Investing General Discussion

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Furious

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,904
4,989
I own 23 Rent houses I am 100% hands off and they pay a steady 8% return, they are inflation proof I don't have to wait till I am old as fuck to enjoy the cash and when I am old as fuck and renters have paid off all my notes they will pay closer to 15%.

Wow, 23 is a big portfolio. Congratulations. I would love to buy rentals but the rent could never justify the price here in Vancouver.
 

Scoresby

Trakanon Raider
783
1,436
Has anyone messed around with personalcapital.com? I caught wind of it a little over a month ago during college football and signed up for the free side of it (they interface with your other investments, credit cards, bank, mortgage, etc. and give you a breakdown of the overall portfolio vs. the market on the free). Unsurprisingly, they called me about a month later to try and sell me investment advice, which I was a bit leery of since I have done pretty decent managing this on my own and am sketchy about paying a fee for someone else to manage my investments. In the end, I think I am going to give them a go and see how it plays out as their strategy makes a helluva lot of sense to me.

They play a market neutral approach by sector, evenly investing in each sector (this is statistically more sound than my current strategy as it will avoid sector bubbles), but utilize tax loss harvesting to balance gains you will see in other sectors. I personally am pretty negative on the market outlook, but as easily as sliding my risk profile to conservative, they recalculate an appropriate investment mix with more allocated to bonds while still having a balanced investment cross-section (my plan is to wait for the next big crash which I feel is imminent and then get aggressive, if it doesn't happen in 2 years I'll get back to middle of the road and just ride it). They do charge 0.89%, but only on the portion of your investments they have custody on. The remainder, such as my and my wife's 401ks, they will advise on and consider for your overall portfolio, but you get the advice for free.

I also like the notion that if I keel over before my wife, at least someone will have a notion of what to do with our investments.

Anyways, story is just curious if anyone else has had experience with them and what is your take? If nothing else, I'd recommend trying them out on the free just for the tool they have to aggregate your investments in a single place.
 

Furious

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,904
4,989
Bought on Nov 23 & 24th
All TSE:
TA 7.33 +1.07 17.09% TransAlta Corp 890 shares @$6.19
SJR.B 26.46 +0.19 0.72% Shaw Communications 75 shares @$26.31
PLZ.UN 5.04 -0.04 -0.79% Plaza REIT 650 shares @$4.83
BIP.UN 44.65 -0.21 -0.47% Brookfield Infrastructure Partners 46 shares @$43.39
BTE 5.17 -0.17 -3.18% Baytex Energy 200 shares @$5.23
D.UN 17.71 +0.02 0.11% Dream Office REIT 116 shares @$17.72
NVU.UN 19.02 -0.01 -0.05% Northview Apartment REIT 92 shares @$19.00
AX.UN 11.75 -0.01 -0.09% Artis REIT 559 shares @$11.56
 

Furious

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,904
4,989
I also put a stop loss on like 30 companies and bond ETF's

DOW has gone crazy after DJT win.
 

Big Phoenix

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
<Gold Donor>
44,359
92,485
They fucking better, getting tried of intel being dicks with their monopoly. Guy who lead the development of their chips that had them ahead of intel 10 years ago also lead the development of Zen so it is indeed promising.

Less optimistic about their new Vega cards due at the same time seeing as how Polaris has been a bit underwhelming. Though apparently google and alibaba have both recently agreed to use AMD gpus(based off their fury line so wtf?) in their datacenters who the knows.
 

Elsebet

Peasant
110
5
Anyone else a passive index investor?

My AA at age 40 is:

50% domestic stock (I need to consolidate the S&P and Small cap into Total Market, those two were some of my first index purchases years ago)
FSTVX - Total US Market
FSRVX - REIT
FUSVX - S&P 500
FSSVX - Small Cap

20% international
FPMAX - Emerging Markets
FSIVX - Total International

30% bonds
FSITX - US Bond

I use the Fidelity index funds (formerly Spartan funds) to keep my costs low and I rebalance only when my AA wanders too far.
 

Heylel

Trakanon Raider
3,602
428
Changing jobs in January, and I'll need to roll over my company 401k into something else. I could throw it into my new company 401k, but I'm thinking about giving something like Wealthfront or Betterment a go. I was only in this job for a year and it's not a large sum, only 10k or so. I also still have 30k or so sitting in a retirement account with the state growing at a guaranteed 5%. Haven't found a good reason to move it yet so I've just let it sit there since I left academics.

Should clear 40k or so on our home sale (starter home in Georgia, low property values). I'm going to need to stick that somewhere as well. Any suggestions? I'm 34 and feel woefully unprepared to invest in anything. My wife and I own some Tyco (formerly Johnson Controls) stock we purchase every month, but that's basically it.
 

Tinycoffin

Trakanon Raider
238
523
I would say it comes down to how willing / level of desire to manage your own investment strategy. I faced a similar choice a few years back and ended up rolling it over to a IRA with Fidelity. I went this route because I can now choose to invest the money with any mutual fund I choose opposed to just the ones offered in my companies 401K. If your new company happens to use Fidelity Net benefits as the 401K administrator it makes it super easy to handle the investments from a single web login. If you're looking for path of least resistance and willing to accept the the choices your company offers you in terms of 401K investment just roll it over to the new plan, it's pretty much automated these days between companies with minimal paper work.
 

Heylel

Trakanon Raider
3,602
428
Willing yes, knowledgeable no. I really feel out of my depth with retirement and finance, so I try to make it as idiot proof as I can. I realize that probably means I'm not accruing at the rates I could with more direct management. I don't have a ton of info yet, but it looks like Vanguard handles at least a few of the options.
 

Tinycoffin

Trakanon Raider
238
523
As others have pointed out Vanguard has some solid mutual funds you can invest in. Sounds like a Index Fund would be a good fit for you're current situation. Keeps cost low and you should see returns similar to the over all market the index is based against.

Index funds | Vanguard
 

Gravel

Mr. Poopybutthole
36,042
113,797
Go with a Vanguard or Fidelity index fund. Throw all of it in there. Pick the one with the lowest fees. I prefer Vanguard, personally, but they're both the only two companies with competitive fees.

I suggest a total market fund (VTSAX or whatever Fidelity has, FSTMX?).
 

Elsebet

Peasant
110
5
Willing yes, knowledgeable no. I really feel out of my depth with retirement and finance, so I try to make it as idiot proof as I can. I realize that probably means I'm not accruing at the rates I could with more direct management. I don't have a ton of info yet, but it looks like Vanguard handles at least a few of the options.

You may want to read the Bogleheads wiki then ask questions in the same forum.
 

BrotherWu

MAGA
<Silver Donator>
2,991
5,750
I own 23 Rent houses I am 100% hands off and they pay a steady 8% return, they are inflation proof I don't have to wait till I am old as fuck to enjoy the cash and when I am old as fuck and renters have paid off all my notes they will pay closer to 15%.

How did you accumulate 23 houses? Are they business loans? How does that work? I live in a touristy area that can get around $2000-$4000 per week during the summer tourist season, around 10 weeks, and maybe a couple more weeks for fall color tour, holidays, snowmobiling, etc. Problem is those are lakefront houses and that's probably $400k-800k for decent houses. You could get something cheaper but the income would scale down with it.

I like real estate but it seems like all I could do is service the loans, which I guess is something.

Also, that must be a full-time gig for you managing 23 rental properties? I can only imagine the bullshit you put up with.

I've been taking it in the ass from a Wells Fargo FA managing my IRA for the past couple of years and I am switching to a local guy I met who has done a really nice job for some people I know. For me, it is worth it to pay to have have someone who is an expert on the topic advise me and keep an eye on things. I put some money into ETrade in the early 2000s and that was a shitshow.
 

DrFukasaka

Lord Nagafen Raider
147
361
I own a seasonal business and my wife has a great job so we started out saving up the 20% down payments and buying one house a year . In my area you can buy a good mid-ranged home with good schools for 100k.

We then moved to buying houses that needed lots of work and my crew from the seasonal work and myself would get them rental ready through the winter this process allowed me to start buying houses much faster.

As an example I buy a 2 bedroom 1 bath beat up home for 40k (8 grand down) I then spend 3 months and 40k more turning it into a 3 bed 2 bath home worth 120 grand, I then have it revalued and pull out any forced equity ( in this case I am able to pull out around 40 grand ) and I use that cash for my next deal.

Two other factors that really helped me is having a great relationship with a local bank and my best friend is the supervisor of one of the companies my business provides work for and I am able to charge them roughly 4 times the average market price :)

We used many more tricks but my best advice would be to go to a sight called bigger pockets.com there is no better resource for learning the rental business.
 
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BrotherWu

MAGA
<Silver Donator>
2,991
5,750
Thanks. That makes sense; you have a season business so you can put sweat equity into it in the off season.

23 renters, though. You must hear a lot of sob stories.
 

AladainAF

Best Rabbit
<Gold Donor>
12,846
30,786
Decided to take some some profits on the best damn investment I've ever had (given the timeframe owned). Wife got thousands of RSUs of AMD stock valued at various amounts 1-3$ per share and we've not touched it until today. lol. Sold half of it and the rest of it is pure gravy, no matter what happens to it.

What a stock that's been this year.