I just signed up with LearnVest. They are like mint in that they track all your accounts, but there is also a financial planner service for $300. I have my first call with them this week, so I'm not sure if they are good/bad yet, but it might be something to check out (or for anyone else, for that matter).

Anonymous wrote:The difference is the individual who owns shares of companies are actually investors themselves rather than mindless lemmings siting on the sidelines.

People can become wealthy by investing in the stock market, but you have to be in the market yourself in order to see opportunities when they appear.

Toiling to put a few meager shillings into Vanguard 500 every month will prevent you from being penniless, but it will never make you rich.

My goal is for everyone reading this to eventually become wealthy enough that they nor their children will ever have to worry about money ever again in their lives.

Never allow anyone else to manage your money. No one cares more about your money or your family than you do yourself.

ahem... when you buy shares of a mutual fund that consists of stocks, you are "in the stock market." you sound as if you don't know what "mutual fund" means.

If you own shares in a mutual fund, you directly benefit from the performance of the shares in that fund.

What you are saying would make sense if you were urging people to follow some investment theory or run algorithms and try to get rich by picking stocks that will outpace the market. However, you are advising people to pick tried-and-true blue chip companies. This is absolutely not different at all from someone investing in, say, an S&P index fund -- only if you invest in an index fund, you don't have to worry about which stocks you currently own, which ones you need to swap out, etc. You can invest, turn your mind off from the subject, and get those 10% returns you have mentioned without ever thinking about it.

You talk about putting "meager shillings" into an s&p fund, but you point out that the market historically has returned 10% annually. You then say that by buying individual stocks, people can earn 10% annually. HOW DOES IT NOT MAKE SENSE FOR PEOPLE TO JUST INVEST IN THE MARKET ITSELF IF IT RETURNS 10% ANNUALLY? Why do they have to worry about researching individual stocks, buying them, then hoping they match or exceed the performance of the market (when history has told us they probably won't)? Please explain this.

The difference is the individual who owns shares of companies are actually investors themselves rather than mindless lemmings siting on the sidelines.

People can become wealthy by investing in the stock market, but you have to be in the market yourself in order to see opportunities when they appear.

Toiling to put a few meager shillings into Vanguard 500 every month will prevent you from being penniless, but it will never make you rich.

My goal is for everyone reading this to eventually become wealthy enough that they nor their children will ever have to worry about money ever again in their lives.

Never allow anyone else to manage your money. No one cares more about your money or your family than you do yourself.

again, you are basically saying that people should try to mirror the performance of the stock market by picking their own stocks and managing a portfolio.

why is that better than either (1) buying a mutual fund that tracks the market and charges (the fees on vanguard's S&P fund and total stock market fund are both a whopping 0.05%) or (2) if you have an issue with those oh-so-inflated fees, just buying SPDR shares of these funds?

how on earth are you describing two different things? please explain this. if you are telling me it's because a 0.05% fee is going to eat up all of your gains, don't bother with that.

Anonymous wrote:on what planet will your annualized returns of 6-8% over 30 or so years are going to be completely eaten up by administrative fees, and all you will have left is the principal you invested?

like PP said, invest in a couple broad-based index funds with Vanguard and pay maybe a quarter of a percent (probably less, actually).

Stop trying to sell mutual funds! Stop selling fear! Stop selling the idea people are not smart enough to succeed on their own.

1. Stock market returns over long periods of time is 10% gains. This includes usual up years like 2013 and usual down years like 2009.

2. With 10% returns Investing dividends according to the mathematical law of 72, the value of an individual's investments will double in 7.2 years.

3. There are zero administrative fees for having a brokerage account and dividends are reinvest in the same companies free of charge.

Individual investing is not very difficult. Anyone can be successful investing in the stock market. Often times I talk with guys abouts sports. I like sports and I've played sports. I keep track of whose I the playoffs and I have my own opinions about whose going to win the Super Bowl, etc. But, I'm not very good at keeping track of exactly what players are playing for whom. On the over hand, I often talk to guys who know a ton of statics about many teams, their rosters, histories, where former players are playing now, etc. These guys are walking sports encyclopedias; clearly very smart people with excellent abilities of recall, yet many of these individuals are afraid to invest in the stock market when they clearly have the sense of recall and reasoning power to make themselves wealthy investors.

Having the skill set that would allow an individual to assemble a great sports team is the exact same skill set that would allow an individual to assemble a great basket of shares of stocks in companies which over time would make them and their families independently wealthy. Yet, most are fearful to do so; it's strange and sad that intelligent people are afraid to even try to succeed at the game of creating wealth.


Never allow anyone else manage your money. No one cares more about your money and your family than you do yourself.

on what planet will your annualized returns of 6-8% over 30 or so years are going to be completely eaten up by administrative fees, and all you will have left is the principal you invested?

like PP said, invest in a couple broad-based index funds with Vanguard and pay maybe a quarter of a percent (probably less, actually).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:okay, so assume someone just buys SPDR shares of, say, vanguard's total stock index or s&p 500 index. no maintenance fees. how are they better off picking their own "basket" of stocks? (answer: they aren't).

They are better off choosing a basket of stocks from the lists provided by "Dividend Achievers and Champions" because they are taking ownership and responsibility for their investment choices. They become tuned into the investment world around them. Through the simple process of owning shares, collecting dividends, reinvesting dividends, differentiating between low and high paying companies, tax implications, growth v. income, contrarian investing and as they move along in their education process over several year the more exotic types of trades.

If you just hand your money over to Vanguard, you'll never learn how to be a CAPITALIST and you'll never be able to teach your children the skills it requires to become independently wealthy.

Hopefully, you now understand my point of view and you will begin telling others you may meet to do the same.

Never let anyone else manage your money! No one else cares about your money and your family more than you do yourself.

I care about my money and I've done the research and thinking and concluded that "strategies" like buying dividend stocks and labels like "growth vs income" or "contrarian investing" are just the noise of the financial industry, and that I'm better off investing in broad index funds with expense ratios of .25% or less. The idea that my kids need to be able evaluate a company's stock to know how to save, invest and accumulate wealth is like suggesting they need to know how to a car engine works to be able to commute to work. Except the "skills" you keep talking about are not only not helpful for what they really need to do, spending time on those things would probably be unhelpful in the long run.

Your blurred response suggesting it's a waste of time to teach your children anything is a waste of time in it's self.

To young investors know that financial planners and managers are parasites who will drain the lifeblood of your potential wealth away from you and your descendants during the next 40-50 years of your life. You'll get to retirement age and there will be little more in your account than the actual cash you saved. The reason being is the majority of the cream, the investment growth value will have been siphoned off by your parasitic financial planner/manager during the years when your wealth should have been growing exponentially.

Always remember, no one cares more about your money and your family than you do yourself!

I'm not sure which reveals your ignorance more-- "it's self" or the claim that my investments will be bled dry by managers when I specifically stated I invest in funds with expense ratios of .25% or less.

answer the question. why shouldn't someone just go to vanguard and buy a very low-fee index fund that tracks either the entire stock market or the s&p 500 (or a mix of those), or buy SPDR shares of such funds. you keep ridiculing that approach as foolish, but your investment strategy appears to be: buy a "basket" of large, established dividend-paying companies and let it ride, re-investing the dividends.

i am not seeing the difference here at all, other than the fact that an investor stands to lose more if s/he doesn't pick the right basket of stocks (not only that, but you have to factor in time spent evaluating whether stocks in the basket should be swapped out and whether the investor is picking the right stocks).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:okay, so assume someone just buys SPDR shares of, say, vanguard's total stock index or s&p 500 index. no maintenance fees. how are they better off picking their own "basket" of stocks? (answer: they aren't).

Haha seriously, why is PP obsessed with the word basket? Does he think it makes him sound more knowledgeable in some way??? LOL, some people truly have no clue how they come off.

What are you talking about? Are you talking about making baskets or weaving baskets? What are you talking about and what's so funny about it that it's making you burst out laughing. Laughing out loud about this rudimentary topic is odd.

Anonymous wrote:okay, so assume someone just buys SPDR shares of, say, vanguard's total stock index or s&p 500 index. no maintenance fees. how are they better off picking their own "basket" of stocks? (answer: they aren't).

Haha seriously, why is PP obsessed with the word basket? Does he think it makes him sound more knowledgeable in some way??? LOL, some people truly have no clue how they come off.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Buying a basket of stocks and reinvesting the dividends is not the same as practicing medicine. It doesn't take a Nobel Prize winner to buy a basket of stocks. In the shirt term you'll make money and in the long term you may become very, very wealthy.

Never let anyone else manage your money. No cares more about your money and your family than you do yourself.

Wrong. You act as if stocks can never go down. They have, they do, and they will. You act like investing in stocks is a sure thing. It isn't.

If it was, why would anyone bother with any other investment products at all? Why not just dump all your money in the stock market? According to you, you'll win in both the short-term and the long-term.

I agree that taking a long-term view, stocks are a good investment, but in the short-term it's not guaranteed. Generally, I'd say if you have any plans to use the money within the next 5 years, you shouldn't go heavily in stocks.

I'm always amused by individuals who emphasize with facets of an arguement I which they disagree, but offer no other solution themselves. You must be a Republicam! Over a long-time horizon the stock market will return 10% annual gains when factoring in up/down and flat years. In the short-term the market could go up or down, or you could be hit by a bus.

Make a contribution to the discussion. Where would you invest $100k if you had a five year time horizon?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:okay, so assume someone just buys SPDR shares of, say, vanguard's total stock index or s&p 500 index. no maintenance fees. how are they better off picking their own "basket" of stocks? (answer: they aren't).

They are better off choosing a basket of stocks from the lists provided by "Dividend Achievers and Champions" because they are taking ownership and responsibility for their investment choices. They become tuned into the investment world around them. Through the simple process of owning shares, collecting dividends, reinvesting dividends, differentiating between low and high paying companies, tax implications, growth v. income, contrarian investing and as they move along in their education process over several year the more exotic types of trades.

If you just hand your money over to Vanguard, you'll never learn how to be a CAPITALIST and you'll never be able to teach your children the skills it requires to become independently wealthy.

Hopefully, you now understand my point of view and you will begin telling others you may meet to do the same.

Never let anyone else manage your money! No one else cares about your money and your family more than you do yourself.

I care about my money and I've done the research and thinking and concluded that "strategies" like buying dividend stocks and labels like "growth vs income" or "contrarian investing" are just the noise of the financial industry, and that I'm better off investing in broad index funds with expense ratios of .25% or less. The idea that my kids need to be able evaluate a company's stock to know how to save, invest and accumulate wealth is like suggesting they need to know how to a car engine works to be able to commute to work. Except the "skills" you keep talking about are not only not helpful for what they really need to do, spending time on those things would probably be unhelpful in the long run.

Your blurred response suggesting it's a waste of time to teach your children anything is a waste of time in it's self.

To young investors know that financial planners and managers are parasites who will drain the lifeblood of your potential wealth away from you and your descendants during the next 40-50 years of your life. You'll get to retirement age and there will be little more in your account than the actual cash you saved. The reason being is the majority of the cream, the investment growth value will have been siphoned off by your parasitic financial planner/manager during the years when your wealth should have been growing exponentially.

Always remember, no one cares more about your money and your family than you do yourself!

Anonymous wrote:
Buying a basket of stocks and reinvesting the dividends is not the same as practicing medicine. It doesn't take a Nobel Prize winner to buy a basket of stocks. In the shirt term you'll make money and in the long term you may become very, very wealthy.

Never let anyone else manage your money. No cares more about your money and your family than you do yourself.

Wrong. You act as if stocks can never go down. They have, they do, and they will. You act like investing in stocks is a sure thing. It isn't.

If it was, why would anyone bother with any other investment products at all? Why not just dump all your money in the stock market? According to you, you'll win in both the short-term and the long-term.

I agree that taking a long-term view, stocks are a good investment, but in the short-term it's not guaranteed. Generally, I'd say if you have any plans to use the money within the next 5 years, you shouldn't go heavily in stocks.

Anonymous wrote:

Buy a house or two

This is pretty good advice. Few investments have a lower tax burden. You get to depreciate an appreciating asset. Theoretically you pay that back on sale, but you can defer it if you're Starker-exchanging for like investment property, and if you hold it (and keep making money on it) till you die, your heirs get it at a stepped-up basis.

It's a little more work than other investments, but you can hire that out to a property manager and still make money.

ugh Starker is a huge pain and depreciation recapture is a b$tch. Why do all that when simple stocks have a lower tax rate and will defer gain indefinitely until heirs get a stepped up basis (assuming the Mars family never succeeds in convincing everyone to repeal stepped up basis and the estate tax).