Looking for Advice

Hi. I am enjoying this forum and the ER website. I an 56 and will be leaving a solid professional postion in a little less than a year and hope to get into community college teaching or, perhaps grad school for a year or two to retool. Compared to the stress of my present position, teaching will seem like semi-retirement (I have taught before). My wife gets teacher retirement and we have about 1 mil in savings, a little more than half in equities. Our house is paid off and we have 0 debt. Counting my wife's retirement, we expect to have about 85k pretax to live on over the next five years not including what I can make otherwise (money flowing from interests in my current job situation. I do not want to touch our saving until hitting 65. What should I be doing with the savings?? About 60 percent is in sheltered accounts. The stock market is driving me nuts! Thanks in advance for any advice and I realize there will be widely varying opinions on this.

If the stock market is "driving you nuts", don't
participate. I don't. I've been ERed since 1993 on a lot less money than you have right now.

John Galt

I was in the stock market up to about a year ago. I would watch it daily, when the dow was up I felt great when the dow was down I was almost depressed.

I cashed in my mutual funds and started converting my savings to US Savings Bonds.

I am sure that in the long run stocks will make a come back but I am a lot happier being out of the stock market.

Jim

[Bob_Smith]

Rick, the question you must ask is this: "Will I need to sell my stock holdings within the next few years?". If the answer is no, just relax and wait it out. The price of your stock holdings today or next month is completely irrelevant to you if you aren't selling today or next month. Don't worry about it! It doesn't apply to you - it only applies to those who need to sell now.

What about the future? As long as there has been a stock market there have always been many who are convinced that stocks won't bounce back this time; they believe that "now is different" and they can make a very convincing argument. But they have been wrong every time. For those who must plan for a possible life expectancy of 30-50 years, I believe stocks are an important investment for most (although some do fine with real estate), and I wouldn't hold less than 35-40% in the stock market. I like the inflation protection provided by TIPS as well, and hold a good portion of those. Good luck to you.

[wabmester]

Quote:

But they have been wrong every time.

Not every time. The German stock market is still at levels of 6 years ago. The Japanese stock market is still at levels of 20 years ago. And those are "strong nations". Just be glad you didn't invest in the stock market of the Roman Empire

BTW, didn't Rome go to war in order to give their economy a boost?

Quote:

Not every time.

True enough. As every Company the world has ever known, eventually goes bankrupt.

But to make Financial Planning easier, take comfort that in the end we are all dead.

Cut-Throat...........you gotta love him. Not only
is he retired early and completely unapologetic, but he loves to fish and realizes that in the end we are all
dead and any angst over how we live and what we have
will all be moot. He's a smart guy. Listen to him.

John Galt

Thanks for the replies; interesting cast of characters! After posting this, I noticed a link to the Coffeehouse Investor site. An appealing approach to Wall Street is set out there re index funds, etc. Just back home from a tiring two day trip to Chicagoland with a busy weekend: ain't retired yet! But I will keep reading here and will post again. I told my wife she coud get me the Frou Pillars book for my bd next week. By the way, How did this post appear in the wrong section of the topics? I thought I had been posting to the "Hi, I am..." heading. Don't know whot hoppened?? Rick

[unclemick]

As a counterpoint to multiple asset classes, reading some books by Bogle might be worthwhile to stimulate your thinking. Being a Boglehead, I prefer balanced index funds that rebalnce themselves. I still worry and watch the markets - but I don't act. After ten years in ER - don't take myself 'quite' as serious as I use to. Keep my hand off the trottle and let the market do it's thing.

[nayslayer99]

Hi folks,
I'd never touch the stock market on my own these days. It's far too risky for my blood. lol I don't need to worry about the ups and downs of the stock market now. Retired at 31 and don't have to monitor any stock portfolio or call my broker to see what's up. Just collect my daily earnings now and live a great life.

William,

With posts like this, you will outlive your welcome in about a New York minute.

There are a look of intelligent folks around here, otherwise they would not be retired.

Save your keystrokes and go Troll somewhere else!

[sgeeeee]

William,

If you're doing so well, go buy an infomercial. You surely don't have a need to use up our free space.

[Nords]

Let's consolidate the "William" posts at

http://early-retirement.org/cgi-bin/...num=1087670787

("Hi, I Am...") until Dory moves it to "Make Money Fast With No Work and No Brains", and let Rick get back to his topic.

Stay the course, Rick...

[cute fuzzy bunny]

William:

Blow me. :

[Bob_Smith]

It's difficult to imagine that anyone, let alone people in this group, wouldn't see through William's fumbling, bumbling, clumsy sales pitch. Just the fact that he'd post here, and how he went about doing it, should be all anyone needs to know about the product he's pushing.

He says he's retired at 31. I don't believe it.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

As soon as I see the word "MLM" I put my fingers in my ears and start yelling "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA".

[Bob_Smith]

When my wife and I were just out of college a friend and his wife (college friends) called. They said they were starting a business and wanted to partner with us. So we invited them over for supper. They showed up with some slippery character in a three piece suit whom we'd never seen before, and that was our first exposure to MLM - Amway. We listened to that sleaze-bag for about 10 minutes and told them to leave. Never saw them again. I've often wondered how many friendships were ruined that way.

Quote:

William: Blow me. :

LOL!

[dex]

There was a story about these peopel on 20/20. The interesting thing was that the MLM people didn't make there money from selling the products but from the audio tapes they sell and the meeting they hold.

Most of the people who joined and thought they would make money from selling the products lost money.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Quote:

LOL!

I had to say it. I feel GOOD!