Apparently, when your website has a name like Broken Ticker, the rest of the internet thinks you are spam.
Therefore, I have restarted this website under the name Monkeys Throwing Darts. The same posts you see here will be migrating over there. Anything new will now be posted over there. https://monkeys-throwing-darts.weebly.com/ Thank you.
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Buy and Hold is a passive investment strategy that involves buying stocks and holding them for long periods of time... never selling regardless of what's happening in the market. Although it can be used with individual stocks, this article will discuss the merits (or not) of this strategy as applied to index funds tracking the S&P 500, which are a popular and low cost way for the average investor to "be in the market".
It's been one heck of a bull market. You can tell because countless blogs and websites dedicated to the concept of FIRE have cropped up like crabgrass in July on a poorly managed lawn. FIRE... also known as Financial Independence & Retire Early. A person who strives for FIRE typically lives an austere lifestyle in order to accumulate a massive nest egg. Once this is done, he or she can leave the workforce way earlier than normal and live off the investment income for the rest of their lives. I am not against this concept at all. However, before letting something consume your life, sometimes it's worth stepping back and putting things in the proper perspective. Here are two interesting passages from the Gospels. You don't need to be a Christian in order to appreciate them:
There are a whole bunch of numbers on the internet being thrown around and proclaimed as the long term return of the U.S. stock market. Anywhere from 7%-11% depending on who you believe. This number is the basis for a lot of folks' investment decisions and its accuracy is not something to be taken lightly... especially when a couple of little problems become apparent when you stop to think about the methodology most commonly used.
So I've decided to go into the historical data for the S&P 500 index and try to calculate it for myself. If you do an internet search for renter's insurance you will find plenty of articles (of which a disproportionate amount are written by insurance companies) telling you that renter's insurance is definitely worth it. Most of the internet agrees that it's a good idea, yet in 2018 only 46% of renters had renter's insurance compared to 91% of homeowners [Source].
I will take the opposite point of view and argue that renter's insurance is a racket by the insurance industry and in most cases is a waste of money for the policyholder. Many in the personal finance community often preach about the importance of having an emergency fund stocked with several months worth of living expenses in the event of a job loss or any other unexpected financial shock.
Those of us who own a house, especially an older one, are no strangers to the occasional large financial outlay. It's not if something breaks, it's when it breaks. A job loss may or may not happen, yet it's still important to have an emergency fund. If a large home expense will most certainly happen, shouldn't we be prepared for it too? |
Broken Ticker
An alternative minded Investing and Personal Finance blog Archives
February 2019
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