Oh great! Tomorrow we'll be down 300 points.....


The key to INVESTING --- is patience.... and understanding... "timing" makes it fun because it makes you feel better.... but over the years it's just not very important. You've heard me preach enough -- just buy good stuff -- that pay dividends - re-invest the dividends (if you're not living off them like I do) and kick back. Not really much different than buying a nice house in a good neighborhood and letting the renter pay the mortgage for you. Sure - they'll be poo days - like when the renter calls and says "X" is leaking --- or the bad tenant that moves out in the middle of the night.... The market has those same poo times... but eventually things go your way.

As you know - I have real estate holdings - residential and commercial... stocks... mortgage backed paper.... So I'm all for being diversified. :relax:

Yes sir, definitely a long term play for me. Just another way to put my money to work vs. sit in my bank account with mold growing on it. What motivated me is investing 15% of my gross income every year. I needed another avenue on top of the traditional retirement accounts. I do like the fact that stocks are liquid. Retirement accounts are off limits and real estate is far from liquid. I am following Dave Ramsey's baby steps as I'm one of his ELP's and have enjoyed his books. http://www.daveramsey.com/new/baby-steps/ It's a solid foundation to become financially independent.

I still have aspirations to pick up a few more properties but the market is changing and the timing isn't right to pick up number 3. It's looking like 6-12months. I'll keep saving and start whacking down the principal on my primary and investment properties.

This is one step that most miss in retirement planning... and it's a super important step! It's not just how much you have for retirement -- it's about how much you NEED to retire... and if all you have to do is buy groceries and pay the light bill -- then you don't need much.

Now -- couple "lowering the needs" --- and RAISING the cash flow (paid off rental income property) and now you can go racin'! And take the misses to Hawaii... and that's what we're shootin' for!!



Healthy lifestyle --- and financial health!

I've been adding enough principal to the payments on the investments to pay them off in 18 or less. (All funded by the tenant:hapdance: ) I've also been adding a small amount to the primary for quite some time. I want to step it up and have it free and clear by 50 or sooner.

That's my goal, not to owe anybody a dime. I'm definitely the tortoise and don't have the cojones to play the stock market vs. free and clear property. I'll have plenty to play with in the market when I don't have debts. :thumbsup:

I get that..... but just use this "visualization" to help you get your head around the differences. BTW -- I've used my earnings/profits from STOCKS to invest/diversify into real estate not the other way around. Just say'n'.



http://i919.photobucket.com/albums/a...os/file-43.jpg

Boo... The "little man on Wall Street" seen your buy yesterday. and i think i even heard him yell out this morning "bring the market down boys! I dont think this guys got the guts to stick it out!"

:poke: :poke:

Having trouble making any sense of that graph. Land bought for $100 in 1928 would be worth a whole big enchilada today. I've seen land in Vegas bought for 5k in the 70's that is worth over $500,000.

I can't defend the chart ---- I just googled "Real estate vs stocks" and that's what came up. I know that stocks have always been ahead of both real estate and bonds.... Housing is usually quoted as a 4% annualized gain -- Stocks usually are around 9% ---- and those differences over time are just gigantic.


Either way --- as long as a guy is salting away dough that is earning him money ---- I'm good with it!

Apple (aapl)
 

So as usual --- here's the way the market works.


The minute I posted about Apple (AAPL) being in suck territory year to date.... it's been up every day since. :tiptoe: :D


Adrienne (23 years old) is in line somewhere at an Apple store in Minneapolis as we speak... our family has 4 iPhones and 2 of them are available for upgrading... so you know we're ordering 2 "RIGHT NOW" --- > Mom and Adrienne! Dad can go suck wind. :smiley_smack:

I think the chart represents the average of the asset class as a whole. If you cherry pick one example of a piece of real estate that you know had a higher return, there are also examples of stocks that have had much higher returns than indicated on the chart.

A few years back I had done some research on long terms returns for stocks vs. real estate. The data that I found at that time indicated real estate and stocks have had pretty similar returns over the long term, with real estate having a slight edge. The figures I remember were close to 9% to 10% per year.