What're you doing with your money in 2024? (Fixed version)

[TGS]

It's a new year, so I figured we should have another thread like we had last year: https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....mend-others-do

It's an interesting year to start off in. Some institutions are now offering CDs with over 6% interest, which is nuts: https://www.businessinsider.com/pers...-of-deposit-cd

Additionally, HYSAs and non-bank cash accounts which have both FDIC and SDIC insurance, such as Wealthfront, are breaking 5%.

So, I added those two categories to the poll, which is otherwise cut and pasted from last year.

[45dotACP]

HYSA is the strategy for my wife and I...only because we just bought a house and are saving like a motherfucker to try to pay it off ASAP and we don't want our shit tied up in a CD in case of an emergency that's bigger than the emergency fund.

Also, the fact that you can get almost 5% from a High Yield Savings Account is bonkers so we're getting while the getting's good. Once the rates drop down to what they usually run, we're probably dividing it between a HYSA (despite the lower rates) and an index fund that tracks the S&P500

In the meantime:
-No going out or ordering takeout more than 2x per month
-Focusing on cooking meals with large amounts of leftovers...sorry...I mean "Meal Prepping" for all the kids out there who think this is some new thing they've discovered
-Handloading the expensive ammo...bulk buying the stuff like 9mm or .22lr
-Not buying any new gu...not buying any guns that aren't on sale or are otherwise a good bargain

[Default.mp3]

Where's the option for crypto?



I'm not approaching 2024 any differently than previous years, really, besides putting a bit more aside to stockpile ammo, just as a hedge against any inflated prices that might come as the election draws nearer rather than believing that there is any planned effort towards any anti-gun legislation.

[whomever]

...Some institutions are now offering CDs with over 6% interest, which is nuts...

It is or isn't nuts, depending on what inflation does: "three-month CDs in early May 1981 paid about 18.3 percent APY"

https://www.bankrate.com/banking/cds...nterest-rates/

It was fun in those years to compare your 5.5% savings account to the inflation rate, especially when figuring out taxes on the 5.5% :-(

(I make no predictions about future inflation ... too many decades of listening expert economic forecasts get it wrong)

[Borderland]

All of our debt is paid off. Income is from pensions, SS, 401's and other retirement accounts. I've been buying 5 year treasury bonds lately. May look into CD's. Lots of money in cash, probably too much.

[JTQ]

My goal is to have as little debt as possible. I only owe on my house. I have no car payments, and haven't had a car payment for about 15 years. It will probably be a bit of a shock to the system if I do end up with a car payment, at least at first. My kids graduated from college in 2016 and 2017. They had some good scholarships because they were pretty smart and hard working, so I really thank them for that, but the rest of their tuition and room and board, I paid in cash, so they both graduated with no student dept.

I fully fund a Roth IRA, which is mixed between a money market account and a balanced mutual fund. There were years in there where I didn't fund the Roth, but it is going well now.

I haven't funded my traditional IRA since the Roth became available. That stuff is on auto-pilot in a growth fund, a balanced fund, and within the last couple of years I added a bond fund, with dividends from the growth and balance funds now paying into a money market account, which is what I intend to tap, when I have to start drawing from it.

My only real estate is the house I live in.

I haven't had CD's since I was in college (late 1970's-early 1980's). I decided long ago to give up the percent or two of interest advantage of the CD for the liquidity of a money market account. I did have buddies in the early 1980's that were buying CD's on a monthly basis, so they always had some liquidity, but I was putting my extra cash into stock funds at that time.

I did a gold mutual fund years ago, but got out of it after only a few years, and haven't dabbled in gold either in a fund or coins/bars since then. It's not something I want to deal with.

I do have a non-IRA growth stock fund that I've owned for about 40 years. I know at some point, I'll have to figure out an exit strategy for that one that will limit my tax burden as much as possible, but right now it's still just sitting there.

My current cash position (bank savings/check accounts, and mutual fund money market accounts), probably over the past five years, is higher than it has been in the previous 40 years. It really wasn't a conscious effort to get into cash, it just sort of happened, but it does give me a little more piece of mind than the years when my kids were little and the money was heavily weighted in stock funds and IRA's. Relatively speaking, I had a lot of assets available then, but some of them were difficult to get to. When the washer broke, or the A/C needed to be replaced, there was a little worry then about how I was going to get those assets available without getting creamed at tax time. Now, with a higher cash position it is lot more comfortable.

[JTQ]

It is or isn't nuts, depending on what inflation does: "three-month CDs in early May 1981 paid about 18.3 percent APY"

My first car loan was at 21%, and my first mortgage was at 14%. Of course, I think I was only financing $4,800 on the car and a few years later, $54,000 on the house.

[farscott]

Our only debt is the house at 2.25%, a note for the roof at 6% that is due to be paid off in about three years, and whatever we charge for the month. The emergency fund is in four-week T-Bills at around 5.4%, next year's taxes and insurance is in a 6-month T-Bill that yields more than 5.3%, the mortgage is paid two months ahead as a buffer, and the credit union that holds the mortgage has six months worth of payments sitting in a savings account and a CD at 4.7% that matures in December. 11% of my salary goes into the 401k, 10% of the salary goes into an employee stock purchase plan (ESSP) with a six-month lookback at a 15% discount, and I save in cash another 4%. That means we save 25% of my salary.

Looking at a vehicle purchase in the next few years. Both of our vehicles are more than seven years old and have low mileage for their ages. As such, we only want to purchase one vehicle and are waiting for the bottom to fall out of the vehicle market so we have the negotiating advantage and good finance rates. Hoping for 0% for sixty months when the time comes.

Looking at our recurring spending, we spend too much on food, both for groceries and on dining. Much of that is due to things like butter going from $3 per pound to over $5 per pound. Other than that, we live modestly.

[TGS]

Looking at a vehicle purchase in the next few years. Both of our vehicles are more than seven years old and have low mileage for their ages. As such, we only want to purchase one vehicle and are waiting for the bottom to fall out of the vehicle market so we have the negotiating advantage and good finance rates. Hoping for 0% for sixty months when the time comes.

Similarly, we have our home at 2.25% and her rental condo at 2.7%. We also consolidated down to one vehicle, since my S.O. is fully remote. Along with her moving in with me last year and getting her condo up for rent, consolidating down to one vehicle allowed both of us to max the fedgov limits to our workplace defined contribution plans. This is a huge milestone for us.

Compared to what we thought about last year, we ended up not buying out her car lease's residual value in cash but instead took out a loan, regardless of the fact we could buy it in cash. We figured that since she's a contractor in IT and is now a landlord....and my income as a federal employee seems to be much more volatile with government shutdowns looming every other month....then we should maintain a much larger emergency fund than we normally would, enough to float us several months if we both went without pay and lost the renters. With that said, the car loan is around 7% interest, so she's paying it down within a year and I'm continuing to save into a HYSA to eventually buy the next car in cash.

Like last year, I still don't have the attention span for staggered/layered CDs and T-bills.

When you say you have the mortgage paid two months ahead...do you just have two months-worth sitting in an escrow or no? If the latter, how did you get them to keep it as two months advance payment instead of applying it to principle/interest?

BTW, I apologize I haven't gotten that 380 magazine out to you, yet. I've been travelling a lot over the last few months. Just got back from Africa and am leaving again this weekend. I'm hoping I'll be able to get it out this week.

[MickAK]

Trying to come to terms with the understanding that I got dumb lucky in my previous buy and hold positions but can't get lucky again if I don't try.

Preparing for a recession seems to work out pretty decently even if there's no recession, or at least not the forecasted one. Yet? Maybe? No clue.