Comments on: 2006 Makeover, Step #3: Thinking about Investing

By: lucas

lucas — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 05:23:26 +0000

Re the whole iPod as investment question: an iPod isn’t an investment. I think Ramit’s intention in mentioning it was to say that you should think about the other things you could do with that $300, instead of buying an iPod. To me, it said that the $300 was worth thousands in the future, not the iPod! Sorry, Ramit, if I’m putting words in your mouth. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

By: mike

mike — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 09:21:45 +0000

Just had to comment about the ipod as an investment post… Ipods usually don’t last for more than 5 years, they are running off of a hard disk drive. Hard disk drives do wear out and can wear out very fast if exposed to lots of vibrations. Plus cost of proprietary batteries can take a serious chunk of change to replace every year or two when they get worn out so bad that they barely can play 1 cd’s worth of music before dying.

As for CD’s, a CD can easily last 25+ years if taken good care of.

By: dusty

dusty — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 04:26:44 +0000

I’ve just been reading up on your site – great! Thanks!
To those wanting to learn more about investing, I’ve been learning a lot about stocks and funds over at fool.com aka the Motley Fool.

By: Maria Palma

Maria Palma — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 21:18:42 +0000

Thanks for all the good advice. I've referenced your blog on my blog. The Good Life. ~Maria Palma

By: Dan Esparza

Dan Esparza — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 16:08:50 +0000

Ah — good to know that I shouldn’t be worried about options and margins now! That’s why I asked

By: Ramit Sethi

Ramit Sethi — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 18:38:12 +0000

Dan: Thanks for reading. No, I don’t (intentionally). I’m writing about the simple, long-term steps to get rich–not the advanced, cool hand-waving things that most beginners shouldn’t care about.

If you really want to learn about that stuff at this stage (I can’t imagine why), check out Investopedia dictionary.

By: Dan Esparza

Dan Esparza — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 18:28:21 +0000

Ok, so my wife and I have read the articles you listed in step 3 here (about stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and asset allocation). We’re totally psyched. We’ve been following along with your first 2 articles, and we’re now officially in new waters, financially speaking.

So I have some questions: Do you have articles explaining options or margins? These are terms I’ve heard associated with stocks, but I haven’t found any good explanations of these.

By: Wilson

Wilson — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 11:51:07 +0000

http://www.interactivebrokers.com is a great deep discount brokerage. As low as $.005 per share, and they do IRA’s. $2k minimum deposit.

If you’re looking for someone more local Scottrade is good. Great customer service, local brokers to talk to if you’re not sure of stuff. They don’t give investing advise, though, being a deep discount brokerage. $7 trades limit or market. This fixed fee is good when you start getting into larger amounts of shares.

There’s always going to be debates between the market vs real estate. Both are great investments with their own barriers to entry and success. Real estate happens to generate passive income as well as potential for appreciation. Stocks for example also have the potential for appreciation, as well as passive (dividends). They’re not mutually exclusive investment vehicles either, so there’s no point in debating about it…

By: Jon

Jon — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 21:39:42 +0000

Empty Spaces: Sounds great, but who DO your tenants call when something breaks? I’m assuming you had to enter into some kind of agreement with a maintenance company, which is eating into your profits? Also, the problem with real estate, as far as I’m aware, is that you need a sizeable initial investment. If I want to invest $1000, or even $10000 right now, I can buy lots of shares of stock, but there’s not much (if anything) I can do real-estate-wise, right? Please correct me if I’m wrong – I would very much like to be wrong in that statement.

By: empty spaces

empty spaces — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 00:50:35 +0000

i totally disagree that the stock market is a better investment than real estate. I’ve been invested in the stock since 1999 with pretty lousy returns. I’ve started investing in Real Estate since 2003 with spectacular returns. Real Estate offers tremendous leverage, tax-deferred gains, phantom losses against regular income and there’s just no comparison. The only people who tout stocks as a better investment are stock-brokers and financial planners. Thats not to say that its not difficult. I do not own my own home and my closest rental is 976 miles away. [Which is good. I don't want my tenants calling me to fix something!]

In real estate you can get an easy 30-50% return on your money every year. i’ve gotten 16,500% returns on some investments and have sheltered the gains from taxes. try making that in the stock market and not paying taxes!

also recommended reading – ben stein’s “yes, you can time the market”.