Anyone else Invest?
 

what's your strategy? :)

Buy low sell high.

ok, you can also sell high and buy low:)

Takes money to make money.

oh yeah, and to lose money lol:)

you hit the nail on the head, have to start with savings...

If I had the money, real estate is where it's at. Or rather, where it WAS at. 3-4 years ago, you could buy houses for dirt cheap. Maybe spend 10-20 grand to fix them up, sit on em for a short while, and ride the prices going back up. Could sell it today for 20-30% profit depending on when you bought. The place I'm in now I bought in October of last year. Without doing anything to it (based solely on address), the estimated value has gone up 12%. .....I wish I had more money to play with real estate instead of like... needing a place to live. haha. The phrase "the rich get richer" really is true.

Invest at a Blackjack table at your local casino. Just stick with your basic strategy and you are golden. Remember, you make more money if you make larger bet, I mean larger investment.

I made 1 investment in college and it sure as hell wasn't graduating. It has more than paid off.

OPM: Other Peoples Money

Become a Pimp.


Profit.

Peer to peer lender here. It's not FDIC or anything, but the returns aren't bad at all!

I listen to Warren Buffet. He is an awesome business man. You don't need to know the ins and outs of something, just understand that it's important or not important. That's why he invested in the rail industry. Technology has made it "profitable" again.

High volume breakouts

Long term low risk diversified investments. You won't get rich quick but you also won't get poor quick.

momo? :)

I inherited about 2 grand worth of one of Minnesota's big power companies (Xcel Energy) when my grandpa died about 15 years ago. It's worth about 10 times that today (~22k) using simple dividend reinvestment. I haven't done anything but just let it sit and make money. It's not much, but I've also invested zero more dollars into over that 15 years.

the technical term I believe is "leverage." be careful with that...:)

You could also buy on margin

You need to go read / listen to buffet a LOT more.

Your 12% (if real - estimated value don't mean jack) is really 6% after commission.

And if you bought a house 3-4 years ago, what would you do with it while letting it ride? That's a lot of carrying cost (about $60k for a inexpensive house under $200k). Rent it out? Could you be in the black in yuour market? Could you afford to sit by if you couldn't find tenants for 6 months (happened to me last year)? What if the heat or ac went out (that's $6k)? Do you know what's required to evict someone?

Real estate can certainly be a good investment, but it ain't the piece of cake you seem to think it is, even if it can be easy for short periods of time (like the last real estate boom had everyone thinking they were a real estate genius). Same applies for the market.

margin, leverage...tomato...tomato :)

Only in real estate these days. The market is too time intensive and I feel like I'm gambling (at least I know real estate and I'm in the industry).

Real estate is, and always will be the best investment. So long as you have the financial means to ride out the low lows, you will eventually always come out on top. Not to mention, it's one if the only tangible investment you can leverage to invest more (the golden key to investments).

Exactly. All it takes is money.

Regardless, I don't, nor will I have the money to do any kind of ventures like that. I'm more worried about paying the mortgage I have now and dancing at the fact that I bought near the bottom of the market and locked in a very nice 3.25% rate.

No, it doesn't. That attitude will get you losing money quickly once you get some. Again, look at the last boom and bust.

Actually, the last bust was more of a result of people never having any money...credit...but no money.

But they were getting money... If all it took was money, they would have been fine. But it takes a lot more than that.

BTW, when you don't know what you're doing, credit is way better than cash... You screw up, you wreck your credit, but you lose other peoples' money... ;)

That was/is exactly the problem. People with money didn't know what to do with it or who to trust it to, and people without money were given free access to spend, spend, spend on the former's dime. Unfortunately, those without the money were seduced to spend more than they actually could ever fathom, and (not surprisingly) faultered.

Ah damn this screwy economy :/

Buy Silver!
 

Buy silver. If the price goes up by more. If the price goes down by a lot more. When you retire sell it all at the top of the Market.:w00t:

Missed this, but no, real estate is not always the best investment. The historic returns are quite low (historically, homes appreciate at about inflation, or inflation + 1-2%, depending on how you track it). and it does NOT always provide a positive return if you can ride it out (not in any meaningful term) - I'm looking at you, Detroit...

15% of your income into mutual funds.....gets your hands into a lot of companies, tend to see about a 8%-12% growth compounded over the long haul (20-30 years). I'm another one for safe investments, diversification, and keeping the $$ in for a long time.

Great thread by the way!

Not even many of the typical BRZ posters would admit that.

1. Save EARLY in one's life or as soon as you start obtaining income, as mentioned already - 15% of gross income.
2. Make FULL use of 401K programs or similar programs if available.
3. Always have enuf cash to last for three months.
4. Have a financial advisor that is "fee-based" and not commission based (makes money on what they can SELL to you and not what might be best for you - just for them such as whole life insurance, annuities, real estate investment trusts (REITs). IOW, don't buy this stuff but if you do it should be a relatively SMALL percentage of your investments.
5. Read Read, Read.
6. Investment strategy: DIVERSIFICATION.
7. Have a personal budget and follow it.
8. If you follow all of the above advice you will be a millionaire or multimillionaire by the time you retire.

This is the same a Buy Low, Sell High. The only problem is too much of one thing and the low will be at the time when one needs the CASH the most.

This is what REALTORS are ALWAYS saying. WHY?: Because that is how they make THEIR money.

I have a friend who is a financial advisor for Morgan Stanley. He handles all my investments which are mostly in mutual funds.

I'm not a Realtor. Far from it. I work for a commercial real estate investment firm.

I never said to invest in residential (which is where you are getting your numbers from). Start small (perhaps residential to gain you enough short term capital), but eventually start purchasing commercial/industrial.

I have an IRA I picked up earlier this year because I was going to use money I had saved up to pay on student loans but my dad suggested I put it in an IRA instead, claim it on last year's taxes and collect the tax break. It was effective, doubled my tax return and now I have some money in for retirement already. As far as my investment strategy, I just looked at Fidelity five star picks and picked high-yield mutual funds.

commercial real estate does have better historic returns - closer to stocks, but still lower; the benefit over stocks is obviously you generally have more income coming in and you generally are able to better leverage your investment.

it has some drawbacks as well though- much, much less liquid than stocks (and residential real estate), vacancies tend to last longer, and vacancies tend to happen when the economy is down (whereas residential does well).

the short of it is that there is NOTHING that can simply be declared "always ... the best investment."