How do you guys invest?

My employer gives me a choice of 28 funds to invest my 401K in, mostly from Vanguard. Until recently I invested in the most aggressive small-cap stock funds. I was making good money until the market dropped at the end of 2018 / beginning of 2019, which wiped out 5 years of gains. I stayed put and basically regained all my losses. Now most of it is in an index fund, with 10% in a bond fund.

I have no confidence in the market and USA is overdue for another recession, so when the S&P climbs up about 2 more percent, I’ll convert everything into bonds. Theoretically I won’t be making as much as stock investments, but the stocks have been up and down in last several months they’re essentially flat. If I’m not gaining anything, I might as well put it in bonds.

As for the rainy day fund, I put it in an online savings account that gives back 1.9%. It’s not much, but it’s almost inflation-neutral, at the very least.

I watch market movements every day. Yahoo Finance and its charts are a big help.

I did not make any gain during the same year but luckily didn’t lose money. My employer matched 100% of my contribution and add 6% ontop of it. The reason why I have a 401k account is due to this free money plus annual RSU from my employer. Beside, 401k isn’t the best investment for retirement as it is so dependent on unpredictable future tax rate. Just like unpredictable future market price. Tax deferred retirement fund doesn’t mean it won’t be taxed later at alot higher rate. Historically, tax has always gone up. 30 yrs from now when I retire, tax will eat up my 401k. Look at the example of the tax rate 30yrs ago compared to now.

I don’t believe in any investments where the control of money is on the financial institution instead of us. If things went south, not like you can borrow money from your 401k without getting ripped off by the gov.
 
I did not make any gain during the same year but luckily didn’t lose money. My employer matched 100% of my contribution and add 6% ontop of it. The reason why I have a 401k account is due to this free money plus annual RSU from my employer. Beside, 401k isn’t the best investment for retirement as it is so dependent on unpredictable future tax rate. Just like unpredictable future market price. Tax deferred retirement fund doesn’t mean it won’t be taxed later at alot higher rate. Historically, tax has always gone up. 30 yrs from now when I retire, tax will eat up my 401k. Look at the example of the tax rate 30yrs ago compared to now.

I don’t believe in any investments where the control of money is on the financial institution instead of us. If things went south, not like you can borrow money from your 401k without getting ripped off by the gov.
It’s not true that tax rate is only going to increase in USA. As a matter of fact it has been mostly decreasing since 1960’s. Even if it increases, the rate is not going to be astronomical, especially at the lower tax brackets. The effect is muted even further because the higher tax rate only applies to income within that bracket. Your income in the lower brackets are subject to the tax rate for its corresponding brackets.

https://investinganswers.com/dictionary/m/marginal-tax-rate

While the future is always hard to predict, I’m 95% certain that my income during retirement is going to be less than today (near the peak of my career), so my income tax is far more likely to be lower at that time. I have done the calculation, and I’ll be lucky if I can draw 60% of what I earn right now. Fortunately I can live comfortably at that level, since I don’t have to worry about my daughter anymore. Deferring taxes is the strategy that makes more sense to me personally.

The stock market has ups and downs, but when you look at it in a long enough time period, it always goes up. Very few things guarantee a positive return, except probably real estate in a prime location. The key is to convert more of your investments from stocks to bonds (then to money market) the closer you are to retirement, so you’re less affected by drastic swings.

You can borrow from your 401K without paying any penalty, you just have to pay appropriate interest for it. That interest goes right back into your 401K, not to the government.

I’m staying clear from whole life insurance because the math doesn’t work for me. I don’t always agree with Dave Ramsey, but on this matter I do.

One more video:

My mom likes to keep gold, but I don’t. The price of gold has fallen since 2012, and it has stayed relatively flat since 2014, which means it’s losing value to inflation. I would be really upset if a stock stays flat for 5 years.

If this country falls down the toilet like Yugoslavia, not even gold would hold its value. Real currency would be medicine, fuel, non-perishable food, guns, and bullets. The last two would be highly prized, because with them you can get the rest. I happen to have a decent stock of both.
 
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It’s not true that tax rate is only going to increase in USA. As a matter of fact it has been mostly decreasing since 1960’s. Even if it increases, the rate is not going to be astronomical, especially at the lower tax brackets. The effect is muted even further because the higher tax rate only applies to income within that bracket. Your income in the lower brackets are subject to the tax rate for its corresponding brackets.

https://investinganswers.com/dictionary/m/marginal-tax-rate

While the future is always hard to predict, I’m 95% certain that my income during retirement is going to be less than today (near the peak of my career), so my income tax is far more likely to be lower at that time. I have done the calculation, and I’ll be lucky if I can draw 60% of what I earn right now. Fortunately I can live comfortably at that level, since I don’t have to worry about my daughter anymore. Deferring taxes is the strategy that makes more sense to me personally.

The stock market has ups and downs, but when you look at it in a long enough time period, it always goes up. Very few things guarantee a positive return, except probably real estate in a prime location. The key is to convert more of your investments from stocks to bonds (then to money market) the closer you are to retirement, so you’re less affected by drastic swings.

You can borrow from your 401K without paying any penalty, you just have to pay appropriate interest for it. That interest goes right back into your 401K, not to the government.

I’m staying clear from whole life insurance because the math doesn’t work for me. I don’t always agree with Dave Ramsey, but on this matter I do.

One more video:

My mom likes to keep gold, but I don’t. The price of gold has fallen since 2012, and it has stayed relatively flat since 2014, which means it’s losing value to inflation. I would be really upset if a stock stays flat for 5 years.

If this country falls down the toilet like Yugoslavia, not even gold would hold its value. Real currency would be medicine, fuel, non-perishable food, guns, and bullets. The last two would be highly prized, because with them you can get the rest. I happen to have a decent stock of both.

The problem with financial planning is while the math seems to make sense but it doesn’t sync up with reality, It has never been. You also don’t have easy access to your money when you need it. This institution controlled your money. Never ever borrow money against 401k period, it’s not just the penalty. Ramsey would tell you the same. He just posted this subject sometimes this week. He would tell you to go to quick and loan instead of borrowing a 401k loan.

The problem with Ramsey is that I don’t believe in his program, it works only for americans who are truly in debt in the 1st place due to poor judgement and bad financial decisions. His program is great and has helped many americans in this category but not for those with the capability to build wealth and assets. Dave is also very uneducated about the whole life insurance he has been giving bad advises to many of his listeners.

I’d be honest I came from a very poor background. I married bule miskin when we were younger. My husband was an english teacher in our early 20 making only 13juta abt 10yrs ago, I worked for a well known non gov org making a little bit less... otherwise we won’t survived living in Indonesia as a one income family. I didn’t have issue being poor bc I didn’t marry him for money. Please note that I am not ashamed at all with this part of life. We love nasi goreng vendors where we can get cheap meal before our next pay check. We can’t afford much but we learned to live humble. We were happy regardless.

But today (please don’t take this as me trying to show off, I worked so hard for this and I truly earned every bit of my hard work) 10yrs of hard work has paid off, I owned 5 rental properties in the US and 2 in Indonesia, not including the house I’m living in. Not including many other investments. This has been generating income to the point if my boss piss me off tomorrow, I can turn my badge in and leave my day to day job. This is what I called financial freedom.

Not only I can use the cash value from my investments with fairly low APR for another investments, if things go south with my husband, the death benefit is more than enough for me to expand my business 5x more than what I currently have PER account. And yes they will give you all the amount of benefit. What you might heard from Ramsey’s show where people complained about benefit discrepancy is for term life.

I’m not the smartest in terms of giving advise but I’m lucky enough to mentor with many great wealthy people here in the US who truly taught me how to build wealth from zero. The only thing I’m grateful abt 401k and 526 is the tax exemptions, our income, married combined are currently on the highest tax bracket and even with child credits, we don’t get much back, but as long as we are not owning IRS, we think we are good.

As a side note, yes we still eat nasi padang and soto kaki kambing each time we visit Indonesia. Went to pasar becek just to eat jajanan pasar. ?
 
The problem with financial planning is while the math seems to make sense but it doesn’t sync up with reality, It has never been. You also don’t have easy access to your money when you need it. This institution controlled your money. Never ever borrow money against 401k period, it’s not just the penalty. Ramsey would tell you the same. He just posted this subject sometimes this week. He would tell you to go to quick and loan instead of borrowing a 401k loan.

The problem with Ramsey is that I don’t believe in his program, it works only for americans who are truly in debt in the 1st place due to poor judgement and bad financial decisions. His program is great and has helped many americans in this category but not for those with the capability to build wealth and assets. Dave is also very uneducated about the whole life insurance he has been giving bad advises to many of his listeners.

I’d be honest I came from a very poor background. I married bule miskin when we were younger. My husband was an english teacher in our early 20 making only 13juta abt 10yrs ago, I worked for a well known non gov org making a little bit less... otherwise we won’t survived living in Indonesia as a one income family. I didn’t have issue being poor bc I didn’t marry him for money. Please note that I am not ashamed at all with this part of life. We love nasi goreng vendors where we can get cheap meal before our next pay check. We can’t afford much but we learned to live humble. We were happy regardless.

But today (please don’t take this as me trying to show off, I worked so hard for this and I truly earned every bit of my hard work) 10yrs of hard work has paid off, I owned 5 rental properties in the US and 2 in Indonesia, not including the house I’m living in. Not including many other investments. This has been generating income to the point if my boss piss me off tomorrow, I can turn my badge in and leave my day to day job. This is what I called financial freedom.

Not only I can use the cash value from my investments with fairly low APR for another investments, if things go south with my husband, the death benefit is more than enough for me to expand my business 5x more than what I currently have PER account. And yes they will give you all the amount of benefit. What you might heard from Ramsey’s show where people complained about benefit discrepancy is for term life.

I’m not the smartest in terms of giving advise but I’m lucky enough to mentor with many great wealthy people here in the US who truly taught me how to build wealth from zero. The only thing I’m grateful abt 401k and 526 is the tax exemptions, our income, married combined are currently on the highest tax bracket and even with child credits, we don’t get much back, but as long as we are not owning IRS, we think we are good.

As a side note, yes we still eat nasi padang and soto kaki kambing each time we visit Indonesia. Went to pasar becek just to eat jajanan pasar. ?
The reason why you shouldn’t borrow from 401K is because the money stops growing the moment you take it out. If it’s a good year and the typical index fund grows by 18% and you pay 5% interest, that’s 13% that you fail to earn. I have access to personal loan with 5% interest rate, if I use that instead of the 401K I gain 13% instead. However, for people who can only use credit cards, losing 13% is still better than paying 24% cash advance interest rate.

I don’t always agree with Ramsey, especially about his absolute aversion to debt and credit cards. Used properly credit cards have given me a lot of cash back for things I have to buy anyway. Without debt most businesses can’t run.

From everything that I read I stand by my conclusion that whole life insurance is a bad deal. The second video by whiteboard finance explains it elegantly. With whole life you get either the death benefit or the cash value, but not both. However, each month you’re paying for both.

I’m not saying life insurance is bad, only whole life insurance. Term life insurance is perfectly fine. You said the death benefit can expand your business 5 times, well if you put that same amount of premium into term life, you can probably get 20-50 times expansion.

Please don’t take this as me calling you stupid, that’s not my intention. We’re just trading knowledge around here. There was a time when I had a whole life insurance plan, because I wasn’t informed of the entire complexity, and it was partially sponsored by my previous employer. When I quit the job and looked at it closer, I realized that it wasn’t great.

By any account my mom is fairly successful in her investments. She has rental properties and she keeps gold, so I have no doubt of your success with similar methods. However, she doesn’t care for the stock market in Indonesia, except when Telkom first sold its shares. She made decent money out of it. In Indonesia I don’t blame her one bit, as I wouldn’t touch the Indonesian stock market myself. USA is entirely different. There are strict regulations and monitoring of the institutions, so your money is fairly safe if you know what you’re doing.

You sound well off, so you don’t actually need to do anything with your 401K. Just put it in the default mutual fund for your target retirement age, and the fund manager will take care of the rest. Because you have independent income, your wealth will likely grow during retirement, so Roth sounds like a better plan for you. Hell, in your position your only concern is to maximize all of your annual contributions to the limit, both 401K and Roth. Max out the HSA too if your employer offers it.

My path in USA was rough because until recently I had no green card, so I was dependent on American employers for work visa, and my wife couldn’t work legally. I got to be extra smart with the little money that I have today.

Coming from Jakarta, my favorite street food is toge goreng. Too bad my stomach has been pampered for too long by hygienic American food, so Indonesian street food often gives me stomach issues.
 
Been there, done that. Could not agree more -- whole life, and annuities as well, are poor investment choices. Likewise, "saving" for retirement sounds responsible and appropriate, but the real choice is between consuming and investing. Educate yourself and invest in stream of income vehicles; you are more likely to never have to retire, unless you define retirement, as quitting your day job.
 
The reason why you shouldn’t borrow from 401K is because the money stops growing the moment you take it out. If it’s a good year and the typical index fund grows by 18% and you pay 5% interest, that’s 13% that you fail to earn. I have access to personal loan with 5% interest rate, if I use that instead of the 401K I gain 13% instead. However, for people who can only use credit cards, losing 13% is still better than paying 24% cash advance interest rate.

I don’t always agree with Ramsey, especially about his absolute aversion to debt and credit cards. Used properly credit cards have given me a lot of cash back for things I have to buy anyway. Without debt most businesses can’t run.

From everything that I read I stand by my conclusion that whole life insurance is a bad deal. The second video by whiteboard finance explains it elegantly. With whole life you get either the death benefit or the cash value, but not both. However, each month you’re paying for both.

I’m not saying life insurance is bad, only whole life insurance. Term life insurance is perfectly fine. You said the death benefit can expand your business 5 times, well if you put that same amount of premium into term life, you can probably get 20-50 times expansion.

Please don’t take this as me calling you stupid, that’s not my intention. We’re just trading knowledge around here. There was a time when I had a whole life insurance plan, because I wasn’t informed of the entire complexity, and it was partially sponsored by my previous employer. When I quit the job and looked at it closer, I realized that it wasn’t great.

By any account my mom is fairly successful in her investments. She has rental properties and she keeps gold, so I have no doubt of your success with similar methods. However, she doesn’t care for the stock market in Indonesia, except when Telkom first sold its shares. She made decent money out of it. In Indonesia I don’t blame her one bit, as I wouldn’t touch the Indonesian stock market myself. USA is entirely different. There are strict regulations and monitoring of the institutions, so your money is fairly safe if you know what you’re doing.

You sound well off, so you don’t actually need to do anything with your 401K. Just put it in the default mutual fund for your target retirement age, and the fund manager will take care of the rest. Because you have independent income, your wealth will likely grow during retirement, so Roth sounds like a better plan for you. Hell, in your position your only concern is to maximize all of your annual contributions to the limit, both 401K and Roth. Max out the HSA too if your employer offers it.

My path in USA was rough because until recently I had no green card, so I was dependent on American employers for work visa, and my wife couldn’t work legally. I got to be extra smart with the little money that I have today.

Coming from Jakarta, my favorite street food is toge goreng. Too bad my stomach has been pampered for too long by hygienic American food, so Indonesian street food often gives me stomach issues.

No worries Nimbus, we are here to learn from each other. I do enjoy reading your response though. :)

I’m never a believer of 401k to begin with anyway, bottom line, 401k is basically putting your money in prison, it's like making a trade with the devil. The only reason I keep it is due to the benefit my employer gave me. They matched 100% of my salary and add 6% on top of it since day 1 (I don't have to wait for 5-6yr to vest it), this is free money I can’t turn down. Then using a back door I rolled over my 401k to Roth IRA.

Term life does not work like you mentioned though. It is an investment towards death while whole life is an investment towards life. Why you'll lose term life death benefit at the age limit. You can extend your term life post the age limit, but it will be very expensive. Many people aren’t a believer of a whole life bc there are so many myth and lies around it. It has been going around since the 1800. But whole life is the reason why I was able to build wealth slowly. It has enabled me to build my property business. I'm a huge result oriented person. While process is important, it does not matter if it gives me poor results. Beside, it's a guaranteed tax-free income. Becoming Your Own Banker by Nelson Nash is a good book to read to understand more between whole life and index universal life insurance.

I also have invested passively in multifamily/apartments. This is another long subject for sophisticated investors/non accredited. Preferred return of 8%.

I appreciate everyone working hard in other people's country away from family. I'm not well off, trust me well off belongs to the 1% in this country. I'm nothing more than a hard working person who is eager to learn, I am very determined and very ambitious to achieve my goal. I must have goals and visions in life.

Tauge goreng, yumm! I love it too. I don't have issue dealing with jajanan street food in Indonesia. Probiotic helps.
 
Some while ago I was tempted to buy into cryptocurrency. I found I had to use a VPN as many sites did not want to open accounts from Indonesia. And anyway the Indon government is now blocking sites dealing with cryptocurrency. But past that hurdle was the concern about finding a reliable dealer that would enable quick buying or selling in response to the market. It seemed I would no sooner find a promising site than I would find reviews from people claiming to have been ripped off. And of course there are endless stories about people investing and suddenly the company through whom they were trading has disappeared.

With Facebook and China now looking at getting into cryptocurrency I am curious as to how serious investors and contributors to this thread are regarding cryptocurrency for possible investment.

I have been using Indodax for a long time, there are no problems buying/trading crypto with rupiah.
I hodl on projects that I think have a future and watch for dips over longer periods (weeks/months) for trading.
 
I don’t always agree with Ramsey, especially about his absolute aversion to debt and credit cards. Used properly credit cards have given me a lot of cash back for things I have to buy anyway.

I didn't know who this Ramsey was but having googled him it seems he believes that the argument of "I'm doing it for the miles" doesn't hold up because credit-cards make you spend more than hard cash. Apparently MIT did a study that showed that it actually hurts more for people to pay in cash than with card and hence they would be prone to spending more if paying by card.

That statement might be true for Indonesia as if you want to go out for a nice dinner with a bottle of wine and drinks after your bum would actually hurt due to the huge stack of cash in your wallet required to pay cash for that.

Without jokes though, I have been spending pretty much ALL my spending as much as I possibly can, avoiding cash, for the last 3/4 years on credit-cards that are paid off in full each and every single month. I have never been in a situation where I wouldn't buy something if I had to pay in cash instead of cc. So far this has netted me a round-trip upgrade from Business to First from CGK to Europe, 2 Business return tickets CGK - BKK and just very recently I got 2 return tickets to NZ in Business as well.

His logic says that because I paid card over those 3/4 years, I spend more money than I actually wanted, and if I had paid cash for all of it I would've been able to afford that outright. I've calculated the value of those upgrades/tickets at the time of booking (paid 30jt for Business, if I had to pay First it woul've been 100, hence value is 100-30=70*2pax etc) and it came to about 300jt, hence I call bs on Ramsey's theory.
 
Credit card companies hate cardholders like Euc. But they tolerate them because most card users are as Ramsey described. The card companies don't offer the rebates out of the kindness of their hearts (They actually have no hearts.) but because their research confirms that betting on the weaknesses and ignorance of the buying public pays off.
 
I didn't know who this Ramsey was but having googled him it seems he believes that the argument of "I'm doing it for the miles" doesn't hold up because credit-cards make you spend more than hard cash. Apparently MIT did a study that showed that it actually hurts more for people to pay in cash than with card and hence they would be prone to spending more if paying by card.

That statement might be true for Indonesia as if you want to go out for a nice dinner with a bottle of wine and drinks after your bum would actually hurt due to the huge stack of cash in your wallet required to pay cash for that.

Without jokes though, I have been spending pretty much ALL my spending as much as I possibly can, avoiding cash, for the last 3/4 years on credit-cards that are paid off in full each and every single month. I have never been in a situation where I wouldn't buy something if I had to pay in cash instead of cc. So far this has netted me a round-trip upgrade from Business to First from CGK to Europe, 2 Business return tickets CGK - BKK and just very recently I got 2 return tickets to NZ in Business as well.

His logic says that because I paid card over those 3/4 years, I spend more money than I actually wanted, and if I had paid cash for all of it I would've been able to afford that outright. I've calculated the value of those upgrades/tickets at the time of booking (paid 30jt for Business, if I had to pay First it woul've been 100, hence value is 100-30=70*2pax etc) and it came to about 300jt, hence I call bs on Ramsey's theory.
Ramsey’s stance on credit cards works for his audience, which is mostly people with little self control on spending. There are many, many people out there who should never be allowed to have a credit line, because their brain somehow sees it as “free money” and they promptly max out their debt, then spend years paying it back at 20% interest.

His argument that spending cash hurts probably works for the older generation, but the new tech generation feels the hurt through credit card bills that they check online every day. When I use cash I have no idea where it goes, but when I charge it the CC company keeps tab of the vendor and the type of spending. I see the balance grow on the app day by day, and it makes me uncomfortable enough to adjust my spending. When the balance on my dining out card is getting a bit high, I start brown bagging. If Amazon spending this month is up, I begin postponing all but urgently needed goods.

I prefer direct cashback credit cards, and I have probably earned several thousand dollars over the years just buying things that I need anyway. Of course I pay it off in full every month, so the ‘debt’ costs me exactly $0.
 
The perks of the cards and discounts (e.g. 10% by Bank Mega) are very nice and interesting, but you need to recognize the whole cashback feature -with systems as Dana, cashbac, etc.- does force you to spend more with that system on a later date. Often after one week. It's a bit like topping up too much in OVO or a prepaid SIM. I have always used credit cards as debit cards, often they are linked to bank accounts.

On the stock market; what I saw above and you read that a lot,;"in the long run you will win". And I don't necessarily agree with that unless you only play with indices. Many small startups where the profit is potentially very high go bankrupt or are being bought by biggies. (Been there done that, even as daytrading.) Not all are Apple or Tesla. And the biggies where the house father invests in, don't even have any safety warranty combined with slow growth anymore. Think of the GM's, Shell's, HP's, big banks and insurance companies.
 
There is nothing for free where banks are concerned. Just learn how to maximise and use the system to your own advantage
 
The perks of the cards and discounts (e.g. 10% by Bank Mega) are very nice and interesting, but you need to recognize the whole cashback feature -with systems as Dana, cashbac, etc.- does force you to spend more with that system on a later date. Often after one week. It's a bit like topping up too much in OVO or a prepaid SIM. I have always used credit cards as debit cards, often they are linked to bank accounts.

On the stock market; what I saw above and you read that a lot,;"in the long run you will win". And I don't necessarily agree with that unless you only play with indices. Many small startups where the profit is potentially very high go bankrupt or are being bought by biggies. (Been there done that, even as daytrading.) Not all are Apple or Tesla. And the biggies where the house father invests in, don't even have any safety warranty combined with slow growth anymore. Think of the GM's, Shell's, HP's, big banks and insurance companies.
I don’t invest in individual stocks unless I personally know or interact with the company. Even then I still prefer index funds.
Right now I’m preparing to get out of stocks completely and hold only bonds and treasuries. The recession / depression is coming, in 2020 at the latest. I’ll move over in about 2 weeks, but I can execute faster if I see a compelling reason to do so.
 
Of course there are many specilaized funds now that meet the interests and profile of the potential investor. (And those advisors have fancy brochures on all these.) But me myself, I would never ever want to invest in a collective set (as an index) where companies as GM, Ford, Bayer and BP (just to name a few) are represented. That could have to do with the foreseeable future, their pipelines and products, their business ethics etc. In my portfolio here are much safer investments than stocks, so there in that segment I can play and take some risks.
 
Regardless of the investment vehicle, risk and return have an inverse relationship; the marketplace assures that safe investments produce mediocre returns.
 
Regardless of the investment vehicle, risk and return have an inverse relationship; the marketplace assures that safe investments produce mediocre returns.
Sometimes I prefer minimum risk, especially with a recession on the horizon. My 401K has been performing less than mediocre in the past 3 months, so I might as well keep treasuries and bonds to minimize my risk.

Back in 2007 a very smart accountant that I knew predicted the pop of the housing bubble. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I had no stock investments to speak of, so I had nothing to lose. If I knew what I know today, I would have invested heavily when everything was at the bottom.

It seems like my chance is coming. When things bottom out next year, I will have the means to profit from it.
 
Globalization and the safe world order seem to be reversing and perhaps coming to an end in the foreseeable future. The policies of the nations that were the key pins of maintaining them are now in full reverse. My expectation is that the ability to invest globally or even transfer money likewise will be muted. Expats may find it difficult to maintain an overseas living status and forced to repatriate themselves. My investment advice is to diversify in every aspect so you have a plan A, B, and C.
 
The gutters are full of investors who presumed to predict, "When this or that will happen..." Mr. Buffett's successful, but dry, seemingly mundane, advise to diversify for the long term does not rely on crystal-balling the future.
 
Been there, done that. Could not agree more -- whole life, and annuities as well, are poor investment choices. Likewise, "saving" for retirement sounds responsible and appropriate, but the real choice is between consuming and investing. Educate yourself and invest in stream of income vehicles; you are more likely to never have to retire, unless you define retirement, as quitting your day job.

I think the term investment to describe a whole life insurance is wrong, because it is not an investment and is not designed to be an investment, it is a liquid account that owner do have control just like a savings account but with higher rate of return. As you can see I also mistakenly categorize whole life in an investment bucket. Savings vs investing are two diff things. Savings is your liquid money not only for emergency but opportunities. Investing is longer term and often are not liquid but tax advantages environment. And these two should be viewed entirely separately.

Most people also mistakenly think of whole life insurance as death insurance, it is not. Unlike term life/death insurance, whole life is designed to be used while you’re living. The reason why term life doesnt have rate or return as a matter of fact term life has negative rate of return while whole life do yield a rate of return in a form of cash value.

So to compare whole life with another types of investment is not right either. Do a comparison with another savings/checking accounts, apple to apple....while most savings account gives you >1% of interest, whole life product from a mutual life insurance company (own by the policy holders) gives you 4-6% rate of return, tax free. It’s been around for 200yrs and has never been impacted by the market crash.
 
The gutters are full of investors who presumed to predict, "When this or that will happen..." Mr. Buffett's successful, but dry, seemingly mundane, advise to diversify for the long term does not rely on crystal-balling the future.

Exactly why I have problem with most financial planning, It’s built based on sets of assumptions, it’s a limited structured environment that I don’t feel as helpful. It also puts the control on the financial institutions or advisors instead of the clients, with no guarantee that the money is not going to be cut in half with the roller coaster of the stock market.
 

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