What do you consider your savvy or wise investments?

[Anonymous]

Posters keep mentioning their (or other peoples) wise or savvy investments. Can you share what type of investments these might be and how did you choose or find out about them? Thank you, signed "everything I invest in seems to go south"

[Anonymous]

Number one: Not counting on money you did not earn by blood sweat and/or tears yourself, with your own hands. ie: not counting other peoples pennies and thinking that somehow, some way, in your own f*cked up world, it is owed to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


Number one: Not counting on money you did not earn by blood sweat and/or tears yourself, with your own hands. ie: not counting other peoples pennies and thinking that somehow, some way, in your own f*cked up world, it is owed to you.

Hmmm. That is not where I'm coming from. My guess is that you don't put your earnings under the mattress knowing that it will lose value to inflation.

[Anonymous]

I don't think that any one investment is worth pursuing. Beware of anyone who tells you to put your money into one thing, whether it is gold or tech stocks or rental properties or Google or a tiny recycling company with a ticker and a cool story. That is speculation, and even if you are right once, your portfolio will probably be wrong in a few years.



Balance is the savviest thing that you can have in a portfolio. That usually means a certain amount of stocks, bonds, and short term investments for your immediate needs. It may include some exposure to real estate. It should be a mix o small and large cap, and some international. Some parts of your portfolio will be higher or lower risk, and you need to decide how much risk to take depending on the years to your retirement.

One way to create a diversified portfolio is to use low cost index funds. In this way you go up with the market and aren't picking individual stocks or sectors. And because they are index funds, they are low cost and so less of your money goes to the fund managers.

I haven't studied this article in detail, but it is a start on understanding how you would do this.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5088262_build-portfolio-investing-index-funds.html

[Anonymous]

Diversify, diversify. Also, get yourself a good economic advisor. I'm pretty educated and follow finance, but I don't have time to really follow the markets and do my day job, etc. What is a "savvy investment" changes constantly. Gold was a really savvy investment a couple of years ago. Not so much, now. Our investments are very diversified, but we change focus slightly about twice a year, based our the advice of our money manager. We've had some losses when the market has crashed, but we've more than recovered. To be honest, nobody has the "magic ticket" right now.

[Anonymous]

Agree. A few years ago I had money in a China ETF, which did well (and likely is still doing well), but I've sold it and put the money into more general emerging markets and international funds because I don't trust how the Chinese are manipulating their financial regime - perhaps I sold too early, but as a lay person I don't have time to follow things so closely that I can time things as well as an expert (who can also get timing wrong). I also put some of my retirement funds into a dividend ETF a few years ago, and that has helped with riding out the recession. I have had small cap and micro cap ETFs for awhile and am hoping that diversification will pay off in terms of good growth when we finally see a recovery.

All in all, I'm doing fine and likely much better than others, but like pp said I don't have time to follow things closely, and I chose not to use a financial advisor, so my investments aren't super savvy, more like good enough.

FWIW, I think some people on this board who claim they did well with "savvy investments" really just got lucky.

[Anonymous]

Buy and hold mutual funds and ETFs.

[Anonymous]

We did really well with our "savvy" investments until they became not so savvy anymore and we did not get out of them in time. So there's that to consider.

The only thing I have done really well with over the long haul is keeping all of my TSP invested the C & S funds.

[Anonymous]

http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/11/why-most-investors-dont-measure-returns-correctly/#more-49791

[Anonymous]

I bought a horse. Expensive but I really enjoy it, which is more than I can say for most of my friends' investments which bring them no joy whatsoever, and have also lost significant amounts of money.

[Anonymous]

Invest early (as in with your first job out of college, or even younger for those who are so fortunate) and regularly.

[Anonymous]

pay yourself first

[Anonymous]

My best investment was buying a house in Bethesda when it was a sleepy town and not super upscale like it is today.

[Anonymous]

OP asked about specific types of investments and how to choose them. "Invest early" isn't really responsive (or even possible if, like some of us, "early" is already over!). Does anyone have anything more concrete, like PP who suggested international/emerging markets ETFs?

[Anonymous]

On another thread I remember the "gold" poster. This person apparently invests in gold and is doing better renting a house and ivesting in gold than anyone else on DCUM. HA!