#anyway the stock market was good to my retirement accounts this year

[katarh-mest]

just endured the annual torture that is my husband, financial analyst whiz at heart, forcing me to sit down and gleefully Review The Retirement Accounts with him

there are women out there, whose husbands control the purse strings and who have no assets of their own to speak of, who cannot escape and have no idea how much is theirs or how much their husband has been hiding from them

and then there's my husband, who not only delights in making sure he is f u l l y t r a n s p a r e n t about the state of our savings, both independently and combined, he is the one who knew that as a man and a feminist, it was his duty to make sure that I also had things entirely in my own name separate from his

because he could look back on the women in his own family who had nothing of their own in the past, and could never leave, no matter how hard it got for them

This, too, is love.

[kyova]

TL;DR: Post about gradually working your way to buying better cars with cash, and on the way you realize you reached all your financial goals.

Way back in probably 2009 or so, I paid off the 2005 truck I bought new. It was the most basic model, a Ford Ranger at about $18,000, doesn’t even have power windows. It was a good truck, the payments were manageable on my pay, but the interest rate was 8.1% because I did not have great credit and needed a long loan. I *could* have bought used but I felt it was better to avoid buying someone else’s problem, as I had pretty much no cash for even moderately expensive repairs, but the payment was a manageable $202 each month.

I got a better job, put most of that extra money in savings. Figured getting rid of the 8.1% loan was a better idea, so I paid it off a bit early. Kept the truck a few more years. Figured since I was already doing without that $202 every month, I’d put it in a money market account for the next vehicle.

Fast forward a few years. I had moved the money to an investment account when the Great Recession hit and tanked my interest rate on the MMA. I invest in a few stocks, but I was too inexperienced and “hands on” and lost money the first year. I learned to invest in stable companies with dividends, picking only ten stocks and no more than two from each industry (tech, consumables, healthcare, energy, transportation, etc.), and leaving them alone. I keep putting in relatively small amounts, far less than I’d pay on a car payment. I EARN money instead of PAYING interest.

In 2014, I pay about $27,000 cash from that account for a Subaru Crosstrek. I keep that car for a decade. I continue putting money into the investment account until it reaches about $40,000, then COVID hits along with reduced work hours and I stop, figuring I have plenty to upgrade a bit and get an Outback, a little bigger than the Crosstrek and I can camp in it. I plan on keeping the Crosstrek ten years, then getting the Outback.

So for a few years I put nothing into this account, reinvesting the dividends but otherwise not paying much attention to it except to monitor my stock choices to be sure they’re still good choices. I don’t really pay much attention to the amount other than “this is probably enough to buy a new low or mid range Outback”.

My Crosstrek is now ten years old. I sell it Monday after fixing some major issues (had some bad service from independent shops, plus admittedly some neglect on my end). I get $10,000 for it because I’ve fixed all the important stuff and it has low mileage.

So I go shopping at the local Subaru dealership. I start looking at mid range Outbacks. While the salesman is looking up various models for comparisons, I log in to my investment account and FINALLY really pay attention to the total.

It was at $47,000.

I had $57,000 total to buy a car. 🤩

Buying a car is ALL this account is for. Other expenses are covered by similar tactics of saving. I *could* buy something cheaper. I *could* save that money for something else. But all other expenses were covered and I thought to myself “OMG…I can buy anything on this lot. WITH CASH! ANYTHING!”

So, since I wanted it for camping anyway, I fulfill a dream I’ve had since Subaru started building the Wilderness Outback.

I bought one. A pretty green one. With cash.

Nearly $48,000 in cash for a beautiful green Wilderness Outback with a moonroof and all sorts of other goodies.

Y’ALL.

I’ve been debt free for well over a decade. It’s nice to not have to worry about debt. It’s nice knowing I have a good retirement on the way, house is paid off, I can get healthcare from my company in retirement for pretty cheap, I have a hybrid policy for long term care should I need it.

Some of it’s been luck. Being in the right place at the right time, able to take advantage of an opportunity, no major healthcare issues yet, a stable, secure job.

But I never felt like I made it until this past Monday, when I was able to go to a new car dealership, buy EXACTLY what I wanted with no worry over money, and ask if they would take a personal check for nearly $48,000. 😁

As a young adult, I thought I’d never be able to buy even a good used car with all cash. I thought homeownership was far out of my reach. And I thought saving enough for retirement and the traveling is always dreamed of was just that, just a dream.

After moving to Indiana in 2004 to basically start over with nothing but $2000 and an old truck, nearly 25 years of living under my means, saving for retirement, and gradually building myself up to live the way I want in retirement, I feel like I finally “made it”.

I love her. We’re going to go on adventures. I’m naming her Pickles, because I have pickle buckets from Firehouse Subs in the garage and that’s what it smells like. New car, with a side of pickles and no debt.

[copperbadge]

Please ignore if needed, as I know it’s a little personal, but how are you saving for retirement? I just got my first big-person job (at 27) and am feeling behind/overwhelmed. Any advice?

Well first off, congratulations on the job! Also I never mind talking about finance, but thank you for considering that when asking :) 

I didn't really get to start saving saving until I was in my thirties, and even now what I do to plan for retirement is not necessarily the best plan for everyone. So I will talk about what I do, but first I'm going to recommend that if you really want to take retirement planning seriously you should speak to a financial advisor, especially if that Big Person Job comes with a significant salary. Your bank is a good place to start, or if the job comes with 401K, speak to the company administering the plan, who can generally provide you with someone who can at least advise you on your 401K. Also disclaimer, I am not a financial advisor and none of this is given in a professional context, these are just my thoughts.

There are a lot of ways you can plan for retirement -- a 401K through work, an IRA independent of that (basically a 401K you buy yourself), personal investments, savings accounts, and other more esoteric financial vehicles. The most common is the 401K, a retirement investment account where you put in a percentage of your paycheck and your company (usually) matches it. The money is then invested in various funds that will, at least this is the hope, earn enough interest to keep up with inflation.

My attitude towards my first 401K was that this was monopoly money, not real or meaningful. I had a fatalistic view of it, having just that year (2008) watched my parents, one of whom is a trained financial planner, lose half the value of their 401K in the economic collapse. But my work mandated a 3% contribution, so I bitterly paid in. Rather than throw the money in there and let Vanguard invest it for me, however, I decided to use this "fake" money to learn about investing. I studied how 401K investing works, learned about bonds and mutual funds and all the rest, and built a portfolio based on what I learned. In 2019 my account topped $100K, pretty decent considering I was paying in the minimum on a paycheck that was small to start with. It's not actually much to retire on yet, but I'm proud of having built it that far.

401K investing doesn't require the amount of research I did, to be fair. If you don't want to do a ton of work, most 401K administrators will have a "target" fund that you just throw your money into with the goal of retiring in the year attached to the fund. I still have a reasonable amount in my "2045" Target fund, which means in theory I should be able to retire in 2045, when I'll be 65. As I get older, the target fund's "risk tolerance" lowers, meaning I'll earn less but be less at risk to lose money should another economic catastrophe occur (frankly pretty likely). This is a perfectly decent way to invest if you don't care about investing or want a simpler life than mine. :D

ANYWAY the standard advice is to put as much as you possibly can into your 401K, because it comes out of your paycheck before taxes, and because your work will often match a certain amount, which is essentially free money (as long as you stay with the company until it "vests" which is basically "if you leave before a certain time period has passed, we get to take this money back"). This is not bad advice but if you're interested in striking out on your own, you should feel okay to take some and redirect it elsewhere, with the awareness that you're sometimes raising your risk of losing it in doing so.

You have a lot of options when it comes to investing outside of a 401K. I don't recommend the stock market because it's a mood ring we base the entire economy on, and it’s a dreadful way to try and make money. Right now is kind of a shitty time to have a savings account, honestly, since nothing is offering very high interest rates. I wouldn't do any long-term locked-in stuff like a CD, where you put $10K in and have to wait 10 years for a 2% return or whatever, because hopefully interest rates on savings will rise before 10 years are out. Right now, especially at the start of your career and given the economic climate, I would stay "liquid" if I were you. And for anything other than savings accounts, which is where I keep my non-401K savings at this point, you're really best off talking to a financial advisor, as I haven't done extensive research. (This will be "next steps" for me once I handle a few other issues.)

What I did was stash my cash in high-yield savings (high yield right now is earning like 0.5%, which is garbage compared to a few years ago but better than nothing). Because I really only just started having disposable income in late 2019, when I changed jobs, I currently have a lot of places I'm keeping money but no one place has a ton in it yet. Still, it may be instructional to talk about. Outside of my checking accounts, which I don't use for saving anything (they're just bills and expenses), I have as investments:

-- A traditional IRA. When I left my old job, I was going to a job where Vanguard wasn't offered as a 401K administrator. I like Vanguard, so instead of moving the money from my old 401K to my new one, I rolled it over into a Traditional IRA with Vanguard. It's the same setup as a 401K, it just now doesn't get any new money coming in (I could be paying into it pre-taxes but I'm not quite there yet).

-- My 401K with my new job. My job matches up to 3% so 3% is what I pay in. I should be paying in more but I'm not gonna because I like having a little spare cash to spend right now. Also some of the money I would be paying into this 401K was used to pay off all my previous debts and is now used to make extra payments on my mortgage, currently my only remaining debt.

-- A savings account with Chase, attached to my checking accounts. This account pays 0.1% interest, so I only keep $1000 in this account. This is an emergency fund if, for example, somehow I end up overdrawn on checking, or I'm in a situation where I need a few hundred dollars immediately. It’s not meant to earn much, it’s there to be a cushion in case of sudden falls. 

-- Two savings accounts with a credit union, in my case DCU. One is extremely high-yield (6% interest on the first $1K, 0.25% on anything after that) and one is less high-yield (0.5% but there's no maximum). So I keep $1K in the first account, earning $60 a year, and every month I put $200-$500 from my paycheck into the second account. This is my primary savings at this point and will probably remain so unless I can find something as convenient with a significantly higher interest rate.

-- One savings account with Betterment, an online-only bank. I am actually slowly emptying this one because when I joined, 3 years ago, they were paying 4%, but when the pandemic hit it dropped to 2%, then 0.3%, and then to 0.1%, which to me says they're in trouble. And if money I kept there could be earning more over in DCU's account, why not? 

-- In theory my home, which I bought and am paying a mortgage on, is an investment. Given I lived through the bottom falling out of the housing market in 2008, I don't view it as such, especially since while it is appreciating in value it's not keeping up with inflation. Still, I bring it up because technically purchasing a home is a huge investment, and you're likely to be told as such when speaking to a professional. I can't recommend viewing real estate that way, because a) it will make you insane and b) you can't depend on the housing market any more than the stock market. All that said I do recommend buying a home if you're in a position to do so and know you'll be somewhere for a while. Mine was a huge headache to buy and given my luck will undoubtedly be a huge headache to sell, but I don't regret it and I like being able to paint, install new appliances, have pets, etc.

Anyway, I hope this helps! It's one of those areas that require either a lot of research or the services of a professional, but that just means there's a lot of room to play. Good luck!

[rosarenn]

All things are ephemeral

I've been thinking a lot about the illusion of certainty and the way it holds us back from achieving great things.

There's this idea that if something is temporary, transient, that it isn't worth putting any effort into. That something is only worth your time if it endures, if it's permanent. That the investment must be followed by a payoff or why bother.

I am very much talking out of my own experience here, as a white settler/colonizer raised in a more or less middle class family. I know my experience is not universal, and I am still going to talk about "we" and "us" because I want to include myself in this group, and I'm noticing a pattern that I want to talk about. If you have never experienced certainty, or are in a stable position for the first time in your life, this is probably not about you, for example. Take what you need and compost the rest.

I'm reading Nine-Tenths of the Law: Property and Resistance in the United States by Hannah Dobbz, which discusses squatting in the US. One of the themes that comes up over an over again is the idea that because a squat is temporary, because the police could kick you out at any moment, because you don't have ownership or equity or any kind of title on your side and you could lose everything in a moment's notice, that it doesn't make any sense to improve the home you're living in. That the work would be wasted, and who wants to work their ass off and not reap the benefits? Why would you bother?

And this, to me, is so incredibly short-sighted, and represents an internalization of the logic of capitalism. Why would you bother? Because you are fucking living there. You're living there, you're passing your limited time on this planet in this space, and why would you live in a dump if you don't have to, if you don't like living in a dump, if you would feel better, be happier, enjoy your time there just a little bit more than if you didn't clean it up. It's the same reason I've painted countless rental apartments - even though I don't know how long I'll be there, while I'm there I eventually get sick at looking at plain white walls. It's why I'm planning to paint a mural in my rental apartment - it will bring me daily joy for as long as I am here. It's why I decorated my office when I still had an office. Because if this is where I am passing my time, I want it to be a little more pleasant.

We've so internalized the logic of the state and the market that we have this illusion that home-owning provides certainty, that it makes sense to invest in a home you own because it can't be taken away at a moment's notice. But it's a lie. The bank could repossess your home. The sewer could back up. A flood or a wildfire could make your home vanish in a moment. With climate change these events are only going to increase in frequency, as will the unrest and failed states and all the other forms of violent dispossession that that entails. The entire stock market could blow itself to pieces tomorrow, the currency we've all agreed to use could become worthless pieces of paper, anything can happen. I could die tomorrow. I could die today. There is no certainty, any where, ever. Anything I work for could be for nothing - nothing except for what I make of it here and now. I want to live before I die.

I think about the way I've been indoctrinated to delay gratification to the extreme. That's what the promise of capitalism to the middle class is, after all. Work tirelessly for all of your productive years, save your coins prudently, invest them in the stock market for the future and never take out your principle because compound interest is magic and you'd be a fool to forego that sweet, sweet "free" interest income. And then, and only then, you can retire for a few years and live a tiny sliver of your life free from the constant grind of daily waged labour. If someone is not able to make ends meet, I was taught, it's because they are too loose with their spending, they aren't able to delay gratification long enough for the real payout, the poor dears. Scrupulously saving, denying ourselves the momentary joys of right now in order to chase a possible future prosperity, is positioned as a moral good.

Of course this is a lie, and a terrible way to live (even as it is incredibly privileged). I lived this way for years and I'm only now beginning to come to terms with it. There's so much grief there. How much did I miss out on? Think of all the joy, vitality, and the things that make life worth living that I denied myself - and for what? To chase certainty in the future, because I couldn't accept the ephemerality of today.

There's a delicate balance needed here, of course. There's an argument to be made that what we need is more delayed gratification, not less. The constant churning consumption, the endless extraction from the earth and our bodies, putting today's profits ahead of tomorrow's, or even above the survival of our own children - these are features of capitalism and they are destroying us.

But they need to sell us this lie, that if we work hard today we can be happy tomorrow, to keep us working. Because if we truly looked at horrors of this reality, if we truly knew in our bones that everything we have today could be gone tomorrow, that everything in life is fleeting - would you still go to work, day after day after day? I know I sure wouldn't. Even though I don't know what I would do to survive instead. Even though stepping into that unknown is terrifying. Even though I have no answers, I would have to take that leap.

I think, too, about the way I sometimes see people talk about revolution - and I include myself in this group. That until we are ready to make a global revolution, until we are all but guaranteed success, until the moment we reach critical mass, all we can do is wait. Maybe we agitate, maybe we form unions and organizations and try to spread the word, but until success is certain we can't act, not truly. I see this more in communist circles than in anarchist ones, and it was especially present in the critiques of the temporary autonomous zones that popped up in the midst of last summer's uprisings - they would never succeed, they would be quickly dismantled, and thus were doomed to failure and shouldn't even be attempted. As if there was no value in the experiences, however fleeting. As if the way we live our lives is irrelevant. As if a thing bringing you joy is not enough justification in itself.

Even though I skew more towards anarchism, I can still feel this attitude infecting my own thinking. I don't want to try to unionize my workplace because it will fail and I'll get fired and it won't matter, really, anyways. I don't want to talk openly about my politics when I know people don't agree with me, because what's the point when I already know I can't change their minds. What's the point of guerrilla gardening when the city can just come by with a weed whacker and destroy our labour. So on and so on ad nauseum, every endeavour doomed to be temporary and thus, automatically, a failure.

I think of my friend who spent the past two summers building up an incredible garden, who now has to move, suddenly, before the end of the growing season. My first reaction was that it was such a waste, that she had put in so much effort and time and money and now wouldn't even be there to collect the final harvest, that it would be better if she hadn't done the planting, somehow. As if she hasn't taken immense pleasure and pride in her garden for the past two years. As if she hasn't harvested throughout the whole summer. As if the harvest she planted suddenly winks out of existence if the benefits go to someone other than her. As if this somehow invalidates everything that came before. But this line of thinking is horseshit. Someone will still eat those vegetables. If nothing else, the birds and the beasties will love eating what she has grown. She learned so much and will be able to carry that knowledge forward with her. On and on, there was great value in this venture even if she will not be there to reap every last piece of the harvest. And if it wasn't a sudden move, it could have been a drought, or a violent storm, or an infestation, or theft. Or or or. The possibilities are endless, results are never guaranteed, and if we are only working to achieve an ends, we might need to take a good long look at what we're up to.

I wonder if the roots of this ideology stretch all the way back to the agricultural revolution. Ephemerality would have been the day to day lived experience of hunter-gatherers. Here today, gone tomorrow, pick the berries now, while they're ripe and before the birds get them. But agriculture? Prepare the field, plant the seeds, water, tend, wait. wait. wait. then finally harvest. Finally finally your labour has paid off and you can eat. Careful though because there won't be another harvest until next year, so be careful, ration, wait. Would you plant the field if you didn't know if you'd be around to harvest it? That's a tough sell, for sure.

I think of flatwormposting, on instagram, who announced suddenly that they would delete their account today. That they felt like they had accomplished what they wanted to accomplish, that they were complete, and ready to move on. The immediate response, of course, was no, don't go, or if you must go, please don't delete the account. Leave it up, to sit in perpetuity, an archive of your work and legacy. Please, you did good work, please let us keep it. As if deleting their account deletes their work. As if they won't carry it forward with them. As if people who interacted with the account while it was up weren't changed in some small way. As if a thing that is temporary - which is all things - is somehow less important than a permanent thing.

And their response was simply, all things are ephemeral. All things are ephemeral, everything could be gone tomorrow. If they didn't delete this account, instagram could. A hacker could take it. Nothing is certain, everything is a constant renegotiation. Given that, what now?

What now? How do we want to live before we die? What choices might we make if nothing was certain? What risks would we take? How would we live our lives if we knew, deeply, truly, in an embodied way, that another world is possible, as the Nap Bishop constantly reminds us? That the continuation of this one as it is, that the status quo is not and has never been certain? That each day we wake up we make this world again, and we could simply chose to make it differently, to paraphrase David Graeber. If we no longer privileged that which is over that which could be. If we no longer held onto the illusion of certainty and control and permanence.

All things are ephemeral. What now?

[tonystarktogo]

“It’s never gonna be over.” They are a practiced liar in it only for her own gain, an amoral mercenary who doesn’t play well with others and a business shark on a warpath. [If there is such a thing as a match made in Hell, they are it.]

*

Natasha stares at the number on her bank account — well, one of them — in stunned silence, too numb to feel the happiness, joy, ecstatic shock that is probably appropriate for a moment such as this. 

As a grifter — a damn good one at that, Natasha strives for nothing less than perfection in her chosen craft — Natasha is used to being surrounded by wealth and money, extravagance and shameless posturing. It’s basically her job description. 

But there’s a lot of zeros and then there’s a hell of a lot of zeros. It’s too much, the amount far too high to feel real. The kind of money that goes beyond wealthy, beyond filthy, stinking rich. Tony’s rich, Natasha knows that. Everyone knows that. Or, well, he used to be. Back before he sold his properties and put all his money into saving Stark Industries, only to turn around and retire from his position, sell his stock to his successor and disappear out of the public eye.

[Everyone in the industry knows there’s more to it than that. Everyone knows there’s something shady about the way Tony Stark left his own company — some say of his own volition, some say his hand was forced. No one is stupid enough to believe that the murder of his assistant preceding those changes is in any way or shape a coincidence.

But Natasha is one of the few who has run into Tony Stark since then — or rather the ruin of what used to be Tony Stark. He goes by Anton, these days, and that he smiles a hell of a lot less is the least of the changes. As such Natasha isn’t forced to rely on unconfirmed rumors and gossip. She knows damn well that Stane did something unforgivable. And didn’t have the smarts — or the guts — to put Tony Stark down when he could.

He’ll regret that weakness one day, of that Natasha has no doubt. If there is a man out there, that will one day turn Tony Stark into a killer, it is Obadiah Stane.]

The point is, even for the old Tony Stark this would amount to an indecent fuck-ton of money. For your usual mortal — which Natasha in spite of all her talents is — it’s the kind of sum you vaguely dream about because you can’t even picture what it might look like. What it might mean.

Now here they are.

“We’re gonna be set for life when this is all over,” Natasha mutters. Tries to work through the confusing mixture of disbelief, shock, relief, exhilaration and amusement this seemingly innocuous number evokes in her. To understand how she feels about this, not just the situation itself but its implications.

She’ll never have to work again. She’ll never have to do anything she doesn’t want to again. And — far more important — she’ll be able to do anything she wants. 

This? This is what Natasha’s been working towards, been dreaming of all her life. It’s what every grifter wants, really. Every criminal even. This is the mythical big score. The one everyone always talks about and most never, ever achieve.

[It should feel more satisfying, shouldn’t?]

And yet, despite all that Natasha isn’t sure what to do with it. She’d assumed it would take her several more years yet to reach this moment. [And even then, the payoff she would’ve considered acceptable would’ve been much, much lower.] It feels almost too easy.

Natasha forces herself to tear her gaze away from the screen. The number won’t change and it’s not wrong, she’s already run those checks a dozen times. While her temporary colleagues have remained quiet — perhaps caught up in their own shock, though considering their identity, that doesn’t seem likely.

Anton isn’t smiling.

It’s such an odd, little thing to stick out to her, and yet it’s the first thing Natasha notices. After all, people usually smile when they’re holding a payout of more millions than they knows what to do with. Not that it surprises Natasha.

[She hasn’t seen Anthony Stark smile since the day Pepper Pott bled out in his arms.]

Anton’s staring at her now, not avoiding eye contact for once. An unvoiced challenge. [Natasha’s never been good of letting those go unanswered. And it irks her, just a bit, that he knows her well enough to know this already, even though she’s already decided she doesn’t mind playing along. For a bit.]

"There’s no way Hammer put this much aside," Natasha states the obvious. "Even if we’d taken his company for everything it got, no way would we have made this much money off one job."

"Or maybe you’ve been working the wrong jobs." Anton smirks when she rolls her eyes in response. "Come on, I’m a motherfucking Stark. You can’t seriously think I don’t have any tricks up my sleeve. Playing with the stock market? I’ve been doing that shit since I was fourteen and contrary to what my esteemed former board members like to think, I’ve learned a lot over the past decade."

And the thing is, Anton wears casual arrogance like second skin and just like his infernal goatee and those ridiculously fancy suits he’s so fond of, he makes it look good.

As if to underline Natasha’s point, Anton continues with a simple "All of this?" accompanied by a careless wave of his hand. "There was no way I was gonna let us walk out of this job with anything less. It’s the least of what we’re owed."

There’s something in Anton’s eyes that sends a by now familiar thrill down her back  – because Natasha knows that cold edge. Knows Anton’s brilliant mind that constantly works on fifteen problems at once. Knows even now, with this little game of theirs finished [a stunning victory, as though it could’ve been anything else] he is already setting up the next move. [The next target.]

Natasha has met men on a warpath before and Anthony Edward Stark meets every single criteria. She doesn’t need to understand how he thinks exactly — doubts anyone could, the man’s been called many things, but his unofficial title as a genius has been hard-earned — to know that somewhere in that pretty, pretty head of his, Anton’s keeping book of every offense committed against him and his. Is slowly but surely working through a list only he knows the full extend of.

[Stane was a fool. Part of Natasha — the part that has watched Anton break himself apart over the last fourteen days — hopes she’ll be there when Anton finally, inevitably turns his attention to him.]

But now is not the time for these things. With that in mind, Natasha forces a teasing grin on her lips, keeps her eyes shadowed but her words light. "Yes, yes, we all know you’re amazing."

Even Barnes snorts at the dryness of her tone, though Anton, at least, is unbothered.

"And don’t you forget it."

"Well, then." Natasha catches herself before she involuntary glances down at her phone’s screen again, still not convinced that this money is real. Is hers. "I suppose this is it."

Catches the eyes of Barnes, then Anton because they deserve that much. Working with competent partners is always a pleasure. And though Barnes prefers too much brute force for her taste and there’s a ruthlessness to Anton’s machinations that goes far beyond Natasha’s own cool practicality, she’s enjoyed this job. [More than she thought she would.]

"It could be."

To her genuine surprise, it’s Anton who says those words. [The same Anton whose first words to Natasha were 'I don’t do teams’ with casual derision.] But there’s no doubt he means them — means what they imply — else Anton wouldn’t have spoken up at all.

A quick glance towards Barnes confirms what Natasha has assumed: He’ll let her take the lead on this conversation, if only because it means he won’t have to talk himself. Barnes is a man of very few words indeed.

"What else is there to do?" Natasha obligingly asks. "The job is done. We’re done. It’s over."

[She knows those words are a lie, of course. Knows that big score or not, it was never just about the money. You don’t become a world-class grifter wanted in seven countries and counting just because you need money. Maybe that’s how it started — and sure, the riches are nice to have — but Natasha loves it. Loves the rush. Loves reading the mark, enticing it, blinding it. Loves pulling off a job and getting away with it against all odds.

It’s been less than ten minutes, but Natasha doesn’t need time. She already knows that, millions or not, she won’t stop now. Wouldn’t know where to start, even if she wanted to.]

“It’s never gonna be over.” Anton says it absently, matter-of-fact. "Not for me."

A simple acknowledgement of a truth Natasha already knows. [Men like Anton, they don’t stop half-way through. They don’t stop at all. And perhaps she should know better than to get involved with someone so hell-bent on revenge, but. Hell was always gonna be her ultimate destination anyway. Why not enjoy the ride?]

The way Anton looks at her, at Barnes, there’s no missing the implication. The unspoken offer. The warning. 

You can walk away now if you want. [Get out while you still can.]

A sensible person would’ve taken him up on that offer. A sensible person would walk away.

“Good.” Barnes hums. “I’d be bored to death if I didn’t have to pull your ass out of a fire.” Light and easy, everything he shouldn’t be and usually isn’t. [Like he isn’t committing to a cause without a take-back option.]

Natasha thinks she hates Barnes for that, a little. For the light in his eyes that never dims, no matter how much blood he spills. For how easy he makes it seem, like he really just makes that decision in the spur of the moment, because he likes Anton well enough and doesn’t mind sticking around some more.

[Like he doesn’t care at all about all the ways in which this can and will blow up in his face.]

Anton raises a questioning eyebrow at Natasha. She licks her lips. Thinks of the life she can afford now, somewhere far, far away, without an extradition agreement to any of the countries she wouldn’t like to revisit. The comfortable, even extravagant life she could lead. [Thinks of the bloodied smile on Barnes lips, the way Anton’s eyes lit up when Hammer broke.] Shrugs.

“You’re not completely incompetent. Sure. What’s one more job?”

*

AN: I hope you’re all safe and healthy and that this fic will be a pleasant distraction for everyone who’s currently trying very hard to keep calm and carry on. Please take care of yourselves, lovelies!

[jjkfire]

hello, do u have an estimate of when the new chapter of sweet saccharine will be published?🥺

haha uhhh i honestly can’t give you a date, sorry! do join the sweet saccharine tag list if you haven’t already so i can tag y’all whenever i post it. but realistically, try me will be updated before sweet saccharine, so.... there’s that haha. if you haven’t seen it, you can go to the bottom of this post to see a preview of the next SS chapter.

i’m gonna put the full reason as to why i am taking so long to write anything... tldr is that i’m just doing a ton of different things atm! but you can read the full story down below

I'll be honest and say that my writing has been sitting on the back burner for some time. i get in a few 100 or so words here and there but I haven't dedicated like a full day to writing in a while. the truth is, I'm really so busy at work!!! and this working from home thing has my work schedule all messed up. it just feels like my work day is stretched because I can't focus so I end up working for a much longer time 😔

also i feel like I have to learn 501 things to keep up with my job but you guys know me haha I love to learn anyway so it's all good but it's just that it eats into my writing time.

and 🤪 I know you guys are tired of hearing me say this but I've really doubled down on learning how to trade and invest. and before you scroll away, no it’s not a scam. warren buffett built his fortune through investing. and i just really want some of you to know that you can generate income with investing so please please please take advantage of it. of course i’m not going to be as rich as warren buffett lmfao but it's a really nice hobby that pays me and writing unfortunately doesn't. like... I love writing! it's amazing!! but it's just the amount of time put in versus the money I get from it is like zero... which is totally fine lol I don't think people want to pay for my writing anyway HAHA and yes, yes, not everything has to be about making money. but i so so so hope at least like one person here followed my advice and invested in that crash in March (my posts were on feb 29 and march 15th respectively and the market hit the lowest point for the year on march 23rd). i literally put my money where my mouth is and bought when i said to buy.

i bought shares of square (ticker: $SQ) at 45 dollars in March and it is 142 dollars today (as of writing, August 13th). meaning I made 97 dollars from one share alone. and if i sell it tomorrow even minus tax it's like give or take 86 dollars profit. all this from just clicking buy. if you can buy one bts concert ticket worth 300 bucks, and considering the concert was cancelled this year, you could’ve bought 6 shares of square with that money and you’ll be 510 dollars richer today. or if you’d rather buy a company you’re more familiar with, had you bought one Apple share at 230 in march and you sold today at 459 dollars, you would have made, minus tax about 201 dollars. (and tesla was 361 dollars in March and it’s 1620 dollars today... yeah that’s NOT a typo). anyway these returns are soooo much more than what your bank is giving you. your bank gives you next to nothing. let me be generous and say right now (since they have severely cut interest rates) they give you 1.8% interest... if you put 300 dollars in the bank, you will accumulate 5.4 dollars in interest at the end of a one-year period....... versus $270 to buy 6 shares of square and then $510 profit if you sold today. do you see what i’m saying???? (you can also do paper trading first if you are scared. meaning use pretend money but it will follow real market prices so you can see how you fare in the market). I'm digressing from your question but!!! financial independence, we want it.

so if I can get just one of you to care about personal finance or investing, my life is made. it’s never too late (unless you are close to retiring then you should think hard about it) and never too early to start. i started in my senior year of college and that’s only because i’m not American and had to get a ssn. if you’re american.... and you have money that you know won’t severely affect you if you lose it, I highly suggest learning about investing. but, make sure you have a solid personal finance foundation too. the tldr is pay off high interest debt, track your expenses in excel or mint or whatever just track it so you can see where you’re wasting money and where you can cut back, take advantage of cash back on credit cards, never pay your credit card bills late, have a 3-6 month emergency fund set up, and then finally learn how to invest. once you do that, if you really want to you can graduate to learning how to trade options. which i do! and this means on top of what i make from investing, i make a few extra bucks every week.

[anything i said is not financial advice. as in don’t go out and buy square right now just because i talked about it. i’m asking you guys to learn about investing. do your due diligence about the companies. do you believe in them? do you think they’ll be here in 10 years? are you planning to invest in the company long term or you have an exit price where you want to cash out quick profit? do you want to do a bogleheads 3 fund portfolio? are you someone who wants to put your money in individual stocks or put your money into an all encompassing etf like VOO or SPY? it’s a tried and true method and investing in an etf on average over a 20 year period gets you more money than stock pickers or some hedge funds and definitely your bank as it returns about 7% on average every year. just learn!!! it’s not as complicated as it seems i swear]

anyway, that is the long winded answer on why i haven’t written in so long.... but please learn about investing please please please please. if you’re american you have so much more at your disposal aka your roth IRA account (you don’t have to pay taxes on your gains if you invest with this account but you can only take out the principal amount. after you are 59 and a half you can take out everything at zero tax cost) and also your 401k (if your company offers it and is doing matching, take the match PLEASE). you might get a second chance at investing at discounted prices again if the fed ever lets the market collapse in some sense lol but i think they will prop it till the election at least. anyway a financial crisis appears every give or take 10 years. also as long as you do dollar cost averaging, you should be fine. think if you bought at all time highs mid feb this year then held your stocks, bought some more when the market went through the shitter in march... then as of writing, right now, you’ll still be making profit if you sold. On August 13th, SPY (an etf that tracks the S&P500) literally closed two dollars shy from the all time high which was in mid to late feb of this year. so uhhh if it isn’t already clear, please learn to invest. whether you wanna enter the market now or wait till post election is completely up to you but PLEASE LEARN. idk if any of you ever read my financial rambles till the end but if you have questions you can message me and i can always direct you to the appropriate resources. i can show you all the videos and articles and posts i’ve read to date. don’t wait to start learning. you can learn and then wait to invest but whatever the case is, if you already have the knowledge you’ll be ready whenever there’s a good chance to invest. okay????? 

[novoplata]

How I saved $200K in 6 years

I’m a late starter when it comes to saving money. My 20s had seen me living from paycheque to paycheque and splurging on unnecessary things, which I’d later regret. But when I touched 30, and finally moved out of my parents’ house, it finally dawned on me that I really have to be more financially responsible. So, I started investing in a unit trust fund and doing the boring work of budgeting. So far, from January 2014 to December 2019 (six years), I have managed to save up $177K in cash and earned a cumulative of $23K in dividends over the years.

I understand that $200K is not a lot of money for some. Therefore, if you’re an heir to a multimillion-dollar corporation, this post is NOT for you. But for those of you like me who didn’t come from a rich family and had to start from scratch, I hope this will help!

1. Track your spending

So, just like if you’re trying to lose weight, the first thing you get told to do is to keep a food diary so you can monitor all the junks that you unknowingly put into your body. I do the same with my spending – I keep a diary of what I’ve spent on and how much money I have left to spend in a certain month. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but after six years, I’ve started to enjoy doing this. You don’t necessarily need to keep all your receipts, but if you pay by credit card, you can usually check the statement online in real-time and it’ll let you know how much you’ve spent in a day/week.

2. Stick to your budget

I give myself an $800 allowance to spend on food and groceries each month. Therefore, my daily meals budget is set to $26.70. Sounds really tight, I know, but it forces me to be really creative and forces me to make my own food instead of getting takeouts.

I also make a point of saving up at least 35% of my income each month since six years ago. So, my monthly expenditure breakdown would look like this:

Take home monthly pay (I’m a writer) - $5800 minus retirement savings = $5134 nett

Payables (mortgage, car & insurance ) - $1753.85

Food & groceries - $800

Miscellaneous (phone bill, gas, Sephora treat, etc.) - $500

Balance to save - $2080

I also do regular freelance jobs outside my working hours. Usually, part of the proceeds will also go into my unit trust fund, the rest into my ‘ travelling piggy bank’.

3. Pick good investment vehicles

They say that the way to get rich(er) is by investing in property and the stock market. Since I’m not very well versed in the stock market, I chose what other Bumiputeras in my country (Malaysia) would choose: to save in the Amanah Saham Bumiputera (ASB) unit trust. ASB has delivered steady returns of 5.5% to 7.5% over the past few years, for people like me who are rather risk-averse, it’s the best choice.

With a steady average monthly investment of $2500 (starting from 0), I’ve managed to earn $23K in cumulative dividends, which is much better compared to if I were to park my money in my savings account.

4. Save your big-ticket purchases for the year-end

Or whenever your investment return is announced. For the past few years, I’ve been planning my travels around December so that when the ASB dividends are announced in early January, I can withdraw my dividend to pay for my flight and accommodation. This way, I wouldn’t have to dip into my savings too much to go travelling.

The same goes with any big-ticket items that I’d been eyeing: I’ll wait till Christmas to splurge. They’d usually be on sale by then anyway, so, WIN!

5. Learn to thrift shop!

Prior to COVID-19, I’ve purchased almost all of my clothes and handbags at various thrift stores around my city. I love items, so thrifting works for me. The dresses that I buy normally sell at $5-$10 and the bags from $35 to $50. So far, I’ve managed to get a really pretty vintage Coach Dinky bag for less than $100 and a pair of suede Hush Puppies Oxfords for only $20.

I’m not sure how thrift stores would fare post-COVID-19. Personally, I’d still thrift-shop, but will take extra precautions to clean and clean.

6. Monetize your hobby

When you don’t earn enough, there’s only so much to save after a while. This is why, as my spending increased a few years ago, after purchasing my first home and my second car (having given my old one to my sister), I realized that I have to take part-time jobs to earn more. The easiest, more enjoyable way to do this is by monetizing your hobby.

If you like baking, perhaps you can start selling your baked goods. If you love cleaning, perhaps you can offer your cleaning service to lazy people – like me. For me, I took a part-time job coaching beginners and women’s Jiu-Jitsu for two years from 2014 to 2016. Then, I took freelance writing and translating jobs from various companies.

If you reside in a developing country like me, it’s also good to look for remote jobs based in the US or Europe as the pay is typically higher. You may have to adjust to the time difference like I did when I worked remotely for a company based in Greece; my working hours were 3 pm - 11 pm MY time. But if you’re single with places to see and no one to date, this would be the perfect arrangement to earn more money!

7. Evolve your craft

When I started working as a writer, my so-called forte was travel writing, as I worked for a local tourism promotion corporation. It was a fun job to do when you’re young, but as I crawl into my late 20s, I realized that technical writing is where the money is if I want to earn more as a writer. So I switched gear into technical writing.

Today, SEO content writers are more in demand than ever, and it’s great as there are many companies that are hiring freelance content writers remotely. You can even be hired by multiple companies at a time – like I have for years now. Just be smart to manage your time so that you won’t get overwhelmed by work!

So, whatever you’re good at, work at getting better at it and find out where the money’s at. Good luck!

[bitchesgetriches]

Hello! Thank you so much for making this blog exist in the world; it has helped me so so much!! I had a question about investing that I hope isn't too silly. I'm 24 and just started my first Real Adult job about 6 months ago; I work at a nonprofit so don't have a particularly high income now but I have about 7k in savings from working while in college, some of which I recently moved to a high-yield savings account with Ally thanks to you guys! My question is whether (1/3)

           I should start investing now or if it would be better to wait until I have at least 6 months worth of expenses in my emergency fund first (about 10k for me since I have a pretty high rent). I’ve always been pretty intimidated by the stock market but I know it’s one of the best ways to grow my money. My main worry is that if a big emergency comes up I’ll be in a tight spot since investing is a long-term game and my understanding is that (2/3)     

           there’s a good chance of losing money if I have to sell stocks too soon. I hope this question made sense! I’m trying to be better about not just letting my savings sit in my checking account but I’m quite anxious when it comes to money so any advice you can provide is much appreciated! Anyway I hope you both are doing well and thank you again for everything! (3/3)            

You’re crushing it. Your understanding of the pros and cons of investing is spot-on and I’m super impressed with the thought you’re putting into this decision.     

Start by reevaluating what you need for an emergency fund. If it’s six months of expenses, that’s fine, but don’t just save that amount because someone else told you to. Here’s how to decide on the size of your emergency fund:

You Must Be This Big to Be an Emergency Fund

Next, you say you have a big kid job. Does this also mean you have a big kid retirement plan? Because you should absolutely be enrolled in your employer’s 401(k) plan if they offer it. Here’s why:

If You Don't Use Your 401k You're Losing Money in 3 Different Ways

A retirement fund is actually a form of investing! And in my opinion the benefits outweigh the potential risks. So set yourself up with a retirement fund through your employer if one’s available. And if it’s not, get yourself an IRA. Here’s how that works:

Investing Deathmatch: Traditional IRA vs. Roth IRA

Dafuq Is a Retirement Plan and Why Do You Need One?

How to Save for Retirement When You Make Less Than $30,000 a Year  

Lastly, I’m giving you some homework. Read this to decide if and when you’re ready to invest outside of a retirement fund:

Ask the Bitches: How Can I Make Myself Financially Secure Before Age 30?

[jareddillian]

How Unrealistic Return Assumptions Are Ruining Your Portfolio

There is no shortage of stupid things in the financial market. But probably the worst thing people can do is to have unrealistic return assumptions.

Question to you: On a long-term basis, what annual returns do you expect in a broad-based stock market index?

6%

8%

10%

12%

The answer is E.

We have no freaking clue!

All we know is what stocks have returned in the past. We have no idea what they will return in the future. The conditions that led to prior returns may not be present for future returns.

Stocks Might Not Return the Long-Term Average

Most people will tell you that you can expect to earn 8% from the stock market per year. That is about what it has returned historically.

So, a little perspective. That 8% annual return (over a period of about 100 years or so) easily beats any other stock market in the world. Why is that?

It’s because America has the rule of law, property rights, all that jazz.

We have something special here in the United States that other countries don’t have. We have a legal framework that protects private property. This lets financial markets flourish.

You see that in varying degrees as you travel around the world. The really dastardly places don’t have stock markets at all.

Anyway, it makes sense that a loss of respect for private property rights or the rule of law might lead to diminished stock market performance. That is one reason the stock market might not return 8%.

I can think of a bunch of other reasons why stock markets might not return in the future what they have in the past.  And a big one is that they have just become so freaking expensive.

When stocks get overvalued, forward returns go down. Few people disagree with this.

There are lots of smart people out there who expect future stock market returns to be much lower than they have been in the past. It is not just me being a crank.

Stupid Assumptions Lead to Irresponsible Decisions

The problem is, people take this 8% number and extrapolate it out in the future. They break out Microsoft Excel for the first and only time to figure out how much they need to save every month in order to retire at age X.

The FIRE dillweeds have made big news because they think that you can retire at age 35. And yes, they are relying on that generous 8% number (or higher) to reverse engineer a future standard of living.

This is dangerous. If you have unrealistic return assumptions for the stock market, you will:

Retire earlier, when you should actually retire     later—and you will run out of money.

Consume more, when you should be consuming less—and you     will run out of money.

Invest, instead of paying down debt, which could result in capital losses to go along with     increasing debt balances—and you will run out of money.

The worst example of this comes from a competitor of mine. In his book Total Money Makeover, he claims that an allocation to “growth-stock mutual funds” will lead to 12% returns.

After all, the main small-cap growth ETF (IWO) is down about 19% from the highs—losses that are difficult to recover from.

Not to mention: in that book, there is no discussion of an allocation to bonds.

A 12% assumption for stock market returns is irresponsible. It’s ignorant of decades of global financial markets history.

The stock market is not a bank account! It doesn’t pay interest. It isn’t a magic money machine. Average investors can find themselves in a position where they sustain losses over a very long period of time.

I’ll tell you how crazy this is. If someone came up to me with a pitch book for a hedge fund claiming they could make 12% a year, I would probably report them to the SEC.

The best, smartest, most amazing investors in the world have a hell of a time making 6-8% over Fed funds.

Have Realistic Return Assumptions

So what are realistic return assumptions? Well, I think 5% for stocks is reasonable, and maybe 3% for bonds. So a 50/50 portfolio will get you to about 4%.

Sounds like absolute crap, but that is the reality. If financial assets only return 4% going forward, what are people going to do?

They are going to have to save more.

This is the no-spin zone. People should spend a lot less time thinking and dreaming about 8 or 10 or 12% returns, and more time thinking about shovelling cash into a bank account. There they can link it up to Treasury Direct and earn 2.5% on Treasury bills risk-free.

Sure, 2.5% would be suboptimal, but not the worst thing in the world. It’s capital preservation.

Here’s the real reason not to be loaded up on stocks and hoping for a 12% return—when the 19% drawdown comes, you won’t panic into a diaper and sell, at which point the compounding comes to an end.

My ETF 20/20 readers know, the goal is to design a portfolio that you can sit in during good times and bad—so you can keep compounding.

Please temper those return assumptions. The stock market does not magically puke out 8–12% a year to a bunch of passengers along for the ride.

This is not a case of me being pessimistic. We can’t possibly know what stocks will return going forward, so we should probably prepare for the worst.

Grab Jared Dillian’s Exclusive Special Report, Investing in the Age of the Everything Bubble

As a Wall Street veteran and former Lehman Brothers head of ETF trading, Jared Dillian has traded through two bear markets.

Now, he’s staking his reputation on a call that a downturn is coming. And soon.

In this special report, you will learn how to properly position your portfolio for the coming bloodbath.

Claim your FREE copy now.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 10/8/21 - NO TIME TO DIE, THE RESCUE, MASS, LAMB, NIGHTSTREAM, and More

It's a very special week here at the Weekend Warrior because October 10 will be my 20th (!!) anniversary as a film critic and the 20th anniversary of me doing a weekly movie preview column, mostly about box office but also with reviews and other stuff. Pretty cool, huh? (I’m celebrating this occasion by writing this column to the music of Public Enemy’s Apocalypse 91 which is 30 years old this month.)

Of course, this column wasn't called The Weekend Warrior in the early days, as I was instead doing "Half-Assed Analysis” at a long-gone Hollywood Stock Exchange fan site called HSJ.org. But then, it was a conversation with Mirko P. from ComingSoon.net (R.I.P.) that got me on the track of changing the name to "The Weekend Warrior" even though it would be a year before I would actually bring it to ComingSoon for 12 ½ wonderful years. The column has gone through a number of transformations and evolutions and iterations over the years, sometimes it being called something different just 'cause I didn't want to go through the ordeal of explaining to one of my bosses at a website that "The Weekend Warrior” is my own, and if I leave, it goes with me.

Anyway, I have taken a few weeks off over the years, particularly earlier this year when it just didn't seem a good time to be trying to predict box office, and I was starting to get burnt out on reviews. Now, the column is kind of back to being mostly about box office but with a few reviews, which is how I've always intended it.

Who knows if I'm going to continue this on that much longer, because honestly, there's no money and very little reward, and it does take a lot of time to write this up each week, especially with all the work I have to do for Below the Line. Anyway, for now, I'm going to keep it going, and we'll see how it goes. But Happy 20th Anniversary to me, and I can promise you… there won't be 20 more. NO FUCKING WAY.

Before we get to this week’s theatrical releases, I feel the need to mention the first of a bunch of October horror film festivals, as NIGHTSTREAM will begin on Thursday and run through Oct. 13. This is an amazing streaming horror/genre film festival that was instituted last year by four festivals, the Boston Underground Film Festival, the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, the North Bend Film Festival, and the Overlook Film Festival when all four were cancelled due to COVID. Some of these are still happening this year as physical in-person festivals but Nighstream continues on. Some of the guests at this year’s Nightstream are The Green Knight director David Lowery; Akela Cooper, who wrote the recent James Wan horror film, Malignant; horror and special make-up FX legend Greg Nicotero, who is also the showrunner on the Creepshow anthology series, and more.

There are so many movies and events going on in the week of Nightstream but some of the highlights include the World Premiere of Jefferson Moneo’s Cosmic Dawn, Scott Friend’s feature debut, To the Moon, and the Virtual Premiere of Scott Barber’s doc, This is Gwar, as well as much more.

You can see the full list of movies here and learn how to get a pass at the official site.

Let’s get to some other movies hitting theaters...

Obviously, the big release of the weekend and maybe the month is the 25th James Bond movie, NO TIME TO DIE (MGM), once again starring Daniel Craig in his final outing as 007, his fifth movie in a run that started with Casino Royale in 2006 and 15 years later, it’s coming to an end.

Obviously, this being Craig’s last stint as Bond is a big draw for the movie, but there are other interesting things to note First, it’s directed by True Detective’s Emmy-winning director Cary Joji Fukunaga, who is making his biggest budget movie to date, having started with smaller films like Sin Nombre and Jane Eyre, and then getting more attention for his festival favorite, Beast of No Nations, starring Idris Elba, who for a while, people seemed to want to play the NEXT Bond.

Much of Bond’s colleagues and friends from past movies are back including Naomi Harris as Moneypenny, Ralph Fiennes as M, Ben Whishaw as Q, but it also brings back Jeffrey Wright, who was introduced as Felix Leitner in Craig’s first film, Casino Royale, and also a few people from the last Bond movie, Spectre, which wasn’t received as well as the previous one, Skyfall. (More on those things in a bit.) Christoph Waltz played Blofeld in Spectre (for better or worse), and he’s back, as is Léa Seydoux, who played Bond's love interest, and actually she continues said role but brings more to the plot.

The new cast is pretty significant, starting with Oscar winner Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody) as the new arch-villain, Safin, and actually, there’s also a new 007 in Lashana Lynch, who replaced Bond after he retired from MI6. There’s another “Bond Girl” (if you don’t mind the outdated trope) in Ana de Armas, who previously starred with Craig in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out, which feels like it was made 500 years ago but actually has a sequel shooting as we speak. In fact, Armas seems to be getting the best notices from everyone who writes about the movie, even though her section probably isn’t more than 15 minutes long.

I’m not going to say more about the plot. You either don’t need to know it in advance cause you’re seeing it anyway or you don’t WANT to know anything, and good for MGM for being able to keep the plot and lots of stuff secret despite the movie being delayed for 18 months due to COVID.

That’s right. No Time to Die was probably one of the first movies delayed due to COVID, and it definitely wasn’t the last, but MGM (and EON Productions) really stuck to their guns, and didn’t allow a streamer to come forward with millions and millions of dollars to put James Bond on streaming. (Granted, Amazon did come forward and ended up buying MGM outright earlier this year, and we’ve yet to see how and when that will come to fruition. As far as I know, Amazon has nothing to do with MGM’s 2021 releases, of which there are a few still to come.)

Actually, the fact that MGM is releasing this one on its own is an interesting point in itself, because it’s been almost 20 years since the studio has done that with Pierce Brosnan’s last Bond film, Die Another Day. In the time since then, MGM has been co-distributing its films with other studios until fairly recently -- the last four Bond movies were released by Sony Pictures. I’m not gonna throw shade at MGM, because they’ve been doing a fantastic job with No Time To Die, essentially marketing the movie once back in early 2020 and then again for its final release spot this Friday. In between, the movie has moved a number of times as COVID just kept ambushing its planned release date. Any weaker studio (like, say Sony) would have just sold the movie off (as Sony has done many times over the past 18 months until finally having a theatrical hit with Venom). Interesting how that works out, huh? MGM took over Bond, and now it’s releasing the new Bond a week after Sony’s biggest 2021 hit, essentially killing its chances at having a decent second weekend.

Others are seeing how well Venom did and are assuming that the box office is back, and that Bond can do even BIGGER numbers, but you need to take a few things into account, including something called REALITY. And it comes from the wonderful box office archive site, The-Numbers.com, which I have been using for those 20 years mentioned above.

Up until Daniel Craig took over the role, the biggest opening for a Bond movie (not accounting for inflation) was Brosnan’s Die Another Day with $47 million. Casino Royale opened with just $40 million in 2006, but it proved to have significant holiday legs as more people discovered it and decided that the new direction of tougher and grittier and more violent action was for them. It made $167 million domestically and $594 million globally. A few years later, Quantum of Solace had a much bigger opening of $67.5 million but made almost the exact same amount domestically -- the reason? People didn’t like it as much as Casino Royale, so it was more frontloaded.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Sam Mendes took over the 50th anniversary Bond movie, Skyfall, four years later, and that was generally as well received as Casino Royale, so that it set a new opening record for the franchise with $88.3 million and OVER A BILLION worldwide. Woo! Three years later, Spectre was going to introduce two classic Bond villains, Blofeld and Jaws (played by David Bautista) but it once again wasn't received that well, and it opened lower with $70 million and “only” made $200 million domestically vs. the $300 million of Skyfall. It still made over $879 million globally, but a final movie for Craig was always going to happen.

Now I’m going to talk about why I don’t think No Time to Die is going to break the opening record set by Skyfall, and believe it or not, it's not because of COVID. This is the thing. Bond clearly peaked with Skyfall and then it dropped down with Spectre, and that movie wasn't that well-received either by critics or fans with 63% from the former on Rotten Tomatoes and 61% from audiences. That is basically Quantum of Solace numbers and down from Skyfall's 92% and 86%. You take that disappointment and then you add six years, which is how long it's been between Bond movies, and you have a lot fewer people interested in shelling out money to see another Daniel Craig movie. There's no way around the fact that people are just burnt out on Craig and maybe Bond himself, and it really would take a huge wave of positive reviews to get them back.

Also, and unlike Venom, Bond is about as white as you can get in terms of a fanbase. I'm sure there's some African-Americans and LatinX movie fans who enjoy the action and stuff, but do you think you would see the entire James Bond collection in their Bluray libraries? I'm sure there are some, but they may be outliers, because Bond is the kind of Baby Boomer anti-woke un-PC franchise that the Millennials have been warning you about for years. It also doesn't have as big a female fanbase as other franchises (like Marvel) so that's another audience that might not rush out to see the movie. Sure, some changes have been made, including additions like Lashana Lynch or as she's better known, "WHO?!?!?", and de Armas, as well, but it's still the same old James Bond. Fukunaga just didn't try hard enough to make the necessary changes, or maybe he wasn't allowed to, because EON's Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. WIlson still hold very tight reins on the Bond films. Whatever has been done may not just be enough and who knows how many will want to see No Time to Die just to give Craig a glorious send-off? There's also the matter of No Time to Die being almost an hour longer than Venom -- longer run time, less screenings, less money per screen. It's simple math.

I already reviewed the movie for Below the Line -- I liked it but had some issues -- and it’s sitting pretty at 83% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, which is a good sign for getting the interest of fans to return to theaters for a movie that won’t be available on streaming on VOD for quite some time, I’d imagine.

I’m feeling generally bullish (or is it bearish?) on No Time To Die, especially with how much better Venom: Let There Be Carnage did last weekend compared to my prediction (OUCH!) but I’m also keeping track of that REALITY I mentioned before. Not just COVID on this one, but also opening the movie earlier overseas where the movie can be easily bootlegged and put on piracy sites for people who just don’t want to chance it at movie theaters yet. (I’m going to be writing more about this soon, but I have seen probably 100 movies or more in theaters since they reopened in NYC, and I get tested regularly. I have not tested positive for COVID once.)

The movie has done very well overseas, scoring $121.3 million in its first weekend, but I still don’t think it will open over $80 million in North America. But I do think it will be close, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it opens somewhere between $75 and 80 million.

Without knowing if any of the movies below might be going wider (but highly doubting it), here’s what the weekend Top 10 might look like. Actually, let’s make that the top 8 cause last week’s #9 and 10 were so odd and I have no idea if anything is expanding wider, as I write this:

1. No Time to Die (MGM) - $76.5 million N/A

2. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Sony) - $31.5 million -65%

3. The Addams Family II (MGM/UA Releasing) - $9.3 million -45%

4. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Marvel/Disney) - $ 3.5 million -43%

5. The Many Saints of Newark (New Line/WB) - $2.1 million -55%

6. Free Guy (20th Century/Disney) - $1.3 million -45%

7. Dear Evan Hansen (Universal) - $1.1 million -57%

8. Candyman (Universal) - $700,000 -47%

I think there are just way too many great movies to pick just one "Chosen One,” but since I probably should decide, I'm going with Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi's new documentary THE RESCUE (National Geographic). You may remember Jimmy and Chai from when they won the Oscar for Free Solo, and their latest is just as good. The rescue in the title refers to the 2018 rescue of an 11-kid Thai soccer team called the Wild Boars and their coach when they became trapped in the Tham Luang caves in Northern Thailand, as the annual monsoon season hits early, flooding the caves in which they’re exploring.

To fully understand how they got trapped, you have to have some idea of the structure of this underground cave system, and this film does a great job explaining how the monsoons create flooding in the caves and how much harder it is to get someone out of them when the rain just won’t stop. Two British cave divers, John Volanthen and Richard Standton, are called in to survey the situation and figure out if there’s a way to get the dozen trapped out alive, as time keeps passing until it seems like those kids are trapped without food longer than any human can survive. Seemingly, thousands of locals and foreigners come to the caves in hopes of helping, whether it’s trying to pump out water or dig new tunnels to try to find where the kids are trapped (which is a difficult task in itself).

There’s a good chance you were watching the news and you know the results of this elaborate and daring cave diving rescue, but you definitely don’t know how the plan was developed and pulled off until you actually watch it as it’s taking place. The underwater and cavern footage of the kids and their saviors is absolutely second to none, and it’s hard not to get emotional in the way Chin and Vasarhleyi assemble the footage with the music.

The Rescue is an amazing movie, maybe as good as the duo’s previous one, Free Solo, and it may be the best recapturing/documentation of an important news event that I’ve seen in recent memory.

I was seriously close to having multiple "Chosen Ones” this week, because there are a few other very good movies, including Fran Kranz’s directorial debut MASS (Bleecker Street), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and deservedly received mass praise and stellar reviews. I don't want to say too much about the movie, because its emotional power may lay in not knowing too much about it in advance. The simplest plot is that it involves two couples meeting in the room of a church to have an important face-to-face about a difficult subject, one that needs resolution and absolution from both parties. If you like great writing and amazing performances, than the work of Reed Birney and Anne Dowd (as one couple) and Jason Isaacs and Martha Plympton (as the other) will make this movie a can't miss.

Again, without getting too deep into what the couples discuss, Mass is written and directed similar to one might do a 90-minue one-act play, but it begins with us seeing the people who work at the church trying to set up the room where this eventful tete a tete will take place. It’s surprisingly witty and even elicits a few laughs from Breeda Wool, who is so nervous and awkward about the meeting that’s about to happen.

When the two couples arrives, that’s where we really get into it, but it still starts out slow, a re-aquaintance phase between the two couples, who clearly have a difficult past, try to get through the niceties before getting into the serious conversation at hand. And here is where I’m gonna put a HUGE SPOILER IN HERE FOR THE NEXT PARAGRAPH.

As with so many movies, Mass deals with gun violence and the survivors of the types of school shootings we’ve seen far too many times in the last two decades. Isaacs and Plympton’s son was killed by the other couple’s son, who turned the gun on himself. It creates this dynamic where both couples have lost a son they loved, but Dowd and Birney are put in a spot where they have to try to explain their son’s behavior and if they saw that he was capable of such violence before the shooting took place.

The actors are all terrific, and while you might think a dialogue-heavy movie with four actors sitting at a table might not do much for you… well, first of all, you can go see No Time to Die if that’s more your speed … but Kranz’s direction is more than just getting these emotional performances out of his actors but also capturing it on film and editing it to best effect. There’s even an imperfection to the camera work, sometimes focusing on one actor while another is talking, that makes this long conversation feel even more authentic, as if you’re a fly on the wall in that room.

Again, the writing and performances and direction of Mass makes it one of the most powerful dramatic works this year. I’d love to see any of the four main actors get awards attention, but especially Dowd and Isaacs, who have been so deserving of awards love for a very, very long time.

Icelandic filmmaker Valdimar Jóhansson's LAMB (A24) is a very different movie, this one starring Noomi Rapace and Hilmir Snær Guðnason as Maria and Ingvar, a couple living on a sheep farm (or rather, a lamb farm -- I honestly don't know the difference) who make an incredible discovery when a lamb gives birth to a child they decide to raise as their own. Invar's brother Pétur is not only not impressed but he thinks they’ve gone crazy, but there’s a lot of far more nefarious things going on in and around their remote and isolated farm.

This is a really fascinating film, one that’s fairly subdued but Johansson and his cinematographer (Eli Arenson) beautifully capture the vast landscapes of Iceland and gives us a real idea of how remote and isolated the farm where it mostly takes place is. He also does a great job building on the mystery of this child and the tension that surrounds where it came from, and yet, I’m not sure I’d consider Lamb to be horror, even if A24 is maybe marketing it in that direction. Really, it’s more magical fantasy mixed with character drama, and Rapace is just great as always, really impressing me with her skills delivering baby animals and driving a tractor.

If you dig a bit deeper, you’ll discover that Jóhansson wrote the screenplay with one “Sjón,” an author who has contributed to Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark (one of my favorite musical movies) and also wrote The Northman, Robert Eggers next movie.

This is a terrific debut by Jóhansson -- I have an interview with the director over at Below the Line, too -- and it will be highly interesting to see where he goes from here.

I was hoping to watch and review SOUTH OF HEAVEN (RLJEfilms), the new movie from Aharon Keshales, the co-director of the fantastic Israeli thriller, Big Bad Wolves, which stars Jason Sudeikis, Evangeline Lilly, Mike Colter, and Shea Whigham, but I fell foul of a lousy screener and just didn't have tie to watch it before writing this week's column. Sudeikis plays Jimmy, a convict who has served 12 years for armed robbery who gets early parole, and he swears to give his childhood love Annie (Lilly), who is dying from cancer, the best final year of her life.

I also didn't get a chance to watch Russian filmmaker Evgeny Ruman's comedy GOLDEN VOICES (Music Box Films), which opens in New York and L.A. this weekend. It stars Maria Belkin and Vladimir Friedman as Raya and Victor, the Soviet Union’s popular film dubbers who have been translating film classics into Russian for decades. When the country collapses in 1990, the Jewish couple decides to move to Israel in hopes of finding employment. When she answers a help wanted ad looking for “pleasant voices,” she ends up working as a phone sex operator catering to the Russian community in Israel while he falls in with black market film pirates.

I also just haven't gotten around to JUSTIN BIEBER: OUR WORLD (Amazon), directed by Michael D. Ratner, which seems like the fourth or fifth documentary about the global superstar, this one that goes into the making of his 2020 New Year's Eve concert after a three-year hiatus atop the Beverly Hills Hilton for 240 invited guests and millions via livestream. It will stream on Amazon Prime Video this Friday.

A couple horror movies streaming this week are THERE’S SOMEONE INSIDE YOUR HOUSE (Netflix), the new movie from Patrick Brice (Creep), which hits Netflix and involves a masked assailant targetting a high school graduating class to expose the darkest secret of each victim, forcing a group of misfits to band together to stop the killings.

Shudder gets V/H/S 94 (Shudder), the latest anthology horror movie made up of five installments, directed by Simon Barrett, Chloe Okuno, Ryan Prows, Jennifer Reeder, and Timo Tjahjanto. I haven't watched it yet but that's quite a rogue's gallery of horror/genre filmmakers there.

Streaming on Amazon Prime Video are the next two installments of this year's batch of Welcome to the Blumhouse movies, Axelle Carolyn's The Manor, an eerie tale set in a retirement home and starring the legendary Barbara Hershey, and Ryan Zarazoga’s Madres about a young Mexican-American couple having their first child in ‘70s California where he’s sent to work on a farm where the wife finds a talisman and a box with belongings of the former resident. Both of them debut on Amazon Prime Video this Friday, too. Also, you can read my interview with Ms. Carolyn over at Below the Line.

Other movies that just didn't fit into my schedule this week include:

ASCENSION (MTV Documentary Films) VENGEANCE IS MINE (Vertical) PHARMA BRO (1091) KNOCKING (Yellow Veil Pictures)

Next week’s wide release is David Gordon Green’s horror sequel, HALLOWEEN KILLS!

[xtruss]

Real Retirement

America’s ‘Ugliness and Divisiveness’ Pushed This Couple to Retire Abroad

‘Leaving the U.S. for a more peaceful environment was in our best interests’

— September 11, 2021 | By Paul Brandus | Market Watch

A Sunny Day in Panama City. Getty Images/I Stock Photo

The United States has always been divided, but in recent years this has been accompanied by a nasty, off the charts intolerance that each side seems to have for the other. Some Americans who can afford to do so are getting out.

Which is why Cheryl Smelson (a retired journalist) and her husband David (a sales manager who will work remotely) are kicking up their heels in Panama, where they moved on Sept. 1.

Cheryl, a former member of the White House press corps (we often sat together in the briefing room) tells me “the ugliness and divisiveness among the American people is a danger to democracy. We felt leaving the U.S. for a more peaceful environment was in our best interests.”

Cheryl

Why Panama?

Panama, described on one retirement site as “one of the top retirement destinations in the world,” boasting an “affordable cost of living and high standard of living,” quickly attracted their attention. “We wanted to live reasonably close to Maryland, where our son is attending college,” Cheryl says. “That pretty much ruled out Europe and Asia. We prefer warmer climates over colder, so that narrowed the field to Central America. We had vacationed in Costa Rica a few years ago, but our research led us to Panama (which borders Costa Rica) as the better choice for us. There is a large community of expat Americans active on social media who gave us lots of information about life on the ground.”

The quality of life for expats is good. “Panama currently has a lower Covid rate than the U.S.; a low crime rate; per capita income is high compared with other Latin American countries; and the government is stable,” Cheryl says. Panama also uses American currency, so there’s no need to change money or figure out what things cost.

Housing Costs

In the capital of Panama City, dotted with skyscrapers, high-end shopping and abundant nightlife, a couple can live quite comfortably on $1,500 to $2,000 a month. If you and your spouse had nothing but the average-size Social Security check ($1,543 in 2021), you could do pretty well. The Smelsons can afford to spend more—$2,500 to rent a luxury apartment with gorgeous views—but you could get by on less.

Compared with most major American cities, those costs seem reasonable.

But Panama City is also blazing hot and dripping in humidity, and can have American-style traffic jams. Some retirees opt for nearby beach towns like Coronado, which are buffeted by cool breezes and quiet.

The Smelsons, who are renting on a short-term basis while they house hunt, are drawn to nearby mountain towns which are much cooler. Two are Santa Fe and Boquete, which can have California-like weather, but rents that can average—get this—about $500 per month. Boquete has tons of expats, many of them baby boomer retirees lured there by the cooler temperatures and low cost of living. Cheryl advises, however that

“Your average American likely will experience higher [than $500] costs because they’ll have higher standards (like hot-water in every faucet, reliable electricity, shop in more expensive grocery stores),” Cheryl advises.

Healthcare

U.S. healthcare is very good—if you can afford it. Fidelity, the Boston-based investment giant, estimates that the average American couple retiring at age 65 will need to spend a whopping $300,000 to cover healthcare expenses over the remainder of their lives. Panama offers socialized medicine to all for basic care, and according to the Smelsons, who cite comments made by other expats, “doctors in Panama are highly qualified, accessible, and costs are exponentially lower than in the U.S.”

But expats are still encouraged to have their own health insurance for comprehensive care.

Planning and Preparation

Moving abroad is obviously a big deal and involves a lot of “planning, planning, and more planning,” says Cheryl. “Get advice from the people who have been there before you, but really understand your own circumstances. The definition of ‘low-cost’ means different things to different people. And be realistic about your priorities.”

The Smelsons also spent a year decluttering, getting rid of virtually everything they owned.

“It was done painstakingly, a little each day,” Cheryl says, and when they arrived in Panama, they were down to two large checked suitcases and a carry-on bag each. That’s it. There’s really nothing that can’t be bought in Panama anyway, she adds.

The Smelsons also set up a virtual mail service in the U.S., which will only forward essential pieces of mail. What’s “virtual mail?” (A virtual mailbox service provides individuals and business owners with a real street address or virtual PO Box. A digital mailbox enables individuals and corporates to improve receiving postal mail and packages anywhere in the world. For example, if you are a frequent traveler or your business is located outside the US. You definitely need a virtual address to view and manage your postal mail and packages. A virtual mailing address gives you a more prestigious address located in a big city. It will also give you an anonymous mailbox to keep your home address safe.) Here are several companies that offer a variety of services.

List of Virtual Mail Companies (Left). The slimmed-down possessions Cheryl and David took with them to Panama (Right).

Banking

One drawback: It’s harder to open a local bank account in Panama than in the U.S., Smelson says. The Panamanian law firm they hired to process their residency visas helped cut through red tape, and now they’re good to go. Wire transfers are common and so is cash — compared to the increasingly cashless and digital U.S. “We’ve found cash is used more commonly, although most restaurants in the (Panama) city take credit cards.”

It’s important to add that anyone seeking to apply for a permanent residency visa in Panama is required to retain a Panamanian law firm, Cheryl says. “Our law firm was among those recommended by the organization that specializes in helping Americans relocate to Panama. It’s an extra service to have the law firm help set up a bank account, but very well worth it in my opinion.”

She adds: “Our Spanish is not good (they’re learning) and government and banking officials mostly don’t speak English, so a bilingual law firm is extremely helpful.”

What About You?

Have you retired abroad? Are you thinking about it? Tell me where you are—or where you’re considering moving—and why? Help me share your advice with others. Write to me at RetireBetterMarketWatch@gmail.com — and thanks.

[simplemoneyman-blog]

Should I Even Invest In The Market Right Now?

Can there be such a thing as a good problem? Isn’t that an oxymoron? I guess it is. If I was heavily invested in the stock market, but still have some excess cash to invest, I may be the victim of a good problem. Unfortunately, I am NOT, but am looking forward to this problem later in life. I’ve heard that the market operates on a seven-year cycle. So I decided to see for myself.   The stock market or S&P 500 index was rising in the early 90s (reason being the dot-com era), then falling, then again in the late 2000s (reason being housing bubble), then falling – Great Recession, and then rising again around 2010 and continuing too. (see S&P chart below from about a week or so ago).  

    From 1989 to 1999, the rise was 10 years long. From 2003-2007, the rise was 5 years long. And from 2010 to 2017, the rise has been for 8 years so far. So it’s not really 7 years at a time, but the average from my calculation is 7.6 (10 years + 5 years + 8 years = 23 years/3 cycles = 7.6 years). If and when it drops, which I’m thinking could be soon, I may be in a better position to buy (even though buying in a market downfall is a very hard thing to do). Anyway, let’s continue to focus on what’s right now – back to reality.  

Market Seems High

For the past 3 months, the Dow has been in the 19,000 to mid-20,000 point range – an all-time high. But what if it continues to go higher and an opportunity to get in was lost: Investopedia believes this is possible as it states “while stocks may be expensive now, they might become more expensive later.   These securities could even be in a secular bull market, which is an extended period characterized by upward price movements” Investopedia's case for buying.   Also, remember that the future value of money is less than what is today. For example, at a 3% inflation rate, $100 today may be worth around $75 in 10 years due to inflation and thus decreased purchasing power. Check out this chart (click to expand) from ObservationsAndNotes:  

                          Am I Better Off Holding Cash?

Not a whole lot probably enough to fund an emergency account and a bit more to fund an opportunity you may have waited for. The logic for hoarding cash depends on your age too. If your younger (40 or below), it’s better to buy stock because you have time on your side and if the market is high, it can continue to go high and you’ll profit.   However, if it falls, you still have time to recover and cut your losses or hold on and be patient in the hopes that, based on past history, the market will bounce back once again.   If your more experienced in life (note I didn’t say older :-), they still don’t hold cash, rather invest in a bond fund.   You’re invested and still have the flexibility to sell and but into something else when a great opportunity arises. A lot of financial publications say that time in the market is more important and gives you a much greater shot at achieving financial independence than timing in the market.   So if you’re young or old, when is the best time to get into the market…..how will you know? Oh, you’ll know. Just kidding, you won’t really know and no one does. I don’t believe in timing the market. I believe in consistency, establishing prudent financial habits, setting a reasonable budget which includes an investment line item.  

Don’t Stop Dollar Cost Averaging Though

Of course, if you’re in your organization's retirement plan, you should definitely continue to invest in it. Overall you may be investing at a bit of a high time, but what if you decide to forego it and take the extra money in your paycheck. Without going into the details of this, there are drawbacks.   One: you’ll lose out on the tax-deferred benefit of investing now in your retirement plan and not having to pay tax till years later when you retire.   Two: if you get a company match, which many do, you’ll lose out on FREE money!   Three: you’ll run the risk or incur the temptation of having the extra money in your paycheck (which will be less by the way because you’re going to get the after-tax amount) and may not be disciplined enough to save it – “hey I got a few hundred bucks to spend now, how about another big screen TV in a different room”. If you were invested in the retirement plan and contributing regularly without any financial problems, chances are you don’t have an immediate need for the money anyway.   So are you buying, selling, or holding on and riding the wave right now? Please share below.  

I use because (1) it’s free, (2) it tracks all of my accounts and overall net worth, (3) my account balances automatically update, (4) it shows how my investments are diversified and allocated in various sectors, and (5) can use built-in tools like “Investment Checkup” to get….wait for it…free personalized advice! Read the full article

[instacontestlhj]

Which Ways To Resort For Safe Investment In Stock Market - Stocks

If the market gives it similar PE ratio, its share price will be doubled to RM20 and dividend will also be doubled to RM1.20 per share. If its profit grows consistently year after year, it will pay higher dividends as long as its dividend payout remain the same, and its share price will go up accordingly as long as the market gives it the same PE ratio. So focusing solely on dividend yield might be misleading, especially when the company has some one-off gain and gives one-time special dividend. So I plan to invest in high dividend yield blue chips the boutique s only after accumulating enough money for retirement. Typical textbook teaching tells us that growth stocks tend to give little or no dividend as they need more money to grow. Are you fed up trying to make money online? Short-term market movements are driven by unforeseeable and non-predictable forces. A candlestick is a financial chart style; it used to describe security, derivative and currency price movements.

Lets say if its profit drops by half after 10 years, its share price and dividend will fall by half as well to RM5 and 30sen respectively. Pullbacks below $34 are a buy as well as a close above $40 ( but more risky ). If Alcoa can close back above $13.89, I think the stock could run back into the $15's. The requirement to purchase these OTC stocks is that the account needs to be above $25 thousand. Anyway, stocks are called blue chips because they are huge and stable, has significant competitive edge or monopoly in their business, and has proven track record. However, from my experience so far, I find that many growth stocks can give better dividends than blue chips, and their share price certainly move up much faster than blue chips. Basically I don't invest solely for dividends at this stage, but if the growth stocks pay good dividends along the way, then it's a bonus. Out of 3 pure property stocks I hold, I opine that Matrix and Huayang can at least sustain its current earning level for the next 2 years. We have to pray that our dividend stocks deliver at least flat results, if not growth, to increase our wealth.

[shandragdotson]

Socially Responsible Investing: Is It Also More Profitable?

Since the Dawn of Mustachianism in 2011, the same question has come up over and over again:

“MMM, I see your point that index fund investing is the best option. But when you buy the index, you’re getting oil companies, factory farm slaughterhouses and a million other dirty stories.

How can I get the benefits of investing for early retirement without contributing to the decline of humanity?”

And in these nine years since then, the movement towards socially responsible investing has only grown. Public pension funds have started to “divest” from oil company stocks, and various social issues like human rights, child labor, climate change or corporate corruption have bubbled to the surface at different times.

And all of this has led to the exploding new field of Socially Responsible Investing (SRI), and a growing array of new ways to do it.

So it seems that this is not just a passing trend – people just might be starting to care a bit more. And since capitalism is just an expression of human behavior, the nature of capitalism itself may be starting to change.

This leads us naturally to the question:

What can I do with my money to help fix the world? And even better, is there a way I can make money in the process of fixing it?

The answer is a good, solid “Probably.”

As long as you don’t get too hung up on getting every last detail perfect, because just like real life, investing is a haphazard and approximate and unpredictable thing. But by understanding the big picture, you can make slightly better decisions on average, which lead to slightly better results. And slightly better results, stacked up consistently over time, can lead to a much better life, or even a much better world.

This is true in all of the main areas we care about – personal wealth, fitness and health, even relationships and happiness. And while your money and investments are certainly not the most important thing in life, they are still worthy of a bit of easy and effective optimization.

So anyway, the first thing to understand with SRI is, “what problem am I trying to solve?”

The answer is, “You are trying to make your investing (especially index fund investing) have a better impact on the world.”

On its own, index fund investing is ridiculously simple. You just get an account at any brokerage like Vanguard, Etrade, Schwab or whatever, and dump all your money into one exchange-traded fund: VTI.

When you do this, you are buying a stake in 3500 companies at once(!), which is both impressive and overwhelming. How do you even know what you are holding?

Well, this is all public information, and easily available with a quick Google search. For example, here’s a list of the top 90 holdings in VTI (click for larger):

Top 90 holdings in Vanguard’s VTI Exchange Traded Fund

As you can see, the biggest chunk of money is allocated to today’s tech darlings, because this index fund is weighted according to market value, and these are the most valuable companies in the US today.

Through a convenient coincidence, the total value of the VTI fund happens to be just under $1 trillion dollars, which means you can just throw a decimal point after the ten billions digit of market value to get a percentage. In other words, about 4.7% of your money will go towards Apple stock, 4.4 towards Microsoft, and so on. Together, these top 90 companies are worth more than the remaining 3,410 companies combined, so these are what really drive your retirement account.

And within this list, you will see some of the usual suspects: Exxon and Chevron (oil), Philip Morris (tobacco), Raytheon and Lockheed (bombs), and so on.

But what about the less-usual suspects? For example, I happen to think that sugar, and especially sugar-packed beverages like Coke, is the biggest killer in the developed world – a major contributor to 2 million of the 2.8 million deaths each year in the US alone. Should I exclude that from my portfolio too?

And what about drug and insurance companies – aren’t they behind the political stalemate and high costs of the US healthcare system? Comcast funded some election disinformation campaigns here in my home town in the early 2010s, should I exclude them too? And if you’re part of a religion that is against charging interest on loans, or in favor of pasta and Pirate costumes, or against a spherical Earth, or any number of additional ornate rules, you may have still more preferences.

The higher your desire for perfection, the more difficult this exercise will become. However, if you are like me and you just want to get most of the desired result with minimal effort, you might simply have a look at the Vanguard fund called ESGV.

ESG stands for “Environmental, Social and Governance”, and in practice it just means “We have tried to avoid some of the shittier companies according to some fairly simple rules.”

And the result is this:

Vanguard’s ESGV Exchange traded fund (ETF) – top 90 holdings

The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s almost the same. In fact, the top five holdings – Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet (Google) and Netflix not far behind, collectively referred to as the FAANG stocks – are completely unchanged – and this means that there will be plenty of correlation between these funds.

It’s also the reason that the stock market as a whole has recovered so quickly from this COVID-era recession: small businesses like restaurants and hair salons have been destroyed by the shutdowns, but big companies that benefit from people staying at home and using computers and phones are making more money than ever. The stock market isn’t the whole economy, it’s just the publicly traded companies, which are the big ones.

But let’s look at the biggest differences between the normal index fund versus the social version.

The following large companies listed on the left are missing in the ESGV fund, in order of size. And to make up the difference, the stake in the companies on the right have been boosted up to take their place in your portfolio.

Main differences between VTI and ESGV (source: etfrc)

The omission of Berkshire Hathaway was a bit of a shocker, as it is run with solid ethical principles by Warren Buffett, one of the worlds most generous philanthropists. And in fact the modern day nerd-saint Bill Gates is on the Berkshire board of directors, another person whose work I follow and respect greatly.

(side note: Apparently the company fails on the “independent governance” category. And Buffett disputes this category, but in his characteristic way has decided to say, “Fuck it, I’ma just keep doing my own thing with my half-trillion dollar empire over here and you can have fun with your little committee” – I’m paraphrasing a bit but he totally did say that.)

Furthermore, both funds hold the factory meat king Tyson foods, while neither holds Roundup-happy Monsanto, because it was bought by the German conglomerate Bayer AG a while back. Nextera is a giant electric utility in the Southeastern US that claims to be the world’s largest generator of renewable energy. Some do-gooders are against nuclear power, while others (including me) think it’s the Bee’s Knees and we should keep advancing it. And all this just goes to show how nobody will agree 100% on what makes a good socially responsible fund.

But What About The Performance?

In the past, some investors were nervous about giving up oil companies in their portfolio, because while it was a dirty substance, it was also what made the world go round – which meant it was a cash cow.

Now, however, oil is on its way out as renewable energy and battery storage have crossed the cost parity threshold – meaning it’s cheaper to make power (and vehicles) that don’t use oil. In its place, technology is the new cash cow, and tech is heavily represented in the ESG funds. The result:

Traditional index fund (VTI) vs Socially Responsible equivalent (ESGV)

As you can see, the performance has been similar but the ESG fund has done significantly better in the (admittedly short) time since it was introduced at Vanguard.

Of course, we have no idea if this will continue, but the point is that at least our thesis is not a ridiculous one – environmentally sustainable companies do have an advantage, if the world gradually starts to care more about these things. And if you look at the share price of Tesla and other companies that surround it in electric transportation and energy storage, you will see that there are many trillions of dollars already lining up to benefit from this transition. And the very presence of so much investment money creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Tesla is now building or expanding five of the world’s largest factories on three continents simultaneously.

So What Should You Do? (and what I do myself)

My latest home-brewed ebike project – this one can reach 42MPH / 67km/hr!

First of all, it helps to remember a fundamental piece of economics: your spending dollars will probably have a much bigger impact than your investment dollars. This is because you are sending a direct message to the world rather than an indirect one:

When you buy a new gasoline-powered Subaru (or a tank of gas for your existing guzzler) or a steak at the grocery store, or a plane ticket, you are telling those companies directly that consumers want more of these products, so they will produce more of them immediately.

When you buy shares in Exxon, you are only subtly raising the demand for those shares, which raises the average price, making it ever-so-slightly easier for Exxon to maybe issue more shares in the future. In other words, you are making it easier for them to access capital. But capital is only useful if there is demand for their products. And with oil there is a nearly constant surplus, which is why OPEC and other cartels need to work together to artificially restrict supply, just to keep prices up.

Plus, as a shareholder you are theoretically eligible to place votes and influence the future direction of companies – even companies that you don’t like. If you look up the field of “shareholder activism”, you’ll see this is a tradition that goes way back.

So I have tried to take a few simple steps on the consumer side myself, and I find it quite satisfying: Insulating the shit out of all of my properties, building a DIY solar electric array on one of them, and buying one electric car so far to eliminate local gas burning. And a few electric bikes including a super fast one I made myself.

Each one of these steps has provided a very high economic return, percentage-wise, but that still leaves a lot of money to account for, which brings us back to stock investing.

As someone who loves simplicity, I have done this:

Bought almost entirely VTI (or similar Vanguard funds) from 2000-2015

Started experimenting with Betterment in 2015, liked it, and have been adding a percentage of my ongoing savings to that account to that since then. (Note that Betterment now also offers a socially responsible portfolio option.)

Switched the dividend re-investing of my old Vanguard VTI over to Vanguard ESGV, to avoid “wash sales” in making the most of Betterment’s tax loss harvesting feature.

Bought some shares of Berkshire Hathaway separately, and also make a few sentimental investments in local businesses, including the MMM HQ Coworking space.

But you could choose to be more hardcore in your ESG/SRI investing:

Buy your own basket of stocks based on the index, but with different weighting based on your own values

Spend more money on other things that generate or save money (a bigger solar array on your house, better insulation, electric car, an ebike to reduce car trips, etc.)

Invest in local businesses of your choice, rental real estate, community solar projects, or other things which generate passive income – publicly traded stocks are just one of many ways to fund an early retirement!

Like most areas of life, investing is not something you have to do perfectly in order to succeed – even socially responsible investing. If you apply the 80/20 rule to get the big picture right, you have probably found the Sweet Spot and you can move on to the next area of life to optimize.

In the Comments: What is your own investment strategy? Have you thought at all about this ESG / SRI stuff? Did this article bring anything new to the table?

from Finance https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2020/08/22/socially-responsible-investing/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[andrewdburton]

Socially Responsible Investing: Is It Also More Profitable?

Since the Dawn of Mustachianism in 2011, the same question has come up over and over again:

“MMM, I see your point that index fund investing is the best option. But when you buy the index, you’re getting oil companies, factory farm slaughterhouses and a million other dirty stories.

How can I get the benefits of investing for early retirement without contributing to the decline of humanity?”

And in these nine years since then, the movement towards socially responsible investing has only grown. Public pension funds have started to “divest” from oil company stocks, and various social issues like human rights, child labor, climate change or corporate corruption have bubbled to the surface at different times.

And all of this has led to the exploding new field of Socially Responsible Investing (SRI), and a growing array of new ways to do it.

So it seems that this is not just a passing trend – people just might be starting to care a bit more. And since capitalism is just an expression of human behavior, the nature of capitalism itself may be starting to change.

This leads us naturally to the question:

What can I do with my money to help fix the world? And even better, is there a way I can make money in the process of fixing it?

The answer is a good, solid “Probably.”

As long as you don’t get too hung up on getting every last detail perfect, because just like real life, investing is a haphazard and approximate and unpredictable thing. But by understanding the big picture, you can make slightly better decisions on average, which lead to slightly better results. And slightly better results, stacked up consistently over time, can lead to a much better life, or even a much better world.

This is true in all of the main areas we care about – personal wealth, fitness and health, even relationships and happiness. And while your money and investments are certainly not the most important thing in life, they are still worthy of a bit of easy and effective optimization.

So anyway, the first thing to understand with SRI is, “what problem am I trying to solve?”

The answer is, “You are trying to make your investing (especially index fund investing) have a better impact on the world.”

On its own, index fund investing is ridiculously simple. You just get an account at any brokerage like Vanguard, Etrade, Schwab or whatever, and dump all your money into one exchange-traded fund: VTI.

When you do this, you are buying a stake in 3500 companies at once(!), which is both impressive and overwhelming. How do you even know what you are holding?

Well, this is all public information, and easily available with a quick Google search. For example, here’s a list of the top 90 holdings in VTI (click for larger):

Top 90 holdings in Vanguard’s VTI Exchange Traded Fund

As you can see, the biggest chunk of money is allocated to today’s tech darlings, because this index fund is weighted according to market value, and these are the most valuable companies in the US today.

Through a convenient coincidence, the total value of the VTI fund happens to be just under $1 trillion dollars, which means you can just throw a decimal point after the ten billions digit of market value to get a percentage. In other words, about 4.7% of your money will go towards Apple stock, 4.4 towards Microsoft, and so on. Together, these top 90 companies are worth more than the remaining 3,540 companies combined, so these are what really drive your retirement account.

And within this list, you will see some of the usual suspects: Exxon and Chevron (oil), Philip Morris (tobacco), Raytheon and Lockheed (bombs), and so on.

But what about the less-usual suspects? For example, I happen to think that sugar, and especially sugar-packed beverages like Coke, is the biggest killer in the developed world – a major contributor to 2 million of the 2.8 million deaths each year in the US alone. Should I exclude that from my portfolio too?

And what about drug and insurance companies – aren’t they behind the political stalemate and high costs of the US healthcare system? Comcast funded some election disinformation campaigns here in my home town in the early 2010s, should I exclude them too? And if you’re part of a religion that is against charging interest on loans, or in favor of pasta and Pirate costumes, or against a spherical Earth, or any number of additional ornate rules, you may have still more preferences.

The higher your desire for perfection, the more difficult this exercise will become. However, if you are like me and you just want to get most of the desired result with minimal effort, you might simply have a look at the Vanguard fund called ESGV.

ESG stands for “Environmental, Social and Governance”, and in practice it just means “We have tried to avoid some of the shittier companies according to some fairly simple rules.”

And the result is this:

Vanguard’s ESGV Exchange traded fund (ETF) – top 90 holdings

The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s almost the same. In fact, the top five holdings – Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet (Google) and Netflix not far behind, collectively referred to as the FAANG stocks – are completely unchanged – and this means that there will be plenty of correlation between these funds.

It’s also the reason that the stock market as a whole has recovered so quickly from this COVID-era recession: small businesses like restaurants and hair salons have been destroyed by the shutdowns, but big companies that benefit from people staying at home and using computers and phones are making more money than ever. The stock market isn’t the whole economy, it’s just the publicly traded companies, which are the big ones.

But let’s look at the biggest differences between the normal index fund versus the social version.

The following large companies listed on the left are missing in the ESGV fund, in order of size. And to make up the difference, the stake in the companies on the right have been boosted up to take their place in your portfolio.

Main differences between VTI and ESGV (source: etfrc)

The omission of Berkshire Hathaway was a bit of a shocker, as it is run with solid ethical principles by Warren Buffet, one of the worlds most generous philanthropists. And in fact the modern day nerd-saint Bill Gates is on the Berkshire board of directors, another person whose work I follow and respect greatly.

(side note: Apparently the company fails on the “independent governance” category. And Buffet disputes this category, but in his characteristic way has decided to say, “Fuck it, I’ma just keep doing my own thing with my half-trillion dollar empire over here and you can have fun with your little committee” – I’m paraphrasing a bit but he totally did say that.)

Furthermore, both funds hold the factory meat king Tyson foods, while neither holds Roundup-happy Monsanto, because it was bought by the German conglomerate Bayer AG a while back. Nextera is a giant electric utility in the Southeastern US that claims to be the world’s largest generator of renewable energy. Some do-gooders are against nuclear power, while others (including me) think it’s the Bee’s Knees and we should keep advancing it. And all this just goes to show how nobody will agree 100% on what makes a good socially responsible fund.

But What About The Performance?

In the past, some investors were nervous about giving up oil companies in their portfolio, because while it was a dirty substance, it was also what made the world go round – which meant it was a cash cow.

Now, however, oil is on its way out as renewable energy and battery storage have crossed the cost parity threshold – meaning it’s cheaper to make power (and vehicles) that don’t use oil. In its place, technology is the new cash cow, and tech is heavily represented in the ESG funds. The result:

Traditional index fund (VTI) vs Socially Responsible equivalent (ESGV)

As you can see, the performance has been similar but the ESG fund has done significantly better in the (admittedly short) time since it was introduced at Vanguard.

Of course, we have no idea if this will continue, but the point is that at least our thesis is not a ridiculous one – environmentally sustainable companies do have an advantage, if the world gradually starts to care more about these things. And if you look at the share price of Tesla and other companies that surround it in electric transportation and energy storage, you will see that there are many trillions of dollars already lining up to benefit from this transition. And the very presence of so much investment money creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Tesla is now building or expanding five of the world’s largest factories on three continents simultaneously.

So What Should You Do? (and what I do myself)

My latest home-brewed ebike project – this one can reach 42MPH / 67km/hr!

First of all, it helps to remember a fundamental piece of economics: your spending dollars will probably have a much bigger impact than your investment dollars. This is because you are sending a direct message to the world rather than an indirect one:

When you buy a new gasoline-powered Subaru (or a tank of gas for your existing guzzler) or a steak at the grocery store, or a plane ticket, you are telling those company directly that consumers want more of these products, so they will produce more of them immediately.

When you buy shares in Exxon, you are only subtly raising the demand for those shares, which raises the average price, making it ever-so-slightly easier for Exxon to maybe issue more shares in the future. In other words, you are making it easier for them to access capital. But capital is only useful if there is demand for their products. And with oil there is a nearly constant surplus, which is why OPEC and other cartels need to work together to artificially restrict supply, just to keep prices up.

Plus, as a shareholder you are theoretically eligible to place votes and influence the future direction of companies – even companies that you don’t like. If you look up the field of “shareholder activism”, you’ll see this is a tradition that goes way back.

So I have tried to take a few simple steps on the consumer side myself, and I find it quite satisfying: Insulating the shit out of all of my properties, building a DIY solar electric array on one of them, and buying one electric car so far to eliminate local gas burning. And a few electric bikes including a super fast one I made myself.

Each one of these steps has provided a very high economic return, percentage-wise, but that still leaves a lot of money to account for, which brings us back to stock investing.

As someone who loves simplicity, I have done this:

Bought almost entirely VTI (or similar Vanguard funds) from 2000-2015

Started experimenting with Betterment in 2015, liked it, and have been adding a percentage of my ongoing savings to that account to that since then. (Note that Betterment now also offers a socially responsible portfolio option.)

Switched the dividend re-investing of my old Vanguard VTI over to Vanguard ESGV, to avoid “wash sales” in making the most of Betterment’s tax loss harvesting feature.

Bought some shares of Berkshire Hathaway separately, and also make a few sentimental investments in local businesses, including the MMM HQ Coworking space.

But you could choose to be more hardcore in your ESG/SRI investing:

Buy your own basket of stocks based on the index, but with different weighting based on your own values

Spend more money on other things that generate or save money (a bigger solar array on your house, better insulation, electric car, an ebike to reduce car trips, etc.)

Invest in local businesses of your choice, rental real estate, community solar projects, or other things which generate passive income – publicly traded stocks are just one of many ways to fund an early retirement!

Like most areas of life, investing is not something you have to do perfectly in order to succeed – even socially responsible investing. If you apply the 80/20 rule to get the big picture right, you have probably found the Sweet Spot and you can move on to the next area of life to optimize.

In the Comments: What is your own investment strategy? Have you thought at all about this ESG / SRI stuff? Did this article bring anything new to the table?

from Finance https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2020/08/22/socially-responsible-investing/ via http://www.rssmix.com/