Eh.....that doesn't really provide any information to people, and sure comes off like a site that gets commissions in some fashion that tries and competes with seekingalpha.com. Seeking Alpha was fantastic, because it taught me my yearly membership I bought was a waste of money and gave a place marker for market/sector timing, and the increased stress/under performance it brought. The number of those portfolios that focused on commodities or reits(which are owned within market portfolios) is telling that they likely don't understand the long term implications of the tax man, and how much better risk adjusted, post-tax returns are to measure versus chasing yields and past performance.
Bogel Heads, Money Guy Show, Rational Reminder, and Late Starters have been excellent with discussing the foundation, and later on touching the allocation.
The biggest thing I regularly see is people thinking they're smarter than they really are, and try to use economic reports to do investing to "beat the market" (but can't define the market). These same folks don't understand that economic reports are backwards facing, and market prices are forward facing.
Providing 100% refunds on free products. Check will be sent out tomorrow.
Debit scares me, with how much fraud is out there. Having watched what co-workers and employees went through with a single case of fraud to try and get a penny back, compared to the fraud protection that a credit card offers, I'm firmly in the credit camp.
With the caveat that you pay it off every pay day, treating it like cash. And move the cash-back into a savings/retirement/brokerage account, versus rolling it into the monthly payment.
Providing 100% refunds on free products. Check will be sent out tomorrow.
I briefly considered just letting my cash rewards build up indefinitely to serve as an additional emergency fund.
But then I decided that a custom built Mk12 Mod-H and OCM-5 suppressor was an emergency.
So, I've settled on it being my impulse fund that I don't have to feel guilty about buying frivolous shit with.
"Are you ready? Okay. Let's roll."- Last words of Todd Beamer
First thing one morning I looked at my phone and there were warning emails about what turned out to be about $20k in fraud. Good thing I was already sitting on the throne, and good thing it was all on credit and not debit.
I only carry the debit card because it is the ATM card and still seldom use it.
I am usually backfilling for an impulse that already transpired, when you find primers on sale on a random Saturday you better snag 10k of them!!!
Thread Drift: Speaking of cash back cards, mine has a big ass cash advance fee, and I learned this the hard way. I linked the card to Venmo to buy a raffle ticket to benefit a friend's son's traveling baseball team. It woulda been nice if I won something, since I spent $50 for one ticket ($20 + $30 cash advance fee).
The glock 19 of investing advice is to regularly buy an S&P500 index fund (like VOO) during your working years and start mixing in bonds as you approach retirement age. It won't be the ideal investment, but just doing that will put you ahead of 99% of people and you won't ever have to think about it.
The classic textbook on stocks and bonds is Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd. I found it dry and dense and it took multiple readings separated by other study for me to feel comfortable with it. But the Depression-era text is still used today and is the foundation upon which value investing was built.
A far more approachable introduction to stocks and bonds would be to start reading Warren Buffett's letters to shareholders: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html Buffett writes them as if he is explaining his choices to close friends and family members who never studied business. Reading them with 40+ years of hindsight is also informative on the limitations of predictions as industry disruptions occurred...
Last edited by 0ddl0t; 04-16-2024 at 02:03 PM.
In the P-F basket of deplorables.
Apparently it does. I've just never had a pump reject my debit with a pin. I've never used that card and said it was a credit card. I looked and as you say, immediate debit on my checking acct. So going forward I'll just tell the pump it's a credit card. I'll probably stop using it eventually and just use my Visa card. I'm pretty new to using a credit card, one with a seperate billing website, but it's smooth, real smooth.
In the P-F basket of deplorables.