If you can afford a house, try as hard as you can not to buy a house that you can barely afford with a 30yr mortgage. Limit yourself to a house where you can afford it with a 15yr mortgage. I did that in my 30s and now in my 40s I don’t have a mortgage anymore. Obviously with the current housing market this advice won’t help many.
To those people, I’d say: stop using a basic savings account. Get a High Yield Savings Account. They pay 3.5-4% interest at the moment. Zero risk, and you can even havd a card attached to it for spending. They’re liquid. Got 1k sitting in savings? That’s $35/yr free money you’re missing out on. 10k? $350/yr. Best part? When inflation starts going crazy and the fed increases interest rates to control it, your money starts making even more money. Not enough to fix everything, but it does help a little.
If you can, max out your 401k. Put money in a Roth IRA too.
If you want to play with stocks safely use index funds. Something like SPY for the S&P500. 98% of day traders lose money. Every trade someone makes is measured against the market. The trade you made increased 2% in the last week? Well, the market was up 2.8%. It’s like gambling and the market is the house. The market eventually always wins and everyone else loses.
If you can afford a house, try as hard as you can not to buy a house that you can barely afford with a 30yr mortgage. Limit yourself to a house where you can afford it with a 15yr mortgage. I did that in my 30s and now in my 40s I don’t have a mortgage anymore. Obviously with the current housing market this advice won’t help many.
I got a 30 year mortgage at a fixed 2.something % 15 years ago and am very happy with that because I could invest more in stocks with a higher rate of return.
'Course, with the current interest rates that won’t help many either…
Only one problem with the S&P500: a massive chunk of it is AI speculation, like 30%+, and that bubble will pop. Recommend bonds or metals until it does. Then switch back.
Diversified stock without AI exposure is an option. Bonds give less return and also are looking a bit funny these days, while metals give literally zero.
Everything in the market is exposed to varying degrees, unless you have something particular in mind? If you can think of a stock that will go up when AI goes into freefall, name it, please.
G4S, Dollar Tree or a payday lender like Curo Holdings should go up in any major downturn. Specifically if/when AI craps out, some of the big losers in white-collar services would rebound, although I don’t know enough to really give details on that. Lots, like Nestle or Goodyear, aren’t countercyclical but will be fairly unaffected, because they aren’t in tech and sell something people can’t really do without.
Yes, everything in the market is exposed to volatility. In which direction can vary, though. If you have a crystal ball and know the bubble is imploding this quarter, you could also buy bearish options on things like Nvidia. (There’s no off-the-shelf options that go out many years, I checked)
If you can afford a house, try as hard as you can not to buy a house that you can barely afford with a 30yr mortgage. Limit yourself to a house where you can afford it with a 15yr mortgage. I did that in my 30s and now in my 40s I don’t have a mortgage anymore. Obviously with the current housing market this advice won’t help many.
To those people, I’d say: stop using a basic savings account. Get a High Yield Savings Account. They pay 3.5-4% interest at the moment. Zero risk, and you can even havd a card attached to it for spending. They’re liquid. Got 1k sitting in savings? That’s $35/yr free money you’re missing out on. 10k? $350/yr. Best part? When inflation starts going crazy and the fed increases interest rates to control it, your money starts making even more money. Not enough to fix everything, but it does help a little.
If you can, max out your 401k. Put money in a Roth IRA too.
If you want to play with stocks safely use index funds. Something like SPY for the S&P500. 98% of day traders lose money. Every trade someone makes is measured against the market. The trade you made increased 2% in the last week? Well, the market was up 2.8%. It’s like gambling and the market is the house. The market eventually always wins and everyone else loses.
I got a 30 year mortgage at a fixed 2.something % 15 years ago and am very happy with that because I could invest more in stocks with a higher rate of return.
'Course, with the current interest rates that won’t help many either…
Only one problem with the S&P500: a massive chunk of it is AI speculation, like 30%+, and that bubble will pop. Recommend bonds or metals until it does. Then switch back.
Diversified stock without AI exposure is an option. Bonds give less return and also are looking a bit funny these days, while metals give literally zero.
Everything in the market is exposed to varying degrees, unless you have something particular in mind? If you can think of a stock that will go up when AI goes into freefall, name it, please.
G4S, Dollar Tree or a payday lender like Curo Holdings should go up in any major downturn. Specifically if/when AI craps out, some of the big losers in white-collar services would rebound, although I don’t know enough to really give details on that. Lots, like Nestle or Goodyear, aren’t countercyclical but will be fairly unaffected, because they aren’t in tech and sell something people can’t really do without.
Yes, everything in the market is exposed to volatility. In which direction can vary, though. If you have a crystal ball and know the bubble is imploding this quarter, you could also buy bearish options on things like Nvidia. (There’s no off-the-shelf options that go out many years, I checked)