I’m going to a Bogleheads local chapter meeting later this month. Taylor Larimore is a member of our chapter and will be there (https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Taylor_Larimore) so I’m making a list of questions to ask. I’m excited!
I think I need to spend less now on the niceties, so I have enough later for the necessities.
I don’t really remember what I did in each of the crashes. In one case, nothing I think. In another case, I think we did some repositioning that probably didn’t help. Never went to largely cash.
I was a sophisticated investor (helped start a quant hedge fund though never ran it; just contributed ideas) but don’t think I am necessarily a great investor or stockpicker. So, I am pretty diversified (index funds and ETFs, stocks, especially dividend oriented stock MFs, gold, callable municipal bonds for short-term). We have some rental real estate. In the past, I’ve done very well with a couple of private equity funds and OK with a hedge fund of funds, but am not now in anything fancy. I invested in a venture that my son started – hasn’t made money but is breaking even three years later.
I make my money running a little consulting firm that can do very well (our engagements often include success fees) but can have some real variability. So, my investments are intended to be more conservative. I learned from my HF days how active you have to be to be an active investor. So, in addition to some money I invest on my own, I invest through a fee only FA and a little with a broker (sorry, “Private Wealth Manager” or some such) who handles our corporate accounts. The fee only FA has a system that lets me aggregate all my investments (and mortgages and insurance policies and …). So, I can see where all of our investments are and what our net worth is.
Depending upon how I live my life, I would easily have enough to retire on – though I don’t intend to retire – and I am probably 2-3 years away from hitting the number for how much I want to have to retire (but that depends upon the variability in my firm’s income – a couple of big success fees make it work). That is an aspirational number more than anything else.
Diversification is a good thing 
One of my friends is retiring this month… She has corporate benefits for annuity retirement plus a health care fund. Luckily she is only a few years from medicare because even with the group plan advantage healthcare insurance for herself and husband will be $1400/month. Ouch. Yea, I knew costs had probably gotten that high (we were figuring about $20k/year in our retirement planning… ha, which is why we need to keep working.) But I had not yet heard real numbers from anybody.
Well, at the moment I just am getting RMD’s from the inherited accounts- all at TIAA. I am not yet retired, so no RMDs from any of those. I’ll check out Bogleheads…
I am very excited for my son, who just got a job that he really wants, with a much higher salary than he had before. However, I have mixed feelings about this, which seems a little strange. He still is not particularly interested in learning about investing. He is good about saving, he spends very little and has no debt. But now there is going to be more money coming into his account, and though he’ll probably just put it into a bunch of different index funds, how do you start doing that right now, with the market so high? He’s not interested in getting a financial advisor. I personally see nothing wrong with picking several different well performing index funds or retirement date funds and just plugging the money in, but then again, I don’t know what I’m doing, and I don’t want to be responsible for giving him bad advice.
While I think that over the course of the next 30-40 years that a young person has to invest, forget the market timing and just keep plugging it in. But the market is at record levels. Are many of you staying in cash and waiting? I really stink at trying to time the market in any way 
^ Yes, I have a big chunk in cash and wait for market crash. I used to have 100% in stock funds at the beginning of the year. But I pulled a large amount of stock funds to money market because the investing companies keep saying I should not have more than 60% of assets in stock funds. I regret.
I regret it too. We have too much in cash, and our son has too much. But the thought of plugging it all in when the market is so high is alarming…but then the market goes up again. When is the big crash coming? Anyone know a good psychic?
For your son, I think it’s OK to buy stock funds now because he will have plenty of time to recover if there is a crash.
Probably so. I think just putting money in regularly, even automatically, without worrying about it can be the best thing to do for someone who doesn’t want to be involved in the day to day concerns of the market. But it’s probably not the optimum solution if you want the highest return.
DS recently talked about investing in bonds, and wanted my opinion. I told him that his personal capital dwarfs whatever he would put into a bond fund, so keep going long equities. I think he’s got a small emergency fund, but is otherwise 100% invested in equities. He has followed my suggestion to put some into international equities.
Re market timing: I know of people who have been in cash since 2008. Pulling money out is the easy part; figuring when and how to get back in is tough. I’m a blithering idiot, so I don’t force myself to make those kinds of decisions. You know the saying: “God loves fools and drunkards”? Well, I don’t drink, but things have worked out for me, so I guess it’s obvious which one I am 
^ I did save myself when I pulled stock funds to bond funds in 2011 (not sure about the exact year).
I think stock funds are definitely better than bond funds for young people. But then again, what do I know?
If God actually loves fools and drunkards, he should adore me. But I’m feeling like I’m on his bad side lately, so maybe that saying is dead wrong. If I drink more than a glass and a half of wine, I feel terrible in the morning. Another downside of old age. 
“I think just putting money in regularly, even automatically, without worrying about it can be the best thing to do for someone who doesn’t want to be involved in the day to day concerns of the market” - Good point. He is FAR ahead of the young people who spend all they make (and sometimes more).
We were around 50% cash a few years ago, but between continuous contributions that have been invested and market returns, we’re down to about 27% cash now. I don’t have any particular urge to increase my cash holdings.
With interest rates still so low, I have little to no interest in bonds, so my non-cash investments are pretty much 100% equities. I’m too scared of currency fluctuations to chase yields overseas.
@busdriver11 - if your son has index funds available through his 401k, that’s awesome.My companies’ plans typically have none or maybe one, because index funds don’t generate fees for the advisors they hire to assemble the plans.
I’m pretty sure he will have the 401K index funds available, notrichenough, it’s a pretty good size company. His last company had a 401K Roth, which I thought was a good deal.
Here’s one thing I’m curious about…which day of the month to invest. I have never made a specific effort to choose a day of the month or the week, but supposedly it makes a difference, according to investing.com:
So if you were lucky enough to chose all the bad days, you lost most of your money!
https://www.investing.com/analysis/the-statistically-best-days-of-the-month-to-trade-200134813
^^I think that last sentence, they meant to say, "$1,000 invested during all “favorable” days increased to $2,062,769
I started my son in a Fidelity age-retirement fund. I figured they would put him mostly lower in stocks and shift over time. A few years later, he moved everything into a diversified fund. I kept my mouth shut, but it has done well. It’s more aggressive than my mix of funds, but he’s younger. I doubt he goes into meet an adviser, or call a few times a year, but I watch his one fund.
My 401k provider said I should be aiming to have 8 times salary saved by the time I am 60. I might get close enough to that, but H won’t. H has a retirement SEP, which has about 1/7 of what I have, plus I will have 2 pensions. I am eligible to take one pension now but it will continue to grow at 8 1/2% until I reach 65 and I can’t think of a better, more secure way to let money grow.
I feel like I would need at least $2M to feel comfortable as long as my housing costs are lower than they are now. My nightmare is becoming a shopping bag lady outside of Penn Station.
I won’t ever really retire, but for a couple, $3 mill or 100-120k per year in pension/SS that include COLA adjustments (some combo - basically 4% of savings + Pension/SS) is minimum to feel like you don’t “have to” make any more money, even if you still put in a few hours a week at something. That leaves you with some wiggle room for splurges, surprises, economic crashes and helping the kids, all of which are inevitable in one way or another. 5 mill / 200k is ideal, esp if your pension doesn’t rise with inflation. And, of course, both of those scenarios are pretty hard to get to!