Investment BS Thread - Stocks/Futures/Mutual Funds/Bonds/Commodities/Options/ETFs/401ks/Etc

Not to get political but this is the American way right here. A particular old senator that has a lot of "bros" following him was complaining yesterday that over half of older Americans have no retirement savings and how this was "unfair". Somehow, because those folks chose to use their economic freedom to buy stuff NOW vs have money for themselves later, it's someone else's fault instead of their own. The hilarious thing is that this particular senator loves socialism, yet is annoyed that these folks have no retirement savings. But wait, isn't there a thing called social security? Oh oops, no one is supposed to rely on that, even though that and Medicare take up 65% of the federal budget every year. So it's the government's biggest expense, yet it's not sufficient enough to live off of. Funny how that worked out... but yes let's continue to discount individual responsibility in favor of this silly notion called "collective effort"

 

interesting article about shutdown affecting housing data:
https://wolfstreet.com/2019/01/25/were-flying-with-our-eyes-partially-closed-at-a-turbulent-moment/

 

The government shut down really highlighted a related issue. The news says people are facing eviction, going to food banks, etc. It shows how many people don't even have one month worth of savings, stocks, anything. I don't know how they sleep at night. On the other hand, the people that did have adequate savings got a 1 month paid vacation with no worries.

 

I have a friend that works for the national weather service and he's constantly bitching on twitter about the shutdown and not getting paid.. and I want to be like "dude, do you not have an emergency savings fund?"

But I preach to the choir in this thread.

 

I mean, yes, those people still have to go to work (the essential ones) and yes they won't "get paid for it", but they will get backpay eventually, all of the money they are supposed to be paid for their time worked. You use your emergency fund, gov shutdown ends, you get your FAT paycheck and put what you used back into your emergency fund. It's pretty easy. Either that or you're living beyond your means before you have adequate savings.. not smart

 

I think a lot of it is the liberal media trying (as always) to put Trump in a bad light by finding a few workers to put on the air who will say they have to go to homeless shelters, food banks, whatever.

Don't get me wrong, I feel bad for them. But I think the media is milking it by finding people to say these things.

Most people should be able to make it a few weeks, I mean come on. And if they can't, this might be a good lesson for them.

 

it's crazy to think what some government employees make and claim things like this.. I could go a year without work if i absolutely had to without work and be fine.

some people live out of their means too often. some people will never know the feeling of no personal debt. People owning business is different, but that debt is separate as well so.

 

I do think there are some situations where these things might be true. Sometimes beyond people's control, sometimes living beyond your means. There are probably some cases that are legit.

But I see most of what's on TV as liberal propaganda against President Trump.

 

Predictions for next week?

I say, with a lot of big earnings reports, we move a lot.

3% in either direction (I’m leaning toward positive)

 

Could I go out and buy a third gen today? Why yes I could. Would it be smart given my savings goals and where I'm at with them? No, no it wouldn't.

 

I would be a slightly careful with this, here's why. Because I usually do the same thing.. hate seeing a balance on my credit card but use it almost exclusively, so I pay it as soon as a few transactions go through.

Credit agencies tend to get sent a "snapshot" of your credit card balance to see your activity, instead of your whole statement of transactions. So if you run the card and pay it immediately every time, it will look like $0. You don't want that because you can get dinged for "inactivity". Sometimes I will deliberately leave a slight balance on the card for 3 or so weeks, then when I see a credit score update I'll pay it. Still with plenty of time to pay it off before needing to pay interest (usually interest on a particular month will kick in if not paid for in the next two billing statements, which is well over a month).

I'm honestly surprised some companies are already rolling in with good earnings. I was expecting the opposite given all the macroeconomic pressures. I think perhaps a lowered guidance helped a bit there.

 

Thanks for this, I’ll have to try it and see if my credit score goes up. I have a good score, but it seems to have maxed itself out, never goes up anymore. This might actually be why.

 

this has been my problem for the last 3 months lol. And it's usually because it says I only have like $75 balance. I bet if they saw how much actually goes on my card, they would ding my credit score LOL. I'm a little scared to get that extreme.

 

It’s just my system to pay it daily, part of how I handle my money, might be hard to break the habit but might be necessary.

 

I usually pay it once a week or so. So yeah, I totally understand.

 

We made it boys

 

Which card do you use? I have the Bank of America Travel Rewards or something like that. It has nothing to do with travel like it seems, but when you redeem it uses travel related transactions only (it ends up being a lot of random stuff, a little confusing to explain). It pays you good amounts in credit though, nothing travel related, just money.

 

I have a card with USAA. 1.5% cash back all purchases. No nonsense for me. I didn't want to deal with points or purchase categories.

 

The credit reporting agencies only see what is reported to them by the CC companies, and that is your monthly statement balance. It's what they use to calculate your credit utilization rate, which is a fairly good sized portion of what your credit score is based on. If you pay off your card before the end of the statement cycle, the agencies will only see a $0 statement balance, which makes it appear that you haven't used the card at all. Typically you don't want to use more than 30% of your available credit in any given month, or your score starts to take a hit from it. Just pay your card off after the statement cycle closes and before the payment is "due", and you'll never pay interest and it'll look like you actually use your card to the reporting agencies.

Credit scores are a total game, and if you want your score to increase, you have to actually use credit. So if you don't have any debt like car payments/student loans, and only one or two cards, your score won't continue to increase by much. And if you do have a car/student loan payment, you can expect to see your score drop when you pay it off, because you're "closing" an account. In order to have a super high score you need to have a large number of accounts open with a long history of on-time payments.

 

I think my 6-figure student loans is what is making my score so high lol