brip blap - Latest Comments in building wealth in an age of thieves

Re: building wealth in an age of thieves

Lucinda — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:41:58 -0000

I started buying antiques at house sales, reselling them for at least double what I paid, then reinvesting the profits in higher quality items. As long as I keep compounding my money, I'll surpass what my broker ever did for me. There's a guy in Northfield, Illinois - a dealer/collector of 45 years who will teach and help anyone who wants to learn. He's at http://www.31corp.com.

Re: building wealth in an age of thieves

fathersez — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:38:31 -0000

The age of thieves! Well said. Now only if these guys were treated as thieves, then maybe the next generation may not be that susceptible to thievery.

Re: building wealth in an age of thieves

lisa — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:10:39 -0000

the AIG building also looks like it was made of cards.not very steady or strong. Wish I'd noticed that before!

Re: building wealth in an age of thieves

smartenup — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:11:21 -0000

Surely, you must be crazy?

An insane person is someone who keeps doing the same thing (investing in the stock market) and expecting the same result (becoming wealthy) only it never works out that way. Yet, they keep right on doing it.

Wall Street is corrupt. Always was and always will be. No politician is going to change it. Not in 1987. Not in 2001 and not in 2008.

You'd be better off investing your money with drug dealers or art thieves.

Eventually one day, after you've lost your shirt, you'll get over it. Notice that the windows on the AIG building are mirrors?

Here's looking at you, kid.

Re: building wealth in an age of thieves

plonkee — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:07:23 -0000

If you're close to retirement, and have all your money invested shouldn't you have moved much of it over to safer investments by now?

Part of the thing here is that I'm so far away from retirement now, that other than the basics (move to safer investments) I'm not sure that I've actually got a feel for how you manage your move into retirement. Hopefully that'll be something for the personal finance community of the future to talk about.

Re: building wealth in an age of thieves

deepali — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:21:10 -0000

I'm going for that last line. There is no stock market where I'm moving to. :)

Re: building wealth in an age of thieves

CraigK — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:05:08 -0000

Sadly it seems that there is little we can do. A lot of these stable institutions are losing money and taking because of it a lot of investing confidence is being taken away.

Craig
www.budgetpulse.com

Re: building wealth in an age of thieves

bripblap — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:31:11 -0000

Plonkee, I guess I'd say that index funds at least broaden your risk across multiple industries and (in my case, investing in a lot of international index funds) across countries. Investing in an individual stock concentrates your risk dramatically.

I think everything SHOULD be fine long term but it's hardly assured. I can be sanguine since I'm still at least a few years away from retirement, but I feel bad for someone here in the US who has no pension and was counting on cashing in their IRA/401(k)s to retire in the next year or two. We'll see, I guess...

Re: building wealth in an age of thieves

Moneymonk — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:07:18 -0000

The last statement will never change. Stick to it.

Stop chasing high returns

Be the Tortuise and not the hare

Re: building wealth in an age of thieves

Chad @ Sentient Money — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:49:07 -0000

Unfortunately, it is tantamunt to theivery. All these bailouts are prolonging this downturn.

@Emily
We can continually contact our congressmen and vote for slightly smarter people...just a little might be enough.

Re: building wealth in an age of thieves

Emily — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:31:39 -0000

That last paragraph sums it all up. At the end of the day, what more can you do?

Re: building wealth in an age of thieves

plonkee — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:17:04 -0000

You can't have it both ways. Index funds are invested in shares. It's either a good idea to do that, or it's not.

The problem with both real estate and a business is that they have a lot of risk attached - on a small scale, they aren't normally diversified.

In the long run, everything will be fine. I mean at least the US economy is relatively diverse, the British economy is strongly weighted towards financial services so we're scuppered.

Re: building wealth in an age of thieves

Curmudgeon — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:17:00 -0000

>>the old paradigm of “just invest in the market and ride the ups and downs” may not be applicable anymore . . .

Sadly, you may be right, Steve.