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Financial Education
pawz
Member, Moderator, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 21,233 
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But it is an excellent point (hence my upvote). We *should* be teaching things like entrepreneurial skills, investing, risk taking, and business acumen to everyone early and often. Being responsible and saving for retirement is great, but fuck, life is also short and you gotta bet big to win big.
- Borrow about a quarter of a million dollars in any way possible, crazy high interest if need be, family, whatever.
- Buy a used 10 yard dump truck, equipment trailer, a 220 excavator, and a 10K mini.
- Business license, bond, insurance.
- Spend the next three years scraping by and paying off debt and equipment.
- Spend the next five years taking a comfortable salary and expanding and upgrading equipment.
- Spend the next as long as you want stacking money.
There's a guy who contracts at my plant who's finally selling off his business and retiring, much to his dismay. In his late 70s, you'd still see him out there on a mini with a breaker, breaking up concrete for foundation pours with a massive smile on his face. Workaholic, loved what he did, built up a company from nothing that employs hundreds of people. Got so fucking rich that he owns a tank, a MIG fighter jet, and a submarine, but still comes out to work to break up a slab when he gets the chance.The tools described above are quick and easy to learn, can do an amazing amount of work fast, are ALWAYS in demand, and are prohibitively expensive such that there will always be scarcity due to risk aversion. One large and one small excavator can easily make you a millionaire in a decade if you hustle.
Saying that I also think that it is a crime that high school / junior high kids do not get an automatic year of macro and micro economics instead of some of the garbage that does get taught like the history of Washington state etc...
Throw in accounting and business management to prepare people to run their own family business or trade and you would be building a more savvy and self reliant culture with a higher level of employment and better GDP
We are turning out a nation of economic neophytes which has serious consequences in the daily lives of our citizens... and our congressional leaders are routinely passing legislation with predictably idiotic consequences and no pushback because they have zero background in economic theory and practice, and the general public doesn’t call their shit because they are poorly educated in the same regard
My best friend is a VP at a multi billion dollar company that makes shite who’s seriously considering quitting his job to go into “Private Equity” with a bunch of his former BSchool friends. Funny story, but he almost quit is job way back when he first started working to go work for Enron. Like weeks within it blowing up. He’s my personal parable of the current insanity taking place. Although this time I think the Central Banks will keep him on the right side for a good amount of time...
Personally, I find financial advice from the 1980s has worked out better than most of what I've heard more recently.
There's a reason Buffet makes money without being sexy.
Diligence and patience.
As for real assets, so much is about interest rates. Nothing will put downward pressure on stocks, bond holdings, and real estate like the 10 year yield continuing to climb. The Fed could be in a very tricky place come May.
Regarding the real estate ride, i agree, the ride down from 14% [in 1980, like everyone else that was scrambling to get in to move up to that statement 2nd purchase house in their life at that time, I was writing 14% interest only real estate contracts with a 5 year balloon payment in order to buy] has been spectacular because there is an inverse relationship of affordability tied to real estate that makes it seem like real estate ALWAYS goes up no matter what.
The problem as @HFNY and many others have stated, is that what we have seen is a steadily decreasing 10 and 30 year treasury bond rate [which has steadily improved affordability in terms of inflated dollars] that is the proxy for being able to pass through and lay off risk via mortgage backed bonds ever since the peak in 1980.
The fact that the inverse relationship between the rising prices due to increased buying power per dollar is an automatic phenomenon has created the inherently false impression that real estate is always a safe haven for assets that you need to continue to grow to protect capital and maintain liquidity. For the last 40 years Western culture has grown up with the fact that this is a law of physics, and in more modern times have believed through observation that the real estate they own is an ATM that allows them to refinance and pull out equity capital as needed in order to shoulder tougher times.
This available liquidity has been an often underappreciated key driving force behind our increasing personal and collective Gross Domestic Product. Simply put, we take it for granted that it will always be that way. This is the greater fool theory at work in its full expression.
Once the period specific shortfall in demand for limited supply becomes satisfied, when the progressive effect of the pending reversal of affordability is combined with the automatically created trough of new household formation rate which has been created by the demographic decline in the people having fewer kids that began 30-40 years ago, the obvious outcome will be a sideways to downward slanting trend of sustainably lower longer term pricing.
Even though the outcome is staring people in the face, it will take people an extended period of time to believe it simply because the opposite has always been so.
The effect will become a progressively more obvious fiscal GDP crisis of importance because of the seemingly alien effects of decreased liquidity which ripples through the economy, and the resulting lower tax revenue over time.