luck!

Oh and if your trying to be a progressive political refugee here to rant on politics, in that case, make sure your prescription to your heart medication is up to date and fully stocked. you’ll need them.

The funny part is I don’t even like Donald Trump. But apparently, pretending to be on a real estate blog appears to trigger people to go batshit crazy. That’s just entertaining and why it’s so fun to do.

[Coronita]

You mad for missing out, bro?

if you’re mad now, you might get even madder in 2020.

[Coronita]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-home-starts-exceed-forecasts-133001707.html

[Coronita]

leasing makes sense these days because cars these days aren’t built for you to drive into the ground 20 years later. there is so much electronics that most of it , when it fails, can’t easily be replaceable. Cars these days aren’t exactly environmentally friendly if you count how short car lifespans are these days, all the pollution it took to manufacture all that electronics in that car, and disposal of all that eWaste in that car.

Leasing isn’t great, however, if you track your car and/or heavily mod your car. Insurance usually does not cover your car anywhere “a race event could take place” and as part of a lease, you need to have insurance at all times. I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable using a car that wasn’t fully paid off and could be written off completely. Too much shit can go wrong. I already had two incidence where I slid into a wall and another one I hit a storm drain hard and it cracked fuel line hard and the car lit up on fire in older car during the practice laps. Fortunately, most of it was cosmetic and what really needed to be repaired was $300 total. Some guy in a leased C7 went over an embankment one time, and it was painful to see
. I wonder how he explained that to his insurance. A guy I knew did worse, he rolled his RS4 at Willow Springs. He wrote that off, and he was fortunate to walk off alive.

[img_assist|nid=26919|title=shit happens|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=300]

[Coronita]

S&p hitting records.
Dow near record… Ho ho ho… Santa Claus rally.

2019 will finish awesome1

Cardi B sums it up:

I said I like it like
Now I like dollars, I like diamonds
I like stunting, I like shining
I like million dollar deals
Where’s my pen? Bitch I’m signin’
I like those Balenciagas, the ones that look like socks
I like going to the jeweler, I put rocks all in my watch

Short sellers or those that did the ultra bear leveraged ETF totally getting their asses kicked. Ha ha.
lol.

[Coronita]

Avago (not even gonna call it Broadcom) is nothing more than a chop shop. I am not surprised the are trying to sell the wireless business.

Hock Tam is a businessman and Broadcom is nothing more than M&A chopshop. He will slice and dice companies the moment margins start to show signs of slowing down. Great for shareholders , terrible for employees. that’s why I left the moment I fully vested shortly after the acquisition closed.

Henry cared more about the Mighty Ducks than Broadcom imho.

[Coronita]

Broadcom also came in better than expected.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AVGO

2020 guidance also good.

[Author]

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