The post whore thread.

[HoneyBadger]

My new goal is to try and save (and invest) 50% of my income. So far it's MUCH easier than I ever imagined it would be.

EDIT: The cutting back spending part is easier I mean.

That's a gutsy goal. I'll be able to hit 15% in a few months.

[Irving]

I don't see any reason why we can't live off of $3,000 a month (not including what I pay on the mortgage). No car payment and no debt. Shouldn't be a problem except for the mental obstacles, which is the main problem that EVERYONE has with finances.

[Great-Kazoo]

ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT. Either talk about reloading or STFU

[HoneyBadger]

I don't see any reason why we can't live off of $3,000 a month (not including what I pay on the mortgage). No car payment and no debt. Shouldn't be a problem except for the mental obstacles, which is the main problem that EVERYONE has with finances.

Yeah, that's pretty good. You're making good money and that helps a lot. Our biggest problem is our expenses. Cost of living is stupid expensive here. Utility bills on a house that is 50% as big as our CO Springs house are usually 250-350% higher here. Food is more expensive. Gas is more expensive. Taxes are stupid high. Mortgage on tiny house is high. I'm beginning to regret buying a house here. It was a pretty emotional decision, and probably not a wise one.

[HoneyBadger]

ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT. Either talk about reloading or STFU

Kazoo, eat a snickers.

[HoneyBadger]

Irv, next time you see Kazoo, steal his leg.

[Irving]

I'm listening to the Dave Ramsey thing right now. So far, just the fact that Ramsey has a product/fund of his own, colors his opinions in a way that make me less likely to take his advice.

[HoneyBadger]

I'm listening to the Dave Ramsey thing right now. So far, just the fact that Ramsey has a product/fund of his own, colors his opinions in a way that make me less likely to take his advice.

He has a fund of his own?? News to me.

[wyome]

Putting 16% of my pay away every month....hope to get that to 20% soon....

[Irving]

Found the show:
https://www.mixcloud.com/thedaverams...-about-saving/
Scroll down and fast forward to 10:40 and his response to the question goes until about 19:55

Yeah, I'm not at all convinced. Ramsey says that the three important points are 1) Actually investing money, 2) the rate of return, and 3) fees. He's putting fees last and saying they are least important with respect to the first two. He glosses right over the fact that fees directly affect the rate of return. In fact, there will be fees regardless of if there is any positive return at all. He goes on to try and vilify people that question high fees as being anti-capitalist (which is completely BS*), then goes on to try and convince the caller that a fund with a front-loaded commission fee of 5% can actually be cheaper than an average 2% maintenance fee. During that whole time, all I could think about is how whatever the performance of your fund, you'd lose 2-5% of the return. He never even really discounts the video because he admits that "a large amount of mutual funds under perform the market, but there are plenty that do better." Okay that's fine, but what are those percentages, and how would you know which funds will perform better than the market until it's too late? The video (and other sources I've been reading) says that 80% of actively managed funds under perform the market. Ramsey doesn't directly dispute that figure, but if those numbers are true, and you don't find out until the end of the year how your fund did, then what is the reason to attempt to beat the market when you have an 80% chance of losing? I believe it all has to do with human psychology where everyone thinks that if they hand the reins over to an "expert" that they'll be okay. On top of all that, the fund manager takes a commission out of YOUR investment every time the fund is "adjusted" (stocks bought/sold). This allows the fund manager to constantly pay themselves commissions out of your money under the guise of "adjusting" the fund for your best interest. But who's really making the guaranteed money here?

For what it's worth, the important part of the PBS video (which I just watched in its entirety) is from 20 minutes to about 40 minutes. The rest of the video is book-ended with the average sob stories of people who've spent their entire lives not saving any money, so when there are market crashes (which every one knows are coming), it completely wipes them out because they had no other savings.

I keep running into people talking about the Vanguard index funds and it really seems to be a fan favorite of the personal finance and early retirement bloggers. One guy even openly talks about how people who first come to his blog think he is just advertising for Vanguard. For others reading this discussion, the idea behind the Vanguard index fund is that the fund has all the stocks in the S&P 500 so the performance mirrors the market, which over the long run, has continued an upward trend since the beginning of its existence. The index fund has low fees because there is no buying and selling of stocks to try and beat the S&P500 because you already own all of those stocks. It's really a buy and hold method that counts investing for the long term, holding on during the ups and downs, and relying on the historical trend of market growth over time.

One interesting thing to note is that the argument for index funds, and against mutual funds is that EVERY mutual fund contains the small print warning of "past performance does not guaranty future performance." So the pro-index people will point out that data shows over the last 25 years (since index funds were created) that only 20% of mutual funds and active fund managers are able to out perform the market as a whole every year, and while a manager or fund may out perform the market one year, there is no guaranty that they will the next year. All while at the same time pointing to the historical graph of the market overall with a very strong upward trend over all of history. The answer is of course that mutual funds don't have all the companies, so just like trying to hand pick stocks, if you were to buy stock in Joe's Discount CFL Bulbs, and the company goes under, you stand to lose 100% of your investment. There is no bounce back because the company is done and the historical time line has ended. Whereas by owning all the stocks in the market, while at times the stock price value WILL drop with the market crashes, the market as a whole doesn't cease to exist and has shown time and time again that it will recover. In addition to that, if the market ever does crash to the point that it is no longer recoverable, then none of your choices will have mattered anyway. That of course is why people deal in precious metals as well. One could argue that if the stock market crashes, metals won't be worth much anymore either. I'm not going to take that position though, because I just don't know. It's no wonder that the early retirement bloggers are all suggesting that compound gains be married to learning to greatly reduce spending habits, because that insulates you from temporary market crashes. If you are only living off of 20% of your income and saving and investing the other 80% (this is actually possible and there are plenty of examples of people who do this and thrive), and then the market has a big crash (which it will) and you temporarily lose 60% of your investments, you don't have to panic as much because the reality is that you're still living off of only 20% of your total income. If you happen to lose your job at the same time, how difficult would it be to find a job at 80% lower income to keep you alive in the mean time? No need to walk away from a mortgage you can't afford or jump off a bridge because your nest egg took a hit.

*I don't like drinking in bars and restaurants. While I may not be able to recreate my favorite restaurant meal at home, and can stomach paying a premium for a meal prepared by someone else, the liquor store sells the EXACT same alcohol as the bar/restaurant for as little as 1/6th of the price. Since there is no benefit of me paying $6 for a bottle of beer at a bar, when I can get that exact same beer for less than $1, I just don't do it. I'm not against the price that bars/restaurants charge for alcohol, I've just made the personal decision to opt out of that. I personally think it's great how much of a profit margin bars make on alcohol. I think the person who invented "table service" is damn genius to get idiots to pay that much for alcohol. I just won't pay it. This is the same argument against fees in mutual fund packages. If fund managers set up a fee schedule and people are willing to pay those fees, then more power to them. It doesn't mean you're a liberal who hates America (as Dave Ramsey suggests) just because you seek to avoid fees.


Finally, I can't contribute much to the reloading discussion because I haven't been paid since the end of last month while waiting for this new job to start, and I still have a tiny amount of consumer debt. Once that all clears up, I'll allow myself to spend, as little as possible, on some projectiles to rebuild my stash for competition this year. In fact, a little bird told me that someone on here is sitting on 12k .223 projectiles they may be willing to let go. I think I'll look into that when the time comes.