How long did you finance for?

exactly what I just told him... these are good times.

I’m guessing people who think 7-10% is a lot don’t have any investment strategy.

 

Dealers are screwing themselves with these longer term vehicle loans. They are great for those who keep their vehicles. Painful for those who don't. My own limit is 36 months (IF the rates are low). Any longer than that and I pass. So far so good.

 

That’s right, if you can’t buy it in cash you technically can’t afford it. What’s crazy is just look at things like cell phones or even just about every other website that offers financing through affirm. You can literally finance anything. And people wonder why everything inflates so bad, we’re all competing with fake money...

 

26k financed over 60 months at 2.5%. Goal/plan is pay it off in 48 or less.

 

yes, with Toyota. Drove to Indiana the day the dealership could first open after Covid in May. I was driving a 20 year old 2wd Tundra for years and had always wanted a Tacoma. First time I had ever seen Tacoma’s at 0% so I pulled the trigger

 

My investment in Six flags has gone up 103% in about 5 months. When it was up 75% I sold 50% of my initial investment and put that money into other stocks and let the rest ride.

This is just an example from my non retirement trading account. Which was up 38.72% last year.

My 401K was up 21% in 2020.

If you are serious about wanting to invest and make more than 10%, it's really not that hard.
I would open a brokerage account and buy 5 stocks/funds in 5 different sectors.
Sector 1 - Tech
Sector 2 - buy a REIT (real estate investment trust)
Sector 3 - e commerce
Sector 4. - consumer spending (pick something you like and buy from) Lowes or maybe a growing fast food chain
Sector 5 - find a dividend paying stock with a long history of growth and raising their dividend

This is just a quick example, but it's really not hard to make more than 10%. I would avoid trendy trades and get rich quick ideas like shorting or going long on gamestop until you have more experience.

 

20 in one year sure, 10% every year is a bit tougher.

 

The most irresponsible way possible!

 

69 months at 6.9%

 

I think Dave’s plan is great. You can’t go wrong and frankly it’s a long term safe strategy for anyone who just wants a plan to follow. I know people like Peter Schiff or other investors have a completely different strategy that obviously works too. I agree with Dave on credit cards, I think they’re stupid and frankly how much you have to spend to get any of the perks is just silly. I’ll also recognize that not having a credit score or credit card these days would be highly annoying since that’s all businesses care about. What’s sad is everything revolves around that damn credit score and frankly it’s a a joke. I listen to his show daily just for motivation and focus, but I’m also “Davish” and don’t follow everything he suggests either. I just wish Americans in general would just be a little more in tune with their spending and debt. Money fascinates me because peoples success, habits and decisions just interest me from an outsider looking in.

 

84 months; zero down, of course.

 

Don't invest is a REIT right now, that's just bad advice. A number of places closed during the pandemic and eviction moratoriums. IMO commercial real estate is heading for the toilet in some regions. There's one in my hometown called The River and i've heard reports that it's now half empty. They spent millions build this out years ago and there are many more like it.

Amazon-pandemic-mandated closures-eviction moratoriums = bad news for REITs

 

My dad retired 10 years ago. He has averaged over 20% returns every year since retiring. He wishes he would have retired years sooner than 62 as he ha

These 6 month returns don't lie. But this is just a minor part of my overall investments. Like Buffett says, buy when others are scared. Or as my dad would say. " that REIT will pay me over 5% dividend just to wait for it to go back up"

 

There's nothing is normal in the markets right now, trade at your own risk. There's people making paper gains for sure, but when you start seeing people run up stuff like REITs, cruise lines, airlines and retailers with dead business models there's something wrong. I thing recency bias is going to be a cruel bitch if reality shows up. The levels of private, corporate and public debt are at all time highs and this doesn't bode well for the future. The crazy part is the jobless claims have been sky high since the start of this pandemic, but people have their blinders on.

It's not all bad, because when this bubble pops there will be opportunities for people who kept their powder dry.

 

This is a long post, I wrote out the whole story figuring it might help some of the guys in their 20’s realize what’s possible and what mistakes to avoid.

I spent most of my 30’s digging out of the $118K hole I dug in my 20’s, and my wife had $70K worth of student loans from law school. Most of my hole was my offroad truck, tools, guns, restaurants 3-4 nights per week, $5 Starbucks multiple times per day, new trucks every 2 years...dumb shit. Unfortunately my dad, trying to help, enabled me to get into more debt than I could’ve on my own. He was taking on my debt on his low interest balance transfer credit cards, so I never stopped spending. On my own I probably would’ve tapped out at $50-60K in debt, instead I was able to double it while making $28K per year. When I hit 30 everything was finally firing on all cylinders, my wife was done with law school and working her first baby lawyer job, I started a new career making $48K plus $10K in bonus, and we sold a home and netted $40K in profit. I used the $40K to pay my dad the $15K in cash I owed him, $5K for a car trailer I’d been lusting after for my Bronco, and sent $20K to credit cards. The remaining ~$82K looked like it was going to take me 8-9 years to pay off, call it a debt snowball if you want, but I wasn’t all in. In 2008 when George Bush signed the bankruptcy legislation that allowed the credit card companies to change their terms. The monthly minimum payments on the 4% balance transfers I had went from 1.5% of the balance monthly to 5% of the balance monthly to keep the 4% rate, or adjust the rate to 13% and keep the 1.5% payment. The first month my minimum payments went from the $1300 I was sending to $5100. I thought I was screwed, but instead I buckled down, sold some toys, ate beans and rice, etc. and was able to keep up with it. Now I was all in. The balance and monthly payments dropped pretty fast, so if I could make it through the first 6 months I could settle in at paying $1850 per month. As a result I was credit debt free in 5 years instead of 8-9 years, thanks George Bush. In hindsight a bankruptcy probably would’ve been the smarter play, but my pride wouldn’t let me bitch out like that. I never heard Dave Ramsey until I was done with my debt, but basically I did the same thing except we still bought and drove decent newer cars. Unfortunately I let up on the intensity and allowed my spending to eat up some of the additional money I had been sending to debt, but I have a bunch of cool guns to show for it. My wife paid her 1.9% interest student loans off in 2015, 10 years after graduation. I stayed out of debt and saved enough to put $75K down on a home between 2012 and 2016. I had to do a 401K loan for $25K to finance the rest of the down payment and fees on the house, paid that off in 2 years.

When I started the new career at 30 I started investing, slowly. I knew enough to at least collect the company match on the 401K, but I figured paying the debt was a bigger demand than additional investing. After I finished my debt I pushed the investing to 10%, then 15%, then maxing my 401K, then maxing Roth 401K from 2011 to 2019. In the meantime I spent $465K on a house with 20% down and started paying off cars quicker than the loan terms. I’m always going to feel like I’m behind the ball on investing, I’m targeting 62-65 for retirement. My house in AZ is now a rental, so I’m planning on that being either retirement income or a nest egg, it will be paid off when I’m 59 (no point in accelerating payments on a 15 year 2.25% mortgage). I’m planning on buying another home in Massachusetts in the next few years, that also needs to get paid off before I could retire. At 44 now I need to step up my retirement savings beyond maxing out the Roth 401K and the little extra I’m doing. I have a couple buddy’s who are focused on retiring at 55 no matter what. I honestly feel like they are limiting themselves both personally and professionally. One of them left a career in tech to become a first responder because of the pension, the other isn’t interested in advancing up the corporate ladder because his current position and pension will meet his retirement goal. I want to keep growing and advancing to the end.

My role models (parents) are an example of what not to do. They are 79 with two mortgages that their retirement savings, social security, and pensions can pay, but they don’t have much extra. I will not have any pension, just savings and maybe social security. They keep refinancing both houses every few years and taking cash out to pay other debts or reduce their monthly outlay when the rates drop. Both of their houses are on fresh 30 year mortgages in 2020, Dad pulled $65K out of one to pay off a long term loan against a retirement account. They are just trying to get by to the finish line (death). I refuse to be in debt when I retire. Even now, my dad thinks I’m nuts for paying off loans quickly rather than using the low interest loans. Someone on here said “it drives better when it’s paid for”, amen fucking right!

As a biproduct of financial responsibility I basically had very little in my life beyond work. I was working a good job, but it required 40+ weeks of travel per year. I didn’t have much fun in my 30’s and I was an absentee husband much of the time. I realized that YOLO is something that needs to be factored in. I can be as responsible as I want, but if I die of cancer at 50 I needed to have some fun along the way. That is what lead me to spend $73K on my 2020 Raptor, I could afford it and I wanted to have some fun. A month after I bought it I had a great opportunity to start a different career. The new career involved zero travel, but required moving from AZ to MA and uprooting my wife’s legal career. I didn’t hesitate. I sold off the Raptor with 1100 miles on it, as well as my Bronco and a bunch of other “things” that were dictating how and where I lived. I’ve been here at the new job since October 2020, my wife was able to move out first of the year, and things are good. It’s awesome seeing my wife daily, sitting down for meals together, maybe watching something after dinner. I leased the Tacoma as a general around town truck we can also take on the beach here. I’ll be buying a boat for $60-90K in the next 1-2 years as we live 5 minutes from the ocean. The name of the boat will have Raptor in it, probably in the same font as the truck.

One of those two houses my folks keep refinancing is here, so that is where we’re living. My folks won’t let me pay the mortgage or rent, and won’t sell me the house, so I’m putting $20K in renovations into the house for 2021. With our house in AZ rented our bills are very low, we have utilities and the Tacoma lease payment. It’s a perfect time to reset my financial priorities to be able to retire on my schedule while still having some fun along the way.

 

I bench 350! Booya!

 

I don't disagree with you. But I tend to invest all the time (keeping 15-25% in cash most the time for buying opportunities) and set 5-10% stop loss sell orders on riskier investments as a CYA.

 

so glad I am not the only one!

 

Ehhhhhhhh... student loans are different. While I don't have any, I don't think high schools should let student loan representatives in to sell debt to a 17-year-old. Most don't understand any of the terms lol. Lots of my friends took them out without understanding how they work and are still dealing with paying them off. Worst part is most of them could have avoided them altogether.

Edit: Perhaps we should educate younger folk more versus outright blame them for taking on lots of debt at a young age.