Camp FIRE Finance
Below you’ll find plenty of investment articles and ideas, but is investing safe? It’s risky, right? Isn’t it more safe to keep all my money in cash?
Nope!
Cash is king, but it’s got one major flaw: just like the rest of us, cash gets weaker as it gets older. In fact, your cash loses about 3% of it’s value every single year to inflation.
Stick $100 under your mattress and next year at this time your hundred buck will have have buying power equal to about $97. Given enough time, your cash will be worthless … unless you put it to work.
All by itself your cash gets weaker with age, but when you put it to work by investing it, then your money gets stronger with age – a lot stronger! Investing is like creating a money making machine that works for you 24/7/365.
And it’s not hard! Investing is so easy – all you really need to do is just Index and Chill.
If you’re looking for even more investment articles and ideas then keep on reading. Below you’ll find many, many more posts on this topic, so click around till you find one that you love.
I’ve been thinking a lot about investing during a recession a lot lately. And you should be thinking about this as well, because eventually we’re going to have another recession. And take it from someone that’s been there before, investing during a recession is a very hard thing to do!
We’ve all heard the conventional wisdom on investing: Invest only using index mutual funds. 90% of professional mutual fund managers fail to beat their benchmark. What chance does an individual investor have?
Surprisingly, when it comes to stock picking, small investors do have a huge advantage over professional money managers. The main reason is size. Mutual fund managers, if they are successful, end up with a lot of money to invest – billions of dollars, in fact. If they are good stock pickers, they might very well be able to pick more winners than losers. If they were provided with a million dollars, they could come out ahead of their benchmarks.
If you work for a company that offers an Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP), then just like a 401(k) match, your employer is basically offering you free money. You should do whatever you can do to max out your participation in the program.
There’s a nifty little fact about personal finance that I LOVE: every positive thing you do in one area has a positive impact in multiple other areas of your finances as well. I call it the Personal Finance Multiplier Effect, and it’s what makes it possible for all of us to reach Financial Independence and Retire Early.
The only unsolved hijacking in U.S. history is also a great example of the Time Value of Money.
In 1971 a guy going by the name D.B. Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727 airliner, received a $200,000 cash ransom then disappeared forever after parachuting out of the plane with his cash somewhere over Oregon.
Nobody knows for sure if Cooper died trying to get away, or if he got away scot free but one thing is certain: $200,000 in 1971 is the equivalent of more than $1.2 million dollars today.