"People who do math don't have credit card debt."

[redpoint5]

I had considered purchasing a house as early as 2005, but I procrastinated and then it crashed in 2006. In 2006 I had considered investing in stocks, but procrastinated and it crashed in 2008.

I purchased a house in 2010 and Zillow says it has increased in value 65% in that time.

I'll look into taking a more active roll in managing my 401k.

[Xist]

I tried to purchase a house in 2014, but the market was moving too quickly, and I was too busy with school. I remember paying for a valuation on one house and I think I paid a few other things. Even if I had the time, I did not have the money.

I looked at housing prices today. In San Francisco, values rebounded to the record high before the crash back in the first quarter of 2015, and have only continued climbing. From what I saw, it will be years before homes anywhere else are worth as much as they were ten or twelve years ago, and then you consider the interest.

I tried to get a school drop, which would have let me be home for Christmas 2013, but instead I returned the end of that March. The graph I saw put house prices in Phoenix at their lowest the first quarter of 2014.

[roflwaffle]

My 2c is that Mr Money Mustache (MMM) + Bogleheads (BH) will beat Dave Ramsey or anyone else any day of the week.

BH is great because it focuses on making reasonable financial decisions, diversifying your investments, and "staying the course", aka just letting your retirement account do it's thing.

MMM is great because he focuses on how reducing spending and increasing debt repayments/saving are synergistic. The less you spend, the more you have to pay off your debts/save for the future, to the point where the increase in savings and decrease in spending converge at the point where you have FU money. The less you spend and more you save, the faster those converge.

Not that Ramsey doesn't make good points, but I think MMM/BH have much better points.

[oil pan 4]

Oh I have diversified.
Every dollar I have locked up in the 401k racquet I have a nearly equal amount in gold, silver, platinum, rhodium and Ben Franklins.

[Xist]

In the book Stocks for the Long Run, Jeremy Siegel has a graph that shows what would have happened to a single dollar invested in gold, bonds and stocks since 1801.

One dollar invested in bonds in 1801 would yield $13,975 today.
One dollar invested in stocks in 1801 would be worth $8.8 million today.
One dollar invested in gold in 1801 would be worth $14 today.

https://www.daveramsey.com/askdave/investing/6240

[redpoint5]

Man, the 20th century was a good investment century. Totally missed out on that one.

[freebeard]

I'm curious about the 19th vs the 20th.

One dollar invested in bonds in 1801 would yield $13,975 today.
One dollar invested in stocks in 1801 would be worth $8.8 million today.
One dollar invested in gold in 1801 would be worth $14 today.

One normalized dollar? If you had one dollar in 1913, it's worth one penny today.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by freebeard

I'm curious about the 19th vs the 20th.


One normalized dollar? If you had one dollar in 1913, it's worth one penny today.

Oops, read it as 1900s somehow. Looks like both were good centuries.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

If you do a few creative predictable things like trade out stocks for safe haven bond funds in September or October then buy back your stocks in or around the very end of the year if consumer spending appears to be on track. You miss the traditional 4th quarter down turn.
Just doing that every year can double your return.

And how much do you pay in capital gains tax from all that frequent trading?

I'm also more than a little skeptical about the general idea. First, it smells like the "we've had a long run of heads, so tails must come up soon" sort of gambling system. Second, if it does in fact work, and is so simple, why aren't all the fund managers doing it>

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Xist

In San Francisco, values rebounded to the record high before the crash back in the first quarter of 2015, and have only continued climbing. From what I saw, it will be years before homes anywhere else are worth as much as they were ten or twelve years ago, and then you consider the interest.

They've certainly rebounded hereabouts (northern Nevada), and more. I don't really keep track - bought my place about 20 years ago, and have no intention of moving - but the place next door is on the market for about 3X what I paid.

As for interest, set that off against all the rent you didn't pay. These days, the average rental for a 1-bedroom apartment around here is well over my mortgage payment.