hellbender
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2006
- Messages
- 153
Scrooge said:. . . . . . but as long as I am living on <20% of my income and saving the rest, I figure it offsets my suboptimal investment strategies. If you can even call them that
Yep. Each individual's circumstances are different. I have discovered that once you can say that you have a government defined benefit pension which is greater than your income needs and substantial assets set aside besides, the conventional investing advice doesn't scale very well, and can actually be quite damaging depending on an individual's risk tolerance. I know many people who have retired early and quite securely without ever owning a share of stock. I will continue to save substantially in retirement. I don't need the types of returns which are claimed for equities and I do better with real estate anyhow. Equities are way outside my comfort zone. I also know some folks who continue to bear the risks associated with stock ownership even though they are long past the point at which such risks are required to be taken. In each case they seem to have lost sight of the real reasons for investing. Optimizing (maximizing) returns and accumulating assets for the sake of accumulation has become the goal.