Money & Economics

David L

IPCT Contributor
Joined
Aug 2, 2019
Messages
8,051
Reaction score
21,091
Location
USA
We Close Thursday, the 15th, on our Retirement house/home. A little history. About a year and a half ago our son-in-law bought 10 acres (Cleared Land) with a stocked pond, he would take the Scout troop out to camp and fish there. He decided to build a house, they just did the walk through yesterday. In talking to him during the build he said he pulled out of the stock market to invest in this second home/property. In this year and a half his land value has almost doubled. The property has a Livestock/AG exemption, his taxes was $11 last year. The ranch was a 1600 acre ranch that sold to a developer who chopped it up in lots for sale, what is making the land value rise is many people bought the lots (all sold in less than a year) and are reselling for profit. Lastly, the ranch property has a County Road that runs through it which supplies Water, Electric and Fiber Internet to the lots. All that is needed is Septic and Propane (If you want Gas).

So we have been watching our neighborhood/area head downward like our old house/neighborhood area did. We moved here 10 years ago, we were hoping for 20-30 years here. We even had a Pool built here. Anyway, there are Apartments popping up everywhere, more than a dozen different complexes in these last 10 years. In a 3-4 mile stretch of our main road from the freeway we counted 6 Smoke Shops, 4 Tattoo Shops, 2 Pawn Shops, etc. Just about every house sold in our area turns into a Rental bringing renters who don't care about the properties. Presently we are still ok, but we know it will only get worse over time.

This brings us to our Closing, we started looking out in the area our son-in-law bought but we were not real keen on building a new house, mainly due to our retirement age. We watched our son-in-law add many more gray hairs during his build. Well a few weeks ago we found a property with a house (built 2010) and pool (built 2012) for sale that sits on 10 acres of Wooded Land and has a 1/2 area pond. 10 acres or more in Texas you can hunt on. Since buying houses these days move much, much quicker now, we jumped on this one. There were several full price bids but we got the property for less with our cash offer. We are not invested in the stock market but did have to sell one of our CD's, was not bad, we loss about $500 total in the sell of the CD after the interest we made on it (Since most CDs are above 5% now). The rest of the money we had in Money Market at 4 3/4 percent. We do not want a Mortgage so this worked out. A house of our same floor plan listed in one day and sold the next day. Houses in our area are still selling fast so we should be good on the sell of our house. Guessing an Investor will snatch up our house and it too will turn into Rental property. We are hoping to get our house ready to sale in a month. Our sell money will just go back to the Money Market.

Investment? Well we had to add about a 1/3 more than what our present house is worth from our savings. As property values go up, guessing it will be a good investment on our money. Really at our age, any money we make will just be more money for our kids ;) I know this is a bit backwards, most older folks sell their country land and move to the city :)

Sorry for Long Post...
 
Last edited:

David L

IPCT Contributor
Joined
Aug 2, 2019
Messages
8,051
Reaction score
21,091
Location
USA
Smart.
Congrats and good luck! We downsized a LOT and glad we did. I think our old place about peaked in value just as we sold so came out good. No debt is a nice feeling.
It is a big change for us. That is maintenance of 10 acres of woods. I am buying a Zero-Turn from the Seller, big difference from my push mower :) From looking at the cleared land, guessing about an acre to mow, tops.
We never really had any big homes, 2000 sq. ft or less and all one-story. We are going from 1900 to 1700 sq ft, so this is good for us. Crazy but this house is a four bedroom, Master, Guestroom, Office and Sewing Room, LOL. There is a Pool house too, indoor and outdoor shower, toilet, kitchen (refrig/stove/sink) which is pretty kewl. A Large Shed/Work Shop building built out as an Apt., Central Air, full Kitchen and Bathroom/Shower, even washer/dryer connections. May become my Doghouse, LOL, when I am in trouble. There is a Shipping Container by the pond, it is in good shape, not a lot rust, The house sits back about 5-6 acres from the County Road with all Woods in between so no one will know if we are home or not. Debt free is a great feeling, we paid off our last house, paid cash for our present house and now cash for our retirement home. This is my fourth and final, I hope. First house was a few years of Lease-to-Buy (Bad Deal, I was young :)), second house was 30 year Mortgage, paid off in 22 years. We have been debt free since, pay cash for our vehicles and everything else...

Both my wife and I live by the rule, if you don't have the money (cash) for whatever you are buying, don't buy it. Only borrowed money I have ever needed was for my second house and a few vehicles (work van & truck). Credit Card is paid off every month, never paid any interest. I have borrowed some money in my youth from my parents but promptly paid them back. One other rule we lived by, Never buy a house depending on two incomes. We have never been over extended, one of us could lose their job and we would not lose our house.

Guessing this is a 40 footer...
1686492159011.png

Oh BTW, the Pool we had built at our present house, we saved 15 years for...it was put in 2014, since then Pools have doubled in cost.
 
Last edited:

garycrist

Known around here
Joined
Sep 25, 2021
Messages
2,324
Reaction score
6,856
Location
Texas
Ok I give up. WHY. Widgets and plastic, that's what to keep an eye on! ;)
 

tigerwillow1

Known around here
Joined
Jul 18, 2016
Messages
3,849
Reaction score
8,519
Location
USA, Oregon
Fidelity is going woke. Too bad, I used to like them. I don't remember them doing anything special for veterans or some other group that really deserves it. And a whole month they get! Whining and intimidation works.

June is Pride month, and here at Fidelity Wealth Management we are dedicated to working with the LGBTQ+ community to help address important financial needs.
 

Sybertiger

Known around here
Joined
Jun 30, 2018
Messages
4,692
Reaction score
13,537
Location
Orlando
SELF DIRECTED IRA CUSTODIAN

I'm looking at moving a chunk to a self directed IRA custodian. I know zilch-zip-nada about self directed IRA custodians right now but would like to learn more. Anyone have one and if so would you recommend them? Of course my concern is always the annual fees you have to pay. What kind of fees would you expect to pay and is it typically dependent on the amount of money in the account or number of transactions?

I was given a list of these six as partners one of my investors use. Look familiar to anyone?

1687469072392.png
 
Last edited:

Sybertiger

Known around here
Joined
Jun 30, 2018
Messages
4,692
Reaction score
13,537
Location
Orlando
This is what I like to see....DIRECTED IRA company is upfront with my question. Not sure about the others. Looks like I'd have to call/chat/email the others to extract the info which annoys me slightly...LOL!

1687470044214.png
 

David L

IPCT Contributor
Joined
Aug 2, 2019
Messages
8,051
Reaction score
21,091
Location
USA
I use Equity Trust, my equity.com, because I invest my IRA funds in real estate loans.
The wife and I just invested a large amount of our money in real estate/property, we were the lender since we paid cash :) but made no interest so far :) We will see what the value of the property rises to over time...at our age all we make is going to go to our kids anyway...they can fight over it :)
 

mat200

IPCT Contributor
Joined
Jan 17, 2017
Messages
13,960
Reaction score
23,269
The Make-Or-Break Fork In The Road Ahead
The Make-Or-Break Fork In The Road Ahead | ZeroHedge

...and for those who think ZH is a Russian KGB espionage misinformation front, here's the original article they simply aggregated
The Make-or-Break Fork in the Road Ahead
lol .. the best influence operations have numerous good quality news / articles .. and then when the influence articles / news hits you are more likely to accept them as truthful ..

Having read ZeroHedge before the Russo-Ukraine re-invasion in Feb 2022 I can tell you they do put up a lot of interesting articles ..


Let's think about this from a business ..

Daniel Ivandjiiski as ZeroHedge's owner and a Bulgarian American probably has hired teams in Bulgaria to assist with running the editorial selections.

The pro-Russia bias can easily be there, as can the anti-Biden bias ( anti-Biden is super easy ) ..

All Daniel really needs to do is provide direction for his team to select articles which fit his bias.

This is what all managing editors ( and in some cases owners do ) .. for example New York Time, Washington Post, Los Angles Times .. all have very anti-2A bias .. and have had that for as long as I recall reading any of their stories. Did this mean their other stories are no good ? ( well , prior to the pandemic .. clearly since the Pandemic .. all msm seems suspect to me )


btw - their is another way ..

1688341204748.png

Inflate the US Dollar away .. if the US Dollar gets to be worth 50c on the dollar today .. then basically USA debt get's cut in 1/2 ...
 

bigredfish

Known around here
Joined
Sep 5, 2016
Messages
17,504
Reaction score
48,722
Location
Floriduh
I don’t think either one if the above article authors or publications (neither by ZH) are anywhere close to pro Russia. :lmao:

One can be against our involvement in the Ukraine fiasco without being Pro Putin. If I want to read “Russia bad, Trump bad, US good” I can tune into any of the US based MSM all day every day.

Much if not most of ZH stories are about domestic, macro, and global economics and yes domestic and geo politics.. I like that unlike many if not most, they actually cite sources and provide external links to data more so than most any other news source. They were so far ahead of most on the Covid/vaccine fraud narrative for example it wasn’t even close.

Im all for arguing the facts and the content, but I’ve seen nothing to lead me to believe ZH has some Pro Putin agenda. They publish maybe 10-20 articles per day from the WSJ to conservative blogs to European socialist publications. So maybe 100-150 articles, most externally sourced, per week. I just don’t think pro Russia is their primary focus nor their bias. There’s a lot more going on in the world
 

tigerwillow1

Known around here
Joined
Jul 18, 2016
Messages
3,849
Reaction score
8,519
Location
USA, Oregon
One can be against our involvement in the Ukraine fiasco without being Pro Putin.
Actually no, in some respects. This is another divide-the-population box we're being herded into, where there are only 2 choices available. You're either for open-ended money laundering war in Ukraine, or you're pro-Russia and anti-American. The string-pullers are dividing us in so many different ways that we're headed toward everybody hating everybody else, which would seem to be the goal.
 

bigredfish

Known around here
Joined
Sep 5, 2016
Messages
17,504
Reaction score
48,722
Location
Floriduh
lol .. the best influence operations have numerous good quality news / articles .. and then when the influence articles / news hits you are more likely to accept them as truthful ..

Having read ZeroHedge before the Russo-Ukraine re-invasion in Feb 2022 I can tell you they do put up a lot of interesting articles ..


Let's think about this from a business ..

Daniel Ivandjiiski as ZeroHedge's owner and a Bulgarian American probably has hired teams in Bulgaria to assist with running the editorial selections.

The pro-Russia bias can easily be there, as can the anti-Biden bias ( anti-Biden is super easy ) ..

All Daniel really needs to do is provide direction for his team to select articles which fit his bias.

This is what all managing editors ( and in some cases owners do ) .. for example New York Time, Washington Post, Los Angles Times .. all have very anti-2A bias .. and have had that for as long as I recall reading any of their stories. Did this mean their other stories are no good ? ( well , prior to the pandemic .. clearly since the Pandemic .. all msm seems suspect to me )


btw - their is another way ..

View attachment 166788

Inflate the US Dollar away .. if the US Dollar gets to be worth 50c on the dollar today .. then basically USA debt get's cut in 1/2 ...
Agreed but I think #3 "Printing more money" will accomplish that no?
 
Top