1) what do you want to do with that money? retire early, buy a house, etc.? you need to articulate your goals.

2) what does your current portfolio look like? (specific investments and their location--401k, ira, taxable, etc).

3) what is your income, marginal tax rate, and filing status? do you expect your earnings to grow/shrink significant over time? is your job highly cyclical?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163240)

1) don't put money for a down payment in stocks or other risky assets. it's a terrible idea. the stock market's annualized standard deviation is about 18%, meaning you have (very roughly) about a 15% chance of losing more than 18% in a given year (this isn't completely accurate as the market's volatility exhibits long periods of much lower volatility punctuated by short periods of extreme volatility and im ignoring the market's average growth). the vast majority of money for a down payment within a few years should be in high-quality bonds. you can cheat a little, maybe buying more slightly more aggressive bonds, and/or put a small slice of the down payment money in stocks.

2) separate growth investments from nearer-term investments that are meant for shorter-term liabilities (like a home down payment). don't mix the two. the consequences of putting essential near-term money in the stock market can be disastrous.

3) you probably don't want to own low-yield bond funds in your 401ks/IRAs. it's a little bit more efficient to put stocks in your IRAs/401(k)s and use your taxable investments to hold municipal bonds. this won't be always true, but is largely true now due to the still low interest-rate environment. as a plus, you can tap your muni bonds to fund your down payment.

4) assuming you're in the 33%+ tax bracket, focus on making pre-tax contributions in your 401ks.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163920)

how did you lose money? we've been in a bull market for 8 years.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163248)

I paid off my interest-bearing loans in August so I've only built up $25k in my brokerage account, $1500 (75%) of which I lost on the advice of HANDSOME bill ackman with a security called VRX. Sizeable positions in S&P indices, energy etf and a few BLUE CHIPS have only made up for half of that loss

in short I am a really bad investor. wouldn't say poor self control--I don't overtrade I'm just a retard

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163276)

since you are a crappy investor with a taste for speculation, you should create a speculative investment account and fund it with, say, $5,000. never add to that account if it goes down. go BUCKWILD and do whatever dumbass thing you want to do.

with the rest of your money invest in a simple portfolio of vanguard index funds (or ETFs). no need to get cute with tilts to energy, REITs, etc. just VTI, VEU and maybe BND.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163391)

the 4% withdrawal rule of thumb is from a famous study by bengen that basically says that if you held a 50-50 us stock-bond portfolio, you could withdraw 4% of your initial balance, adjusted for inflation over time, and had near-guaranteed success over every 30-year period from 1925 and on.

this version of the 4% rule is very harsh because you do not adjust your withdrawal amount if your portfolio declines. your withdrawal is fixed at the beginning and you just increase it for inflation.

it is too optimistic for early retirement as you may live 40-50 years.

if you are willing to adjust your spending over time, slashing it during bear markets, you could probably get something like 4% over a 40-year period.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163273)

i predict 5 years from now there will be plenty of sob stories by idiots who tried to do FIRE and blew up their portfolios.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163297)

i agree someone who accumulates 600K by 30 is not actually going to retire and have 0 investment ideas for the next 60 years

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163319)

i can't remember if he owned a house in full at the time he retired but if he did i don't know how he did it at 600K (if that's the number he retired at)

granted this doesn't mean that a bunch of people are going to do the same thing if we go through another GFC

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163348)

u could plausibly make this assumption for an old person who would have a virtually impossible time breaking into/performing in the job market and for whatever reason doesn't draw SS, but that's not the case for an early "retiree"

ultimately the 4% is just a guideline and a decent one if you're willing to concede that you might need to work once in a while after your "early retirement"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163503)

most of the financial independence guys are not willing to give up the certainty of losing time for what amounts to unrealistic assumptions

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163587)

however, the past few years have been very, very kind to cryptocurrencies, so of course owning a basket of them would have made you a ton of money. it's possible that many shitcoins plummet over the next few years, leaving only a handful of legitimate coins.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163316)

this is one of the most basic errors novice investors make: thinking they can time the market.

you may get lucky once or twice, but if you keep on doing this you will have terrible, terrible results over a life time.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163325)

if you have the money and play a lot of ps4, it's probably not a bad upgrade.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163330)

it's usually handled by gradually dollar-cost averaging into the market. that way you don't feel too bad if the market surges or crashes. i would set up a 1-year investment schedule where you put 1/12th of it into the market each month.

i agree, though, that the market is expensive-ish. that doesn't mean you should try to time the market. valuation is a very, very shitty timing strategy. i've looked at all kinds of variations of timing the market based on valuations and almost none of them work.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163364)

I set up a Vanguard account, moved some money into MM account, researched funds, and planned to dollar cost average but I never managed to pull the trigger. I'm relatively young and it's the vast majority of my savings so the thought of losing it is terrifying.

I hadn't thought about buying in over a period as long as a year though. Seems slightly less terrifying stretching it out for that long.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163413)

in fact, you should only buy stocks if you have already resigned yourself to losing shit tons of money every 5-7 years. that's what stocks do. they crash. you can't time them, so you should accept that any dollar you put into stocks could turn into 0.50. as a young person who's a net buyer of stocks, you should be rooting for lower, not higher stock prices.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163505)

Is something along the following lines reasonable: 30% VTI, 30% VEU, 15% BND, 20% cash, 5% stock picking/fuckery

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163624)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163416)

this is financial advice.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163454)

What's your time horizon

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163532)

not guaranteed, of course. lots of potential for failure.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163571)

here's a wise warren buffett quote:

“Take a job that you love. I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don’t like because you think it will look good on your resume. Isn’t that a little like saving up sex for your old age?”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163568)

of course, that doesn't mean you take out six-figure debt to go to art school to "pursue your dreams".

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163711)

it's hard to give you advice as the right thing to do is very specific to your situation. maybe look for an in-house job or begin plotting your way into such a position? at the very least you won't want to kill yourself.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163988)

for example: i took a few months off from biglaw to take care of family and began researching something intensively during that time, talking to experts in the field, building devices, etc. i got two job offers during that time, even though i wasn't looking for a job at all

so although i'm not sure it's always feasible to get a job that you love, if you really want a particular goal and labor toward that goal, opportunities will appear

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33164110)

at the very least move it to an online savings account. check out depositaccounts.com for the highest-yielding cds and savings accounts.

if you feel the us stock market is overheated, foreign stocks are still reasonably priced. they've underperformed for years.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33163728)

do you plan to stick with this job?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3595741&forum_id=2#33166387)