Conservative Political Forum

I must know their Family, Uncles, Aunts, Cousins & Nephews.... there's a ton of them out there!  Conversation usually starts with, "If you bought just 100 shares of Disney, Amazon, Berkshire-Hathaway when they started...".  They must have watched that "Back to the Future" movie, the bad dude takes a sports book back to the past and bets on the games, already knowing the outcome, to build his empire.   "Oh... if I only had a TIME MACHINE!!!"  ...and it usually ends with, "It's all rigged against us!  We can't get a fair shake, the rich get richer, and we get poorer."

A guy we known for decades, decided to "save himself rich", and live very frugal.  Every penny of overtime, went to savings, along with 15% of his income.  He never made anything other than modest, conservative investments in the market, CDs from the banks, never went after the high risk stuff.   Without earning another penny, he has enough money to make it 30 years through retirement, a millionaire several times over.  He never screwed or ripped off anyone - he saved & saved.  He has money, he earned it... but needs to protect it.

Several times over his lifetime, were punctuated by inflation, fear investing / selloffs, etc., none of which deterred him from saving.  He never wasted time looking for the silver lining, the magic bullet, killer investment.  Nor did he buy into the radio pitchman selling the next great investment vehicle.

You just described my dads' generation, a product of the Depression, a lesson I learned from him, "If you can't pay cash, it's not yours to own.
I lived that for decades, lived like a pauper, paid cash for everything, my CD's/savings simply didn't exist because I refused to see them as a liquidity, they were there for emergencies only.
Not until I retired 15 years ago, did I finally tap it and relax, never having splurged on fads of the day, I stuck with jeans and Tshirts and always made my own coffee.

If people today would look at the amount of money they waste on frivolities, the crap they claim saves them time, when in truth, they could have set the timer on the coffee pot and had it waiting to take for an entire day.
Seldom did I ever eat out, beans, rice, lean beef etc. The savings came back tenfold, in the end, every dime saved turned into a buck, in the long run, compounding interest.

As you pointed out, it's not about investments, it's all about living within one's means.

Don't get me started on debt.

I'm glad to know a few people who have done that - they're examples to my kids.

Since I wasn't so wise, until much later in life, I'm taking the approach of never retirement. 
My income stream, instead of savings/investments, if successful will be a small business.
This year is looking good.

There is no point in worrying, just come up with a viable plan and work it - having a fall-back plan concurrently in action is wisest.
Most of our friends invest & run businesses, and one of them has been speculating on mining - something I don't have the time to research, not the guts to try - he's had a few setbacks, but overall, done quite well.   Another guy does real estate investing, which helped fund his businesses.   

Both of these guys use money to make more money, if they can't resell it, or it doesn't replace an essential component of their lives - they don't give it a second look.  That's pretty tough, IMO, but they've conditioned themselves to *not* be swayed by the greed & envy in modern society & advertising.   On-the-other-hand... we all sort of depend on societal weaknesses to sell those non-essential things.   

You mention mining, though I'm sure he is investing in huge proven reserves if he is pulling a profit, there are bad ones as well.
My area is littered with gold mines, some are great producers, while others limp along, decade after decade.
I was having a conversation with a couple of these owners a decade or so ago, one a man, the other a woman, both inherited their respective mines, and both warned me about investing in so called, 'new claims'.
They said you are guaranteed virtually no return on your investment, because of greed for gold changes people, and once the people at the top running the mine have access to its fruit, they skim off the profits, fudge the books and you never see a dime of returns.

She said she knows these people well, they take small amounts of gold out of the country fashioned into cheap ugly jewelry and sell it and reap huge profits without a trace.
They both went into great detail how these people keep on scamming investors because there's a fool waiting to throw their money away because people are greedy and all think they can hit the easy lottery.
If I were evil, I too could bilk the willing fool of their savings, because I have a provable vein of gold on my property that I could easily sucker in thousands in investment.
Problem is, I would destroy my property, (including my home which lies directly over it) through excavation, and secondly it might turn out to be a great vein, which is more than likely the case by the proven mines that surround me, or I could lie and fudge the books and claim it was a dry run, show all expenditures exhausted and walk away with a tidy sum.

But we all know that's not how Conservatives work, we don't cheat people, it's not in our nature, we don't destroy the environment for selfish reasons either.
I'm not even sure I'll pass along the location of the vein before I croak, let them find their own wealth the hard way, like I did.

I hear ya, man!

Having grown up on a decent size farm, and accustom to WORK, it pisses me off to see my own kids lazy, or when a tool breaks - all work immediately halts.   Really drives me nuts.  We'd fix it, or find some other way to get the job done.

When I asked, "take the weedeater, and cut down everything to the ground around the house.  nobody moved.  Finally, 3 days later, when an event they wanted to go to, was on-the-line (do this, or don't plan on going), they finally started moving... until the string in the weedeater got so short, it was sucked in.

"Can't get it apart, it's rusted together."   He forgot, it's a reverse thread.... duh!

No phone call to dad at work, until dad calls home, "did it get gone?   No...?   Then weed it by hand."

You'd think the earth had just stopped turning, the stars started falling, or some nuclear bomb had hit - the world was ending, as they knew it. 

They got to their event, TWO HOURS late.   

I got home, it looked like someone had taken a spade all the way around the house, or plucked every blade of grass by hand - nothing but dirt.  Good!   Now I can treat for ants and other unwanted pests.  In the end, they'll be glad they got it done, so am I.

Next assignment, weedeat UNDER all the electric fences, ALL the pastures.   ... bet they get new string on that weedeater, or figure out how to FIX it!

Today that's seen by leftist as abuse. Leftists just higher an illegal to do the work while the child rots on the vine.

People think I'm nuts for having a pack of JB Weld, bailing wire and duct tape in all my vehicles.

Manual labor has been the inspiration for many labor saving devices.
Everyone, is basically lazy, shunning manual labor - unless it's working out in a gym.  (makes no sense to me).

Vanity, the driving force behind the success of my health club chain.

Here's an interesting picture



and an interesting comment, relevant to this conversation

He noted that since Forbes created its first list of the 400 richest Americans in 1982 -- Buffett was worth just $250 million then - some 1,500 different people have been included.

All with one thing in common.

"You don't see any short sellers," he said, referring to people who bet stock prices will fall.
"It has been 241 years since Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence," he said.
"Being short America has been a loser's game. I predict to you it will continue to be a loser's game."

I guess George Soros was not invited, eh?

People are making money - but, it might be selling the gloom & doom idea of the next market crash.

No tool kit is complete without wd-40.   Good idea on the JB Weld though, I need to go pick some up. Could have used it today.

I keep having the stuff dry out after opening.   Guess I'd be best off with little tubes of JB weld instead of the large, economy size.
My brother used it to seal a hole in a tractor's crank case from a thrown rod.  Lasted for years & years.

One year ago, while my co-workers were predicting the stock market CRASH, selling stock and buying Gold & Silver bars, I got laughter when I said the DOW would hit 23k before anything negative happened - that they'd miss out on the ascent.  I went full market with my 401k, and GLAD I did.

All I was going on was the POSITIVE message Donald Trump was bringing to America.  Nothing else has changed, very little to warrant this kind of market boom.

I'm just lucky, probably.   I predict, if there is no roll back of Obamacare, and no corporate tax relief, the DOW will have stalled by the elections next year, never reaching the 25k mark.   If Obamacare is repealed within the year, -AND- corporate taxes are cut by at least 1/2, we'll be talking about 28k as a new potential high, within one year of both the repeal & tax reduction.  Just my GUT feeling.

NO... I do not believe Jesus is going to return Oct 23rd, 2017 - but that the date will get reset again, and again.  Nor do I believe North Korea or Iran will attack the Continental USA, or California will see a 7.0 earthquake, or life will return to "normal" in Puerto Rico by the next election, or Hillary will be brought up on charges, or Jeff Sessions & Mitch McConnell will still hold any seat in government, by the next election in 2018.  Just my gut feeling.

I also think some unexpected, bad stuff is on the horizon for Internet commerce in general, that retail sales will start to return to brick-n-mortar stores out of cyber security concerns, outright theft, and delivery failure/thefts.   I believe the next big target for thieves, on a wholesale scale, will come to light in every stage of Internet commerce, creating such an overall distrust, people will begin to turn away from Internet sales.  I also believe the government is going to stick their fingers into everything Internet related, as a result, and further exasperate the problems, under the guise of taxation & IP security & Net Neutrality.   Again, a gut feeling - if something is going fairly good, leave it to politicians to muck it all up, because a couple of individuals got burnt.

A well known radio talk-show host will have a major personal melt-down and take "time out" to reassess the situation.   No tea leaves, just a gut feeling.   I think there will be civil war in South America, involving at least 3 entities, by next year's election.