What was your best financial investment? Worst? Not a Bot thread.

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NowYou'rePlayingWithPower

NowYou'rePlayingWithPower

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Best:
I've bought and held substantial quantities of AMD (the bulk of which around $2/share) and to a lesser degree Nvidia and Intel for almost two decades.

Worst:
Not at a loss, but I was mining bitcoin back when you could do it on a laptop and giving them away on nerd forums as common as reddit gold.
When they started becoming valuable I was mining them with GPUs and ASICs and sold them all around $170 each, because I thought people were insane/stupid for paying that.

A friend of mine was trying to convince me to invest into flipping houses. In Flint. Michigan. No thanks. They were literally buying houses for under $10k putting in the hundreds or thousands of hours to fix them up and were on the market for years in the $20k's. Don't be like my friend.

Any good life altering flips or losses for y'all? Besides divorces?:ROFLMAO: Guitar? Classic car? Real estate?
 
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So far, probably college. I don't think I'm net positive yet, but it's started to pay off.
 
learned my lessons the hard way during the dotcom bubble. though I did manage to become an accredited investor on my own in my 30s.

since then, I've taken a slow and steady approach that's working well enough; getting closer to my planned early retirement I'm moving some from growth to income.

plan is to stay in or below the 24% bracket in retirement; then finding ways to minimize the impact of coerced RMDs. Since mid-July 2024 I'm convinced we've entered the correction recession; if the Fed cuts interest rates by 50 basis points it may stop the freefall, not confident in the Fed or any incoming administration. Good time to be buying, but I'm only buying music gear for now, see how this roller coaster goes heading into Q4.

If any of these ruling parasites up for election here said one of their goals was to eliminate RMDs and taxing social security, I'd vote for them. :yes:


edit: I'm still up for the year, even with the losses since mid-July, but I can see this being a loss year for the markets, and me.
 
rsm said:
learned my lessons the hard way during the dotcom bubble. though I did manage to become an accredited investor on my own in my 30s.

since then, I've taken a slow and steady approach that's working well enough; getting closer to my planned early retirement I'm moving some from growth to income.

plan is to stay in or below the 24% bracket in retirement; then finding ways to minimize the impact of coerced RMDs. Since mid-July 2024 I'm convinced we've entered the correction recession; if the Fed cuts interest rates by 50 basis points it may stop the freefall, not confident in the Fed or any incoming administration. Good time to be buying, but I'm only buying music gear for now, see how this roller coaster goes heading into Q4.

If any of these ruling parasites up for election here said one of their goals was to eliminate RMDs and taxing social security, I'd vote for them. :yes:


edit: I'm still up for the year, even with the losses since mid-July, but I can see this being a loss year for the markets, and me.
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You know you don’t have to pay federal taxes on the first 100k or so if you live outside the US. Not sure how that applies to retirement or investment accounts and don’t take my word for anything I’m not a pro. But might come in handy if you plan to be on a boat in the Caribbean or wherever. What are you thinking about in moving from growth to income?
 
acceptance said:
You know you don’t have to pay federal taxes on the first 100k or so if you live outside the US. Might come in handy if you plan to be on a boat in the Caribbean or wherever. What are you thinking about in moving from growth to income?
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In retirement I plan to live off investment income / growth; so not sure if that first $100K rule applies, or it just applies to earned income?

I have a set of income generating ETFs I've owned for several years, I'm slowly converting some of my portfolio to these ETFs. Goal is to have at least half of my base retirement living income from dividend income.

For years I've been tracking my change in market value, averages per month, year, YoY, across many years, etc., with a goal to have enough to live in retirement with 3% or less of my average annual change in market value; leaving 97% to reinvest...

...and why my growing main concern is hitting RMDs with too much deferred, pushing me into the highest tax bracket and paying way too much in taxes on money I didn't need to withdraw. In order to offset future RMDs, I'd have to withdraw more per year in retirement before RMD starts, also putting me in higher (likely highest) tax brackets again.

I've been through countless RMD minimization models, and there's no easy way to avoid higher taxes unless RMD is eliminated.
 
rsm said:
In retirement I plan to live off investment income / growth; so not sure if that first $100K rule applies, or it just applies to earned income?

I have a set of income generating ETFs I've owned for several years, I'm slowly converting some of my portfolio to these ETFs. Goal is to have at least half of my base retirement living income from dividend income.

For years I've been tracking my change in market value, averages per month, year, YoY, across many years, etc., with a goal to have enough to live in retirement with 3% or less of my average annual change in market value; leaving 97% to reinvest...

...and why my growing main concern is hitting RMDs with too much deferred, pushing me into the highest tax bracket and paying way too much in taxes on money I didn't need to withdraw. In order to offset future RMDs, I'd have to withdraw more per year in retirement before RMD starts, also putting me in higher (likely highest) tax brackets again.

I've been through countless RMD minimization models, and there's no easy way to avoid higher taxes unless RMD is eliminated.
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I would think if the investment accounts are foreign then it would apply but you’d have to ask a pro. I also have no idea about retirement accounts and issues.

What income ETFs do you like?
 
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acceptance said:
I would think if the investment accounts are foreign then it would apply but you’d have to ask a pro. I also have no idea about retirement accounts and issues.

What income ETFs do you like?
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I have a retirement calculator I use that includes social security, investment income from tax deferred, and earned income, and where the income comes from makes a difference in taxes.

I'm still buying my ETFs, so not in a position to share which ones as it could drive up the prices; there are many ETFs to choose from though, with different sectors, industries, and goals, etc. Took me awhile to find these, compare them and invest due to so many choices.
 
rsm said:
I'm still buying my ETFs, so not in a position to share which ones as it could drive up the prices; there are many ETFs to choose from though, with different sectors, industries, and goals, etc.
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I kinda doubt you have to worry about that here, but what kind of etfs? Dividend? Corporate/gov bond? Short term treasury?
 
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NowYou'rePlayingWithPower said:
A friend of mine was trying to convince me to invest into flipping houses. In Flint. Michigan. No thanks. They were literally buying houses for under $10k putting in the hundreds or thousands of hours to fix them up and were on the market for years in the $20k's. Don't be like my friend.
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I don't have any investments other than my home but flipping a house in St. Pete FL had a bit higher level of profitability than flipping in Flint MI, lol

I see a lot of really nice rural properties but no home or cabin on site so they don't sell. I thought about selling what I got an building small homesteads, staying a few years to beat capital gains, and then flipping it. I think I could reap some good profits buying in the right area, investing in land with water-creek-river-timber or high quality pasture.
 
NowYou'rePlayingWithPower said:
When they started becoming valuable I was mining them with GPUs and ASICs and sold them all around $170 each, because I thought people were insane/stupid for paying that.
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Well if you feel bad there are numerous stories, like the guy that lost a harddrive that would be worth hundreds of millions, or the famous pizza trade that would be valued at like $70M or whatever at todays prices.
 
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acceptance said:
I kinda doubt you have to worry about that here, but what kind of etfs? Dividend? Corporate/gov bond? Short term treasury?
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indexed for different sectors, industries, multi-regions, regions, countries, preferred stock, broad-based income securities, rare earths,/mining, oil/gas, forex; I have a diversified set of ETFs to cover various scenarios; usually some are up, others down and vice versa.

no bonds or treasury based ETFs; and I'm focusing on 6-10 of my favorites to invest more into before I retire.
 
acceptance said:
Well if you feel bad there are numerous stories, like the guy that lost a harddrive that would be worth hundreds of millions, or the famous pizza trade that would be valued at like $70M or whatever at todays prices.
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I don't feel bad. I had thousands of them. I stand by my original statement that people are insane. Even then.
 
Research startups in emerging tech fields that you find interesting. Make a list of 20. Get a linkedin account and cyber stalk everyone connected to the companies. Make a list of the companies you feel most confident in, based on your discoveries. Take the top 3 and invest a modest but decent amount. Forget you invested it.
 
japetus said:
Research startups in emerging tech fields that you find interesting. Make a list of 20. Get a linkedin account and cyber stalk everyone connected to the companies. Make a list of the companies you feel most confident in, based on your discoveries. Take the top 3 and invest a modest but decent amount. Forget you invested it.
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Mostly. I definitely look out for small companies with IPs that are likely to be bought up by larger companies. It's a working strategy. Xilinx was a good one, for example. Though I wouldn't say they were a startup, but the conversion to AMD shares was good if you got in on time.
 
My best financial decision was to max out my yearly 401k contributions. Plus the company I’ve worked for give me an additional $5k match along with 3-5% of my total compensation on a yearly basis. I’ve worked for the same company for 24 years, so I have a lot saved. My wife did as well, but she stayed home with the kids for the past 15 years. Between the two of us, we are really far ahead.

I will admit that my biggest fault has been not contributing a lot to a 529 plan. My daughter was recruited to a private college to play D1 field hockey. With the money they have given (like 40%), I’m still playing $40k a year. That is painful. Student loans suck because our income and savings are a lot, so we were quoted 7%+ interest rates. Fuck that.
 
My wife manages my 401k. She's done really well with it. She is a CPA and a financial advisor. Company match is 5% and I have it maxxed out at 20%. Which is in effect 25% of my income invested. I haven't asked her about it in a while, but last time I did she was averaging somewhere around 21% ROI IIRC.
 
seriously, having a diversified portfolio with a little bit of crypto, some stocks, and a stable savings account has done wonders for me.

My best financial move was investing in skin.land. The trick was finding something that I could manage myself and watch grow over time offers all that plus some cool options to customize your portfolio based on your interests.

Lesson learned: never invest in anything you're not 100% sure about.
 
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